your experiences with gfi's?

[david]

I am thinking of using a GFI (ground fault interrupt) for my new tank, but I am concerned about it possibly kicking off when I am not around.

Do you find that gfi's work reliably?

[anonapersona]

I have only had GFIs kick off when water got into a plug. I have a GFI on the outdoor pond and that is where the Xmas lights connect for the courtyard. When it rains, water gets into the connections (even though I try to cover with plastic).

Given that water in the plug is probably a major catastrophy, like filter hoses popping off, or tanks leaking, and it can keep you alive if you tend to stick your hand into the tank while the power is on to tank equipment, having a GFI has no downside as far as I can tell. They don't go off unnecessarily IME.

I have recently found a plug in the wall GFI for about $9 at Walmart. I need to go see if they have more now, I got the last one, for the 29 gallon tank is not on a GFI circut as far as I know. All the other tanks are protected.

[RTR]

Many GFIs will trigger in power outages, surges, or brief flickers - which are all too common where I live. The hard-wired ones we have in the wall are not moved to full OFF position by these brief or extended power fluctuations.

The remote or plug-in types very commonly reset to off in any power interruption. These are intended primarily for construction or workshop use, where it can be important that unattended power tools do not come on after after a power outage when no one might be there. Obviously this type is not suited for aquarium use, as we want powered operation restored with the return of electrical power. Careful reading of the instructions should be done before purchase of any such unit, followed by a simple test at home before relying on a plug-in type to operate your aquarium.

That said, all of my tanks are on hard-wired GFIs. If I set a new tank in a new location, I will use a plug-in until the electricial can get here to hard-wire the wall outlet.

[slipknottin]

If you do use the plug in GFCIs, use more than one. Put one filter and the lights on one, the heater and the other filter on the other. This way unless both GFCIs fail at once youll retain some circulation until you can get home and correct the problem.

[RTR]

Don't use the plug-in type at all unless you you have tested and found out rhat they allow auto-restart.

[slipknottin]

BTW, be careful with hard-wired GFCIs. Depending on how they are installed, any outlet down the line could also function as a gfci outlet, and could cause the gfci to trip. If your having an electrictian do the install, talk to them about that. it could also be beneficial for you to do this, as you can protect all the outlets in a fish room for instance with one gfci (not a good idea though)

[anonapersona]

Hey, thanks for that, I never knew that about the plug in GFIs.

Apparently the yellow plug-in GFI that Walmart has is an auto-restart after a power failure. We had a good long hour outage earlier this week, I hung around the house until the power came back on, for fear that the new tank might not start up easily, but it did with no problems. I think it is not sold as a power tool type GFI, although I don't have the pakaging to confirm that.

[david]

Thanks for the good info. Based on that, here's my idea...

http://richpoorman.com/aquaria/maintank/ups.gif

This should keep the main filter running through minor power outages and also keep everything on a GFCI.

Now I have to figure out a way to keep water off the UPS...

[slipknottin]

Nice planning. Personally Id try to hard wire as much of that as possible. You could also make yourself a mini electrical panel such as this to clean up the look.

http://www.eazall.com/dave/controlpanel2.jpg