GFCI tripped-What do i need to check?

[minyee]

So sometime between midnight last night and 5:30 this morning my GFCI tripped. Woke up & saw that everything was off and the water temp was down to 73. The GFCI had tripped so I pushed the reset button (had to do it a few times) to turn everything back on. Since the temp was down I left the powerheads off until it comes back up.

Question is now-What do I have to do? What do I need to check? We haven't added any new tank equipment in over a month. It's a 7 year old house. The tank has it's own dedicated circuit. We have multiple ups plugged in...tested them and they seem to be working. Don't know if we were just too sound asleep last night (rare) to hear them go off. The tank has been up and running for over a year.

I figure I'll test the water once the temp goes up. Only the moonlights are on right now and all the livestock looks normal as far as I can see. I had just done a water change last night and added some sand but can't see how that would affect anything. Everything seemed to be running normally when we went to bed.

Anyway any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[ReeferGoneMad]

Test your water. And carefully watch the livestock, IMO I would switch the pumps back on. It will allow for the temp to circulate. Is there anything out of the norm? Check carefully.

Electrical wise I really can't help you. There is a MR member by the name of Fry that knows his stuff, maybe he can elaborate on the situation involving the outage.

 

[minyee]

OK. I turned the pumps back on at 8am once the temp was at 76. I hesitated to do it right away because all the circulation tends to drop my temp a degree or two normally. 5 minutes later the GFCI tripped again. Made me think that the pumps must have something to do with it. All the pumps are on a strip and I noticed the light that usually lights up on the strip isn't now. So I unplugged half the pumps and will try replacing the strip. Hopefully the answer is that simple. Considering how badly my tank could have gone I'm hoping I dodged a bullet.

If anybody has any other suggestions or advice I welcome it.

 

[minyee]

Actually I should say that it's either one of the pumps or the strip so I'll have to check each one today. Probably time to get rid of some of the cheap Maxis anyway.

 

[meschaefer]

If the GFCI is tripping you probably have stray voltage some place. Unplug everything and then plug them in one by one. Untill you find what is causing the GFCI to trip.

For what it is worth. If you are going to use a GFCI, then you really should be using at leat two of them, that are not daisy chained together. Spread your heater, and circulation pumps/PHs between them so that if one of them trips you are covered by redundancy.

 

[FRY]

The cause is either a problem pump,heater,light or a worn-out GFCI outlet. To determine the culprit,
Plug the pump into another GFCI outlet and run it. If that GFCI also trips, the pump is at fault and should be replaced. If the
pump runs normally, the GFCI outlet is faulty and should be replaced.i have one pump plug in one gfci outlt trips plug in other outlet works fine meggern the pump and its fine ,i disconneted the gfci outlets cause of false triping if you use gfci outlet use 2 have hale of the pumps on one and the halve on the other allso use 2 heaters if your heater is 500watt use 2 -250 watts heater one on each gfci outlet,are your lights on the gfci circuit

 

[FRY]

dont get me wrong gfci outlets are the safest thing to have been used in the home bathroom ,kitchen,backyard, but because of the false tripping when used with fish tanks you have to think which is worst losing everything with false tripping which i had happen several times ,i have tester for gfci and and use them all the time but never found the culprit,just make sure your wires are safe and not fraded