1st ever real emergency

[StevenSeas]

Cool you were home. I had a similar situation happen (not tank related) were I woke up to smelling electrical burning - smoke detector didnt go off. Luckily I was going into work in the evening (this was around 10am) and cut the power off before the house went up in flames.

Speaking of voltage, my newly installed ATI T5's are shocking me when my arms are in the tank. If I make contact with the fixture (which easily happens) and my arm is in the tank, I get a nice shock - otherwise everything is fine. Appears I have stray voltage or a bad ground. I know electricity follows the path of least resistance, but a ground should protect this right?

Sounds like you are grounding yourself on the fixture itself and it isnt what is giving you the shock but rather the outlet from the electricity your getting. When you are touching it your just grounding yourself. You can test this theory by sticking your arm in the tank and touching a piece of metal. Or if you wanna get high tech you can use a volt meter and see if it registers anything. i have had this be the case before and am hoping that your new ATI isnt causing this.

[Europhyllia]

Do you have everything plugged into GFCI outlets, Terry?
Please get some and be safe.

You know I ran the ATI until last week and it never did anything like that too me. It must be the metal grounding thing.

DO NOT add a grounding probe if you do not have everything plugged into GFCI outlets!

[ShAgMaN]

Actually, I have a volt meter and will check it. Pretty sure it's coming from the fixture.

[Europhyllia]

what about the bulbs. Are you sure all of the bulbs are clicked in?

[ShAgMaN]

Do you have everything plugged into GFCI outlets, Terry?
Please get some and be safe.

You know I ran the ATI until last week and it never did anything like that too me. It must be the metal grounding thing.

DO NOT add a grounding probe if you do not have everything plugged into GFCI outlets!

Your totally right and I know better than pluging it into anything other than GFCI - but it's not. A GFCI is in the area and will be used after I test this out. Good to hear you didn't have an issue - prolly just a bad ground.

[ShAgMaN]

Definitely not the ground. Plugged into my GFCI with same results.

Sorry, not trying to hijack your thread Ray.

[DarkHorseMBA]

And that is why I don't have a heater in my tank. From what I've read it not a question of IF a heater goes bad but WHEN a heater goes bad. In the winter my tank hits a low of 74, I'd rather risk that than cooking my fish something worse.

Glad it all worked out for you.

[neogenix]

Have you got some water bugs? And, a grounding probe? I could be that your grounding probe bust something tooo, if you had one?

[ShAgMaN]

Just checked and it's not the heater, and I don't have a grounding probe. Pretty sure now it's stray current from the fixture - which doesnt mess with my tank - just me.

[Europhyllia]

Wow. That stinks. I even had my parents mail me the spare screw from Germany directly from ATI so that I could handover a 100% complete fixture in perfect working condition to you. :(

What could have happened? What makes a fixture start leaking current? How can it be fixed? Could something have pulled lose in transit? The 60" fixture is so big with all the cables in the extra bag maybe something got dropped or pulled out?
I've never seen them mounted into a canopy since they have the hanging kit. Could that influence anything?

You need to get it fixed somehow, Terry. I am worried you could seriously get hurt.

I am surprised it doesn't trip the GFCI if there is leakage.

I tried to understand the current leakage issue further but am still clueless. One thing I did find was this in regards to a fixture that tripped the GFCI:

Prior to my grounding the fixture I called my supply house and asked if they had seen this problem before. Their response was that it sounded like a grounding problem. It wasn't until I pulled the fixture down from the ceiling that I realized that the EGC was not bonded to the fixture. Once I connected the EGC the fixture worked fine.

I'm not saying that ALL fluorescent fixtures have to be grounded in order to work but the fact is that ALL FIXTURES SHOULD BE GROUNDED VIA THE EGC.

Sadly I have no idea what a EGC is. I hope you do?

And I am sure you already tried the obvious and also unplugged the moonlights, right? I could see something on the moonlights corroding or pulling out since their wires are way more exposed than the ATI.