Breaker tripping

[Miami Reef]

Hello,

It’s rainy today. I had this problem 3 weeks ago.

Today my lights shut off; the breaker tripped.

I reset it. It was working fine for 15 min. and then the tank and lights both tripped.

I reset it after an hour and heard a lot of weird noises under the tank: the brs 1.1mL dosing pump was trying to turn on but was getting stuck.

The dosing pump motor was stalling and chattering after resetting the breaker, as if it didn’t have enough power or the motor was stuck.

The breaker tripped. I unplugged all the brs dosing pumps (3) and unplugged my UV sterilizer that was turned on for the first time yesterday after months.

I know absolutely nothing about electrical stuff. Does anyone know what I can do to help diagnose the issue? I have an electrician coming in 2 days. He says the breaker panel needs to be changed, but it doesn’t make sense because the issue seems to be triggered by rainy weather and my tank area is only affected.


Would plugging in the brs pumps in a different outlet help diagnose the issue or would it not give any useful information?


I’ll see how long the tank runs now after unplugging the 4 things (3 dosing pumps and uv)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

 

[UncommonSense]

Which breaker is tripping specifically? The whole home disconnect? Or a 15-20A circut?

Edit: this is likely an actual issue with the home electrical, but there is some equipment troubleshooting that can be done before an electrician takes a thorough look!

 

[Reefering1]

Hello,

It’s rainy today. I had this problem 3 weeks ago.

Today my lights shut off; the breaker tripped.

I reset it. It was working fine for 15 min. and then the tank and lights both tripped.

I reset it after an hour and heard a lot of weird noises under the tank: the brs 1.1mL dosing pump was trying to turn on but was getting stuck.

The dosing pump motor was stalling and chattering after resetting the breaker, as if it didn’t have enough power or the motor was stuck.

The breaker tripped. I unplugged all the brs dosing pumps (3) and unplugged my UV sterilizer that was turned on for the first time yesterday after months.

I know absolutely nothing about electrical stuff. Does anyone know what I can do to help diagnose the issue? I have an electrician coming in 2 days. He says the breaker panel needs to be changed, but it doesn’t make sense because the issue seems to be triggered by rainy weather and my tank area is only affected.


Would plugging in the brs pumps in a different outlet help diagnose the issue or would it not give any useful information?


I’ll see how long the tank runs now after unplugging the 4 things (3 dosing pumps and uv)

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

Is this a house or apartment/ condo?

 

[Miami Reef]

Or a 15-20A circut?

This one.

I have 2 separate circuits powering my tank.



Update: the power for the tank went out again. I need to transfer everything to a new power supply.

 

[Miami Reef]

Is this a house

House.

 

[UncommonSense]

This one.

I have 2 separate circuits powering my tank.



Update: the power for the tank went out again. I need to transfer everything to a new power supply.

Run an extension cord from a GFCI on a known good circuit; if the gfci or breaker trips at well under 15A load, the equipment is suspicious!

 

[Reefering1]

House.

Do any house lights flicker? Microwave work properly? Run a extention cord to plug into that 20a outlet and see what happens..
How old is the house? What kind of panel?

 

[mmorrison55]

If it’s an actual breaker in your electrical panel, does the switch feel easy when you “flip” it back on or is there some good resistance? Most likely you are just overloading your circuit and need to split up your equipment across different breakers. But I have seen a breaker go bad and needed to be replaced.

1st identify what all outlets are on that breaker, then unplug 1 device at a time until it stops tripping, or go in reverse and add each device by their importance until you plug something in that trips it.

 

[RedReefer]

You either have too many amps pulling on the breaker circuit or you have a piece of faulty Aquarium equipment tripping the breaker. Is your breaker tripping during peak hours of tank such as peak hours of power consumption?

 

[Matt L]

@Paul B
@Danny_x1

 

[Tangdora]

. Do you run an apex. If so what is your amp load show on the eb832. If not you could get a cheap kill o watt matter from a Walmart , Home Depot or harbor freight. Then plug you power strip into it and unplug everything. Start plugging a device in on at a time till you find which is drawing outside of manufacture specs.

 

[KStatefan]

First is it a standard breaker, arc fault or GFCI breaker in your panel?

 

[FUNGI]

Check your power strip also.....

 

[spsick]

A kill-a-watt is super useful for these situations. You can plug in individual equipment to see what is drawing abnormal amps/watts.

I’d start by plugging in your critical equipment (return pump first) and build from there to see what’s popping the breaking. Big suspects being heaters and pumps.

 

[Miami Reef]

Here’s the apex readout of the equipment. I try to keep things simple.

These are all put in a GFCI outlet. All my equipment is plugged into a single outlet, and I’m using both sockets on it.

I moved it to a non GFCI outlet and I’m seeing a caution sign that I’ve never seen before on the apex:

 

[UncommonSense]

Yes. 109V is too low!

There is a bad connection in your wiring!

Are you getting 109v on other circuits too?

 

[Miami Reef]

What does the caution sign mean on the apex?

 

[UncommonSense]

It is the apex telling you that it detects a problem! In this case, under-voltage; what you would see in a power “brown out”…

If I had to guess; the electrician wants to replace the breaker panel because of water ingress… this would have caused corrosion over time, leading to panel replacement being necessary, versus just sealing the leak! — it could be elsewhere in the wiring too, but your electrician will be able to determine that!

 

[jonelder68]

It is the apex telling you that it detects a problem! In this case, under-voltage; what you would see in a power “brown out”…

If I had to guess; the electrician wants to replace the breaker panel because of water ingress… this would have caused corrosion over time, leading to panel replacement being necessary, versus just sealing the leak! — it could be elsewhere in the wiring too, but your electrician will be able to determine that!

Agree! You have an expensive repair coming @Miami Reef low voltage is never good! Maybe you’ll get lucky and it will be on the cities end.

 

[Miami Reef]

First is it a standard breaker, arc fault or GFCI breaker in your panel?

I think it’s an ARC fault (just a simple on/off switch) but the outlets are GFCI)