Gfci was tripping last night. should I do something?

[Tathamet]

Hi everyone, so I upgraded my tank on the weekend. Swapped all my hardware over to the new tank on sunday except the for the probe for my inkbird and my grounding probe. (accidentally left them out). When I got home from work last night, as soon as I sat in front of the tank I heard the gfci click and everything turned off.

After a few minutes of checking each plug causing the trip I found out it was the inkbird and my 50w cobalt neotherm heater attached to it.

this was the point I noticed I left the inkbird probe out of the tank so I put it in and saw the temp rise to 85. no big deal as nothing living is in the tank yet. All my inverts and corals are still in a 5 gallon bucket with a power head and heater running.

what I’m a little confused about is after putting the inkbird probe in the tank the heater stopped tripping the Gfci when I plugged it back in again. The gounding probe went back in the tank after I plugged the heater back in and all seemed fine again.

Also My heater must be stuck in the on position as it’s set to either 78 or 80.
I’m not necessarily worried about it being stuck on with the inkbird running but I’m not sure if I have another issue going on.

sorry for the long story. Just trying to provide context as I’m not exactly sure how gfci works and am wondering if a gfci trip automatically means I should be replacing the hardware that caused it. Or if somehow I did something that caused the trip and nothing is actually wrong.

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

Hi everyone, so I upgraded my tank on the weekend. Swapped all my hardware over to the new tank on sunday except the for the probe for my inkbird and my grounding probe. (accidentally left them out). When I got home from work last night, as soon as I sat in front of the tank I heard the gfci click and everything turned off.

After a few minutes of checking each plug causing the trip I found out it was the inkbird and my 50w cobalt neotherm heater attached to it.

this was the point I noticed I left the inkbird probe out of the tank so I put it in and saw the temp rise to 85. no big deal as nothing living is in the tank yet. All my inverts and corals are still in a 5 gallon bucket with a power head and heater running.

what I’m a little confused about is after putting the inkbird probe in the tank the heater stopped tripping the Gfci when I plugged it back in again. The gounding probe went back in the tank after I plugged the heater back in and all seemed fine again.

Also My heater must be stuck in the on position as it’s set to either 78 or 80.
I’m not necessarily worried about it being stuck on with the inkbird running but I’m not sure if I have another issue going on.

sorry for the long story. Just trying to provide context as I’m not exactly sure how gfci works and am wondering if a gfci trip automatically means I should be replacing the hardware that caused it. Or if somehow I did something that caused the trip and nothing is actually wrong.

I had to run a dedicated circuit for my tank while also using the current circuit. I was finding that everytime my heater kicked on when my lights were on i was just exceeding the load of my circuit. That could be one of the issues..second one could be water touching the circuit in one of your electrical pieces.

 

[KStatefan]

what I’m a little confused about is after putting the inkbird probe in the tank the heater stopped tripping the Gfci when I plugged it back in again. The gounding probe went back in the tank after I plugged the heater back in and all seemed fine again.

Where did you plug the heater back into? If it was into the inkbird it would not be powered on since your tank was at 85.

 

[Tathamet]

Thanks. appreciate your input. I don’t think I’m overloading the circuit as I’m only running a nano and everything has a pretty low draw from what I remember.

I have previously spilled water on the power bar a year or so ago but I unplugged everything and let it dry out. Haven’t had any problems with it that I know of. But it’s a possibility I guess.

My first thought was that water might have got onto the power bar somehow but it was completely dry at the time of the trip when I was inspecting it.

 

[Tathamet]

Where did you plug the heater back into? If it was into the inkbird it would not be powered on since your tank was at 85.

Derp! You’re right lol! That completely slipped my mind. I’ll plug it into a live socket as soon as I get home and see if it trips again. Luckily it probably won’t turn on at all since with the ambient temp it seems to sit around 77.5. Thanks for pointing that out!

 

[Tathamet]

Where did you plug the heater back into? If it was into the inkbird it would not be powered on since your tank was at 85.

So after thinking about it I must have tested it in the power bar last night because I remember checking that the heater was showing the temperature after the trip happened.

It also turns out the heater wasn’t stuck on. Must have accidentally knocked the button on it. It was actually set to 84.

now that I’m home and testing it. It does turn off on its own and does run without the inkbird.

not too sure what was going on then.

it could explain some issues I’d been having on and off randomly recently though so maybe I’ll just replace the heater to be safe.