Electrical needs discussion

[Ocelaris]

I'm usually paying about $15-$20 for a gfci where as a regular tamper resistant one is $3. But it's not an expense worth skimping on. I've replaced at least 5 gfci receptacles outside as they're all pigtailed, which is really bad over the course of 8 years on only 5 outlets. But I would say that's the exception not the norm. Also when our power line went down and surged the house, it blew almost every gfci and power strip, but luckily on those circuits the equipment wasn't damaged. Unfortunately the central air and dishwasher were hardwired and got zapped. If you don't have a gfci on the tanks circuit, at least have a cheap power strip with some protection. I won't plug any electronics worth anything directly to the wall anymore after that incident, even though I've added a Eaton whole house surge protector.

 

[Ratherbeflyen]

My 220 gallon runs on a single 15 amp circuit breaker, but I get away with that because I threw away all the AC-DC converters and replaced them with a single 24v 40 amp AC-DC converter. I do have a separate GFCI outlet with a different AC-DC converter running my wave pumps. That way if the outlet, power strip, or converter dies on either circuit, the display will still have water circulation.

That's why I'm only using 4 outlets on my reefkeeper. The two aforementioned converters and two 300 watt heaters. That runs my entire tank with the exception of my display lighting that I have on a wifi power strip.

 

[Eric R.]

I'm usually paying about $15-$20 for a gfci where as a regular tamper resistant one is $3.

Yeah, sorry. I meant to say the savings between the two compared to the overall cost of the tank + inhabitants isn't that much. Clearly they are more expensive, but the extra $100 is worth the peace of mind, imo. I find it funny what people will spend money on though and then skimp on other things that could cause huge problems if they fail.

 

[Greg P]

Out of curiosity, do you have your outlets wired so that if one trips, the downstream outlets don't trip as well? I would imagine that this is possible, I've just never seen it done.

My GFCI outlets are independent - 1 for each piece of wet hardware. The only one tied to another outlet is due to having 3 heaters, so a duplex outlet runs off that GFCI.
And due to space, when I was running carbon and gfo I had their pumps on 1 outlet. Not the end of the world if they both went down together.

My controller power bars are direct power after the surge suppressors. I then wired pigtails to plug the GFCIs into the power bars. Then the hardware units go to their respective GFCIs.

 

[Sabina]

I made a video about what I did with my 300 gallon Reef.