tank temp has.been steady rising..

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h20addict

Aquarium Advice Regular
Joined
Nov 16, 2012
Messages
98
In the past week and a half my tank temp has climed to 84+ at times as before it was in the 80_81 consistently.
I have re set and recalbrated my wirless thermometer twice. Removed hoods and added fans in the room. A.c never excededs 75 as im an hr from the gulf coast in texas.
 
It's possible one of your pumps (power heads) is producing an abnormal heat. Try switching off one at a time and wait at least 4 hours and see if it drops even in fraction of degree. May need a new one. Is your heater in sump or DT?
 
Both power heads are less then 5 months old, but il check.
Heater is in the sump,set at 77. the dig temp display for the heater reads 82_83
 
check the shaft on your pumps or powerheads, they may be cracked and causing excess heat or your thermometer is out to lunch, i've had both happen

also whats the ambient temperature in the room that your tank is in, this also happened to me and has a large effect if your heater doesn't have a built in stat, they are set to maintain a set temperature not to regulate it. the onyl thing to do in this case is get a new heater or since the temps outside are rising turn your AC on to maintain a steady room temperature
 
Re set everything, the celing fan in that room had been out so i replaced it as wel last I keep the a.c. About 75, all pumps and power heads were fine. I also put in an old school float thermoater.
Olds school is around 82 as well as the heater. The pinpoint still claims about 84.4 ....
 
I would say it's just a matter of elimination which component on your tank is producing abnormal heat. If you have a Ground Probe in your tank, remove it and measure how much stray voltage from water in tank to ground. If you are using more than one house receptacle to power your equipment and happens to be on different circuits the stray voltage will heat up your tank.
 
I understand your heater sensor is in DT and the heater element is in sump? I have a TrueTemp controller and the specs says + or - 1 deg accuracy. When I set it to 78 it will turn on at 77 and off at 79 which is actually 2 deg differential. I end up using the Eheim heater which has less than 1 deg differential.
 
I would say it's just a matter of elimination which component on your tank is producing abnormal heat. If you have a Ground Probe in your tank, remove it and measure how much stray voltage from water in tank to ground. If you are using more than one house receptacle to power your equipment and happens to be on different circuits the stray voltage will heat up your tank.
lol

i'm sorry but this info is wrong. unless these outlets are on different ends of the house you don't have to worry about, even in those rare occations you still dont

also stray voltage in the water as far as i'm concerned is a load of ****, when you understand how electrical circuits work you will realize that one grounded is when you will cause problems if left alone your livestock will be at the same potential and will be harm free. a grounding prob will turn your tank into one giant piece of wire that will be the center of a dead short and kill everything that is in it as a ground will carry the voltage back to the neutral in your panel and return to the source of where it came from, this being the transformer that is located outside your house on a pole or infront of someones house.


if any voltage actually makes it to your water you have a bigger issue and you will notice it as soon as you toucked the water as you'd get a blast an a half. if people think that the powerheads will cause voltage being an inductive load then you are wrong also, it will cause magnetic lines of flux that will need a coil to generate any sort of voltage.

so again a grounding probe is a waste of money and anyone who tells anyone other wise is throwing a sales pitch to make a few extra bucks

if you're worries about electricity killing you or your lives stock, then get a GFCI and arch fault breaker and call it a day, this will help prevent any for of arching in the circuit and any sort of leakage of current to ground

PS: i'm an electrician and i do this every day of my life
 
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Are you saying that ground probe does not serve any purpose? In a 3 phase system would have 208 vac between 2 phase. If you have both in your tank and happens to have stray voltage on both don't you think the water becomes the load? I agree GFCI is more effective and that is what I recommend. Anyway, any idea what causes the abnormal heat in his tank?
BTW, I'm an Electrical Engineer specialized in power controls.
 
what house has a 3 phase 208v system going to it? we all have 240v single phase 3 phase is in comercial building not residential areas. and yes i'm sayign a ground probe serves no purpous, the water does not have enough resistaance to be a load and you'll get a dead short if two or more phases came into contact with it, weather there is a ground probe or not that would be the short point and it'll blow and trip ther breaker and the short out would cause more heat then a steady increase in temp it'll be a steady shot of heat at 20000+ degrees at that single point.

onother question is how do you expect to get this voltage into your tank? do you think this stray voltage will be from currents coming from the inductive load of a power head or pump? well i got news for you this is totally false, a coil generates magnetic lines of flux to spin the rotor of a motor, in the case of a pump or powerhead these rotors are one big magnet, and the only way those lines of flux are going to get turned into voltage is if there is another coil in the water to cause a current to travel from one point and back to the source, which the only way this is going to happen is if you put a tester in the tank and use the coil inside it. if you think from this explination that means that another powerhead or pump will be the coil then again this is not the case is that coil is already doing the same thing and causing the same sign in the AC wave to take the voltage if it was another phase you'd get another dead short and trip out the circuit for that powerhead or pump. and this is all being said in the water was a ferrous material that could conduct a magnetic charge, which it can't and the talk about stray voltage in the water being a done deal and the only way voltage will get introduced into the water is from a chracked coil or heater and then in that case you'd have ther problems
 
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Im in the USA and you are in Canada. I guess we have different electrical system. We do have 3 phase in residential apartments. We have 120 single phase with 208 v in 2 legs. Stray does not mean short. Electrical insulation has dielectric capacitance. We both agree that stray voltage is not produced by motors. It can be due to degradation or poor insulation plus the diectric capacitance I mentioned. High Tension electrians use grounding probe to discharge stray voltage before working on wires. It does protect you not to get that shock in your tank. Stray voltage does not necessarily means a short. Get a digital meter and touch one lead to ground and the other to the insulation of wire. That will explain what I am talking about. However, there may be some cases where that voltage has enough energy (it could be just 1 volt) and your water turns into a heater.
 
