Almost lost it all

Never overload a breaker

Today, I learned an important lesson. A lesson that we already know but you never really take seriously until you get burned.

I went into my garage where I keep the majority of my fish tanks and it was quiet. No movements, no filters, no heaters….nothing.

(Photo above of my baby Kribensis that didn’t make it)

I checked the breaker and everything was fine except for one that was tripped. And of course, it was the breaker that supported my 23 fish tanks and hundreds of fish. As soon as I switched it back on I immediately looked at all my tanks. Harry, my hairy puffer, was up front on the sand - motionless. My $120 puffer…my only “pet” fish wasn’t moving. I looked at the baby Kribensis tank and all I see is small bodies scattered across the substrate. Motionless, dead.

(Photo above from my fish room showing it was 55 degrees in my garage - it was 51 when I first noticed the power was out)

I go back inside for a moment to decide if I should even continue fishkeeping and not 15 mins later, I hear a “pop” come from inside the garage. It was the breaker again…it tripped and all heaters, filters, lights, all of it was off again. To make things worse, its 20f degrees outside.

So, I run back in the garage and notice that the same breaker is tripped again and all my fish racks are off but the workshop area is still on. There are 3 outlets in the garage, 2 of them run to the exact same breaker and the 3rd one supports the garage fridge and workshop area and that one is on another breaker. I have each rack connected to 2 different outlets but each of those outlets runs to the same breaker!

So, I realize while 2 breakers should be able to support the energy for all 23 tanks plus workshop area - it wasn’t because the majority of the appliances are connected to 1 breaker.

I have 4 racks in my garage plus a fridge and workshop area. Currently the 4 racks are connected to 1 breaker and the fridge and workshop are connected to the other. I decided to have 1 breaker support 3 racks and the other breaker support the 1 rack (the largest one) plus the fridge and workshop area. And after some quick math, it should reduce the energy feeding into the one breaker that keeps tripping by about 20%…Which should be more than enough to ensure it doesn’t trip again…assuming I don’t add more tanks…because the day before I added more equipment - which was the source of the problem. I recently acquired a generator too..I just never set it up. So, I guess that’s what I’ll be doing this weekend.

(Photo above of Hairy laying on the substrate)

But it gets better! Just when I thought I lost Hairy, I decided to give it one last chance to save him, just in case! You’ve heard of cases where someone’s fish jumped out and they are dried out on the floor - just absolutely crispy but they threw it back in the tank “just in case” and a little while later its back to normal!

Well, after a couple rounds of pouring hot water into the tank to gradually increase the temperature - I saw Hairy move! So, I did a few more rounds of adding hot water and while he is not his normal self yet, he is moving around a lot more! I feel confident that he will make a full recovery but only time will tell!

(Photo above of one of my baby Kribensis that didn’t make it)

As for my baby Kribensis…all of them died. But, I couldn’t find any other casualties (that I know of)…

So, the morale of the story…when you start acquiring more and more tanks make sure you know where your electricity is drawing from as well as its capacity. That way, you don’t find yourself in my shoes with a lot of dead fish and while only 1 tank out of the 23 had fish that didn’t make it…it could have been a lot worse.