Be careful !

jhoop · Apr 8, 2017

Today I started to smell a burning smell from one of my tanks. I found that a plug coming from one of my pumps. ( MJ1200 ) was burning the plastic outlet strip on the surge protector. Looks like it was shorting between the two blades on the plug.

Have it all connected to GFCI outlet. But it never tripped. Maybe never shorted enough. Probably got splashed doing some cleaning. Just a little FYI to watch for.

Labridaedicted · Apr 8, 2017

Glad you were there when it happened! I came home to soot on the wall above my outlet one time. I got lucky nothing caught nearby during the short. Now I try to keep my outlets as remote as possible from the tank.

It's unfortunately the risk we take with a hobby suspending hundreds of gallons of water above live electrical equipment

mtraylor · Apr 9, 2017

glad you cought it. Thanks for the reminder. I haven't seen anything like that since I stopped using RIO pumps way back in the day.

jhoop · Apr 12, 2017

I changed the plug today. This is what was happening.

Gargamell · Apr 12, 2017

just curious, why were you using an adapter with that?

jhoop · Apr 12, 2017

After it burnt up my power strip, which I thought was the problem. I put in a new one then, it started burning it again. So then I found out it was the plug. I cleaned the plug and installed the three prong adapter until I could get a new plug. Now it just burned a .99 $ adapter instead of a $ 20.00 power strip. The picture is the "Bad" plug I cut off and replaced.

JaimeAdams · Apr 12, 2017

My wife woke me up one night at about 5am to a burning smell. I opened the door to a house full of smoke. Sure enough under my tank was on fire! Power strips are pretty cheap and can be very dangerous.

sc50964 · Apr 12, 2017

JaimeAdams said:
My wife woke me up one night at about 5am to a burning smell. I opened the door to a house full of smoke. Sure enough under my tank was on fire! Power strips are pretty cheap and can be very dangerous.

Surge protector and GFCI are certainly must have safety equipments.

LJC6780 · Apr 12, 2017

You sure it's just the plug and not the equipment shorting or something? Seems to me like just replacing the end wouldn't necessarily fix the problem. I'm not an electrician though.