Volt reading in tank water

  • We are currently upgrading MFK. thanks! -neo
If the light is humming loudly, there is definately something wrong. You said you added the moonlighting, is it possible that there is a bad connection to the t5 ballast? Did you wire nut the wires together? If so, how many wires, what guage, and what color were the wire nuts?
How old is the fixture? Bulbs?
 
The ballast should still be good, but they can go bad. how old are the bulbs?
 
Inductive current maybe? Do you have any extension cords that are neatly coiled? With 2 big canisters and a big light fixture worth of current, you may have accidentally built yourself a transformer (or electromagnet). That would definitely cause buzzing & induction, which would build & get stronger with time. Are your wires hot to the touch? If so, re-coil the wires in a figure eight so the magnetic flux lines cancel each other out.

If it's neither of these & not any of the other suggestions, I would call a licensed Electrician ASAP. Water + Electricity= Fire Hazard. Good luck!
 
You have a bad ground somewhere in the system. If everything is plugged into a powerstrip, the bad ground could be in the powerstrip itself. Try changing your powerstrip/splitter first, and make sure it's plugged into a fully grounded outlet.

If you eliminate the pwoerstrip from the potential bad ground candidates there is a device you can get called a GFCI converter. Basically it's like an outlet that plugs into your outlet and will accomodate any 3 prong device, however, as soon as it detects a mismatch in voltage between the positive and neutral terminals it opens the circuit. This will tell you definitively which device is failing the ground regardless of whether it's a grounded or ungrounded device.

As for the putting a ground in your tank, that's dangerous. Having no ground is better than having a bad ground. Since you already have a bad ground, creating a second bad ground will only cause an electrical fire.

Until you have this sorted out, I'd recommend not plugging in anything that you haven't certified as being ok from wall to operation, your tank, fish, and most of all house could potentially be on the line. Don't mess with electricity, especially 110v.
 
I think I found the problem. I switched to a different outlet and had the same problem. It was a 2 prong. I switched a third time and get no reading in the water or lights. I think the 2 other outlets arent grounded but this is.
 
PredatorTank215;3060885; said:
I think I found the problem. I switched to a different outlet and had the same problem. It was a 2 prong. I switched a third time and get no reading in the water or lights. I think the 2 other outlets arent grounded but this is.
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2 prong outlets are not grounded.
3 prong with a reset switch may be or may not be.
3 prong with no reset switch should be grounded, but you can only trust it if an electrician has looked at it.

That being said, 3 prong to 2 prong converters are also not grounded, even if they come with the little wire or eyelet to put a screw into as they're screwing into an ungrounded outlet.

Trust me, I feel your pain. I just bought a house and I'm in the process of rewiring the whole thing to accomodate my aquarium habit.
 
JakeH;3060899; said:
Forget your tank for now. You need an Electrician. Every plug in your house needs to be checked & grounded.
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Unless you're using one of those adapters, in which case call an electrician to run you a new grounded outlet, because you need one.

And DO NOT take a 3 prong outlet and install it without a ground, you can face fines and penalties if an inspector ever looks at it, or worse yet, you can possibly hurt or kill someone with a setup like that.

In some states you can connect a 3 prong GFCI outlet to a 2 wire line if and only if you mark the outlet "No Equipment Ground".
 
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