high voltage lineman use the probe to liven the ground around them to the same potential as the cables they are working on to prtect from the current travel from different voltage levels. and yes sir if there is voltage moving from one place to ground it is a short as tehre is a current travelling, pushign the voltage through the resistance.

electricity take the path of least resistance to get back to its source or to ground which will cause a current to flow, weather a high amperage or low it will still flow. even a degradign in sheath will not cause the voltage to maintain contact with the water, ythis will be sheth currents produces which is still a magnetic current and this said there is not enough curren being pushed to have any effect on what is going on and even then you have the neutral which is cancelling out the currents from the line side as they are goign in a reverse flow and causing a reverse sheath current. where you have to worry about sheath currents is when its high amperage single conductor cables that can cause a hot spot in the cable if there is a ferrous material wrappign around causing a reverse current on the same cable. if you have all three phases or neutral in the same raceway these currents are all balanced out cancelling much of the sheath currents. but again a this current is cause when a magnetic field is pushed through a ferrous material onto another coil or sheath that will cause a reverse current on the cable. any sort of induction will cause a magnetic field and not a stray voltage and you need to turn this field into a voltage by creating a path that wille ultimatly return to itself.

look up how a transformer works and then come back and discuss it with me weather its possible or not

as far as the 3 phase in apartments, then that is completly different then a house and there is still single phase panels in each suit but 3 phase goign to the building.

again the info you are getting is a sales pitch by someone that thinks high current enviroments have a bearign on our fish tanks. if it makes you sleep better havign a probe then by all means use it, i'm just lettign you know they are a waste of money and in my opinion a potential risk at further damaging things
 
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That is quite a long explanation of induction current but we are talking about stray voltage. In the US it means leaking. We don't need to talk about high technical terms here. We just want to help the guy who is having a temp problem. So far you have not suggested anything yet.
 
also stray voltage in the water as far as i'm concerned is a load of ****, when you understand how electrical circuits work you will realize that one grounded is when you will cause problems if left alone your livestock will be at the same potential and will be harm free. a grounding prob will turn your tank into one giant piece of wire that will be the center of a dead short and kill everything that is in it as a ground will carry the voltage back to the neutral in your panel and return to the source of where it came from, this being the transformer that is located outside your house on a pole or infront of someones house.
If you recall mentioning the Grounding Probe being used by High Voltage electricians to by pass the current for safety precaution. The same thing applies in your tank. Water has higher conductivity compared to the fish therefore current will flow through the water not through the fish. Yes I use Ground Probe cause I do have stray voltage in my tank. My fish and corals are healthy as can be.
 
lol they use it to charge the ground that they stand on if there was a charge in the water of your tank this would be the same potential, grounding it out would carry any current away rather then doing what high voltage linemen try to do which is keeping themselves isolated and at the same potential.

current will travel when there is a different in potential, the greater the different the greater the risk in electrical shock. an example using a fish tank say there is a leak in the 120 volt line of the fishtank now your water will become charged to 120 volts, water is an insolator but not a very good one so it conducts electricity, but this water is sittign in a glass tank on a wooden stand which are both good insolators, keeping the voltage contained and the tank at equal potential to theline of the powersupply.now add a ground probe to this and you'll be taking this line to a 0v ground which will have a difference of 120v which will cause a current to be pushed through the water through the probe into your ground which gets carried to the ground bar in your panel which is then bonded to the neutral bar of the source and also bonded to the ground. this is a short and carry the the short circuit current of your breaker through the water, this current is 10000 amps for 1 second which equals death to your fish, by electricution and by the heat generated. now lets look at the theoretical concept of stray voltages in your tank from "dielectric" degradtion of the cable insulation introduction 3v into the water and having it grounded to this 0v ground will cause this voltage to want to move, when this happens its goign to want to push through the resistance of the water and the ground conductor which will generate a current that can ultimately kill the live stock. no i have not done the experiment to calculate the resistive value of whater, but i'm sure it varies depending on water conditions but if you want to calculate the current that can potentially be pushed just find the resistive value and plug it into this forumla i=e/r where i is the current e is voltage and r is the resistive value. the current will end up being low but there is still a current and if the condidions get to a lower resistive value to potential to increase the amperage is very high

the thing is its not the voltage the kills it is the current anything over 50milliamps is potentially leathal which is why a GFCI is designed to monitor current leaks that are a difference of 5milliamps

another not here is we are talkign about 120volts not 100 000 volt power lines that require stupid thick silicone insulated cables and still may cause slight leak of voltage through the resistance of the insulator

like i seriouslly can't believe i'm actually arguing about this.
 
I don't want to say this but you are just talking about the basics in electricity. I am just explaining things in layman's language. You are making extreme assumptions to exaggerate what you believe in. Yes I can not believe it either that you are discussing the elementary stuff in electricity. It is because you assume I have less knowledge than you.
 
lol and what we are talkign about is elementary voltages not high voltages that warrent voltage leaks or issues with insulations.

i get it you have a knowledge of electrical engineering are are thinking larger then what is actually being used. in a home reef tank the only way we are going to have an issue with voltage leaks in our aquariums if is the conductor is physically in contact with the water and your theories are over exaggurated not mine
 
Here is a suggestion for you to do to prove what I am talking about. Take a reading of the hot side insulation of the electrical cord with respect to ground. Tell me if you don't get any readings at all. It could be just 0.1 vac but that is only a pin point of your test prod. Now consider the length of wire submerge in your tank cause they do add up. The value varies depending on the quality and degradation of insulation.
 
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