Dead fish = electrocuted?

frybread4life · Oct 13, 2012

So I woke up this morning and when I went to check on my tank, I noticed all my fish, except one hawkfish, was dead.......I checked my parameters thinking it was a spike, but nothing was out of wack at all. So my idea is that maybe my heater short circuited and shocked them? anyone else have any ideas? Is there any way to check my heater to know if it has a short in it? But I dont understand as to why the hawkfish would survive a shock like that, while the rest died.....I'm lost and pretty frustrated! Please help!

Dustin1300 · Oct 13, 2012

I think your chasing after the wrong thing. Fish are not going to be shocked as they are not grounding out the "circuit" and the saltwater is a much conductor than the fish luckily. The bad thing is you still don't know what caused all your fish to die.

Do you have coral? Were they effected? Any power outage? Do you have an ORP probe that would tell what the oxygen was? Any reason you could have had a major influx or reduction of PH? How old is tank? Any detectable Ammonia?

Sorry for all the questions but think the heater is likely not your culprit...

Isoprene · Oct 13, 2012

No idea how to help but im sorry all the same. I hope the hawk stays strong! good luck man!

IBEW41 · Oct 14, 2012

what tests did you do?what are the numbers of the tests

oceangirl2009 · Oct 14, 2012

You could have stray voltage in your tank from a faulty heater and without a grounding probe it has no where to go and can stress fish to the point of dying suddenly and all at once. This happened to me last year, I got a voltmeter and shut everything off and turned everything back on one at a time when I turned my heater on it spiked and needless to say the heater went in the trash and a grounding probe went in.

Connie · Oct 14, 2012

powerheads can give stray voltage also. That happened to me a few months ago. It did hurt my wrasse, but he made it. It affected my corals mostly. Also, what was your water temp? A heater stuck "on" can kill the quickly, but would also affect coral.

MBSL55 · Oct 14, 2012

As mentioned you will need a voltmeter to check for stray voltage. If you get stray voltage with everything on you will then need to cycle through and check each item to see if it spikes the voltage.

You will need to insert a probe into the water and then the other probe into ground. I used a grounding plug to connect the meter to ground so there is no chance the probe will accidentally go into a live socket. That would be no bueno. Set your meter to read AC voltage and see what you get. Probably doesn't hurt to check for DC voltage either. If you have items in the sump, check for voltage there (i.e. heaters, skimmer pumps, etc.). If they are in the main tank, check for voltage in the main tank (powerheads). If your pumps, including return pumps are off as you cycle through each piece of equipment, you may not catch what is leaking voltage unless you are checking where the item in question is actually sitting in water. For reference, I just checked my tank for the heck of it and am getting 0.042 VAC.

frybread4life · Oct 14, 2012

Thanks for the input! So what is a "good reading" I should be looking for on my AC test? Haven't done it yet, but as you tested yours and it came up at 0.042 VAC, is that an acceptable reading? What numbers should I be scared of seeing......Also, I guess I dont really understand the "grounding probe"

Here is my test results as of this morning.

Carbonate - 9*
Phosphate - 0
Nitrate - 0
PH - 8.4
Calcium - 390
Magnesium - 1185
Water Temp - 78.2
Salinity - 1.024

frybread4life · Oct 14, 2012

And as far as the corals, Everything is super healthy and not showing any signs of any stress. Heck, they look better than they ever have! and the tank has been up and running for just over a year, with one move about 4 months ago.

MBSL55 · Oct 14, 2012

Grounding probe is something that plugs into the wall but just has the ground wire connected and leading out of it that can then go into your tank.

I would think anything over a couple volts would be bad. I'd have to do a little research to see what would be acceptable.

Sent from my SGH-T999 using Tapatalk 2

oceangirl2009 · Oct 14, 2012

When I had my heater malfunction last December, my corals and inverts were doing just fine, so it was quite a mystery, until I checked the voltage and it was clear that it was the culprit.

The grounding probe, like it was said above, gets plugged in and one end goes in your tank, that way if anything leaks stray voltage, the grounding probe allows it to go out of the tank into the ground. I would never have a tank without one now as losing all that livestock was devastating!