Help!! Eb8 blowing gfci

Balz3352

Reef Shark
M.A.S.C Club Member
#1
Hey guys. Last night was watching tv gear a pop from another room think nothing of it and later go over and notice moonlights are off? Weird. Go to apex everything is set ok correctly.

See the amps the eb8 is pulling and it peaked at 94. 2!! Wtf. Exactly midnight.

Turn off all the led components and the amps drop. They're all over the place. Turn off for a bit and just peak and trough see pictures.

First pic is of normal cycle for 2 days then the incident.



This pic is closeup of the incident.


This is when I found out it was the gfci

Now i have all the plugs turned off instead of auto (scheduled off) at this time. Now its unplugged from the wall still saying it's pulling 18.9 amps.

Only thing plugged into this eb8 are lights. 3 250watt metal halides, 2 80watt t5, and my 2 diy rapidled acitinic supplements with a vdm. At the time of the pop everything scheduled off except my actinic down at 10% for 3 hours then off.


Gfci is dedicated 20a outlet for the tank this eb8 is the only thing plugged into it. Brand new set up for the tank. Everything was working perfectly on schedule for a month. Nothing has changed schedule or plug wise.

Please help!!
 

halmus

Registered Users
M.A.S.C Club Member
ex-officio
#2
So, I'm not sure I understand everything going on, but I'm looking at a few of the numbers. Currently, you're pulling 18.9 amps. That's about 2200 watts (Power = Volts x Amps). Your MH and T5 add up to around 900 watts. So, the LED's are currently pulling around 1300 watts or 10.8 amps? That's a lot!

Try unplugging the DIY LED's. You should see around 7.5 amps on the EB8 with x3 250 Watt MH and x2 80 Watt T5-HO. If you do see the expected 7.5 amps, I would suggest there's something going on with the Rapid DIY LED kit.

I don't know what kind of wattage that LED kit is supposed to consume, but I can't imagine it should be over 250 watts at the very most.

Or, you can try running one single component at a time. Plug in one single T5 and measure the current and then one single MH until you identify something that looks funny. (250 watt MH = ~2 amps) (80 watt T5-H0 = ~0.6 amps). Or, if you want to bypass the EB8, you can run to the hardware store and buy a "kill-o-watt meter". It's a stand-alone meter for measuring current / watts. Just plug it into the wall and plug the component into the meter. It gives you a real time reading of the current / wattage. They cost around $30 and are handy to have if you're messing with this sort of issue.

Again, the DIY kit is always suspect because it's more likely that there is a short somewhere. Human error. No offense to you, but I work with electronics all the time. I always suspect human error on my part even though I have a decent amount of experience.

Maybe I missed something in your description and I'm way off in the diagnosis. Feel free to correct me and let us know what you find.
 

Balz3352

Reef Shark
M.A.S.C Club Member
#3
Sorry writing this at 5 am when I woke up because im stressed about this so not clear.

I have had all of the lights on it and working on a schedule for 3 weeks without issue. My usual peak amps is 8 and change with all halides t5 amd leds at 80%.

Nothing changed and in fact only my leds at 10% were on (at 10% for 4 hours) when randomly the circuit blew.

Now the amp reading is all over the place whether anything is plugged in or kot whether the eb8 is plugged in or not.
If I do have anything plugged in and I plug in the eb8 (with all the outlets off on fusion) it trips the gfci.
 

deboy69

Nurse Shark
M.A.S.C Club Member
#7
1. Either you got water into the eb8
2. Eb8 went bad

My bet is on the first one followed by the second. Gfci tripped due to a short. The chance of drawing 94 amps is very unlikely from anything from your stuff. Most likely read the short surge and that's what it registered.


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