Power Short

[jcook54]

Wife called me while I was out of town this past week and let me know that my lights weren't on. Since I was in WI there wasn't much to do about it beyond troubleshooting some basics. The lights were on a power strip and I asked her to plug something into it to make sure it was working. It was not so I had her unplug the skimmer and check the breaker box. That was the issue and the lights powered up. Took me a few days to get home but I pulled the skimmer and found this.



For those of you who are new to the hobby, that is not good. Very not good.

How did I know to unplug the skimmer? I'm not proud of this but I had it plugged into a GFCI outlet and it kept tripping. Not my best moment. I've had so many GFCI outlets go bad that I just figured I needed a new one and didn't feel like getting into it. Besides, when I plugged the skimmer into a "regular" outlet it worked just fine. I pulled the pump, cleaned the unit and was getting ready to plug it back in to see if maybe it was just a dirty and drawing too much power (or something like that). When I glanced at the wire I noticed it was clearly broken and as it dried the rust colored corrosion is really evident.

Lesson learned. My Radions seem to be fine but I'd feel like a real jerk if my laziness caused a short that smoked my lights.

 

[Reefplumber13]

Here's my question. Where are you getting a replacement pump? I need one and can't find a direct replacement

 

[jcook54]

I reached out to Coralvue, gave them the skimmer model and they told me what pump to get. The Reef Octopus pumps haven't been used for a long time now and the new-ish line is called "Aquatrance." Specifically, I ordered an Aquatrance 1000S per their suggestion. I've found the Coralvue's customer service to be pretty darn good.


(I actually ordered the pump from Amazon.)

 

[timeconsumer]

Any elevated copper levels from the exposed wire?

 

[jcook54]

Just ordered 2 ICP test to try and find out. Most everything is doing good and the corals that aren't happy are having light related issues Turns out that when you get a power surge that's strong enough to trip the breaker, Radion's forget their programming. It also turn out that the default Radion program is enough to sunburn most of my corals. It was only for 2 day and while everything is looking a little pale, I can't see skeleton on anything (yet).