My Near Disaster

Basicly, in aquarium use, GFI outlets or power strips are used for water protection. If water comes into contact with an electrical connection, normally bad bad things would happen. But with a GFI outlet, if water comes into contact with the electrical connections, the GFI trips and all connections are shut down.

It's like a house circuit breaker or something. Rather than something frying the circuits in the house, the breaker trips and you have to reset it after the problem is solved. Same with the GFI. All we had to do was clean off the water and push a button. And that water must have been FLOODING, I'm not sure. Because I had those power strips mounted about 1 foot off the ground on the wall. Maybe it was the water splashing down the stand that tripped it, rather than the actual overflow.

 

And I do realize that is about as laymans of terms as I can describe a GFI We have an electrical engineer and a fleet of electrical buffs on this forum, so I'm sure someone else will chime in to help me out

 

i am sorry to hear of the problem and glad you caught it quick.

however if it were me i would not keep snails in my overflow. what i would do is just clean it myself and make it part of my maintenance schedual so i had the piece of mind.

 

ive had gfis trip on my fresh water and never noticed til the water kept staying murky and i went to change the filter pads and there wasnt any water flow. when i grabbed the pads cause they needed to be cleaned any way i stumbled and my hand fell in the water and i noticed how cold it was so then i realized what had happened. at first before i dipped my hand in the water i thought it was a faulty pump then i turned evry thing on and it worked

 

To me, it falls in the "thingie" category....

Sparky? Where are you?

 

I like the easy way out! ;D Make something else do the work for me. BUT, I will be skittish about putting snails in the overflow now!