High Tide Aquatics

Electrical, GFCI, Controllers.

Probably because the price would increase to a point where it becomes unobtanium. I don't make design or financial decisions. But you can easily add individual GFCI to the Energy Bar. They sell short GFCI extensions.
 
I have a bank of 8 independent GFCI outlets.
So everything is on GFCI.
But if one trips, it does not bring down the whole system.
As part of that I also included a heavy duty surge suppressor in it.

Also : What people forget - there is always a bit of stray current, and it does add up.
With quite a few things plugged in, you can get close to the limit even without a real problem.
 
Vhuang168 said:
Probably because the price would increase to a point where it becomes unobtanium. I don't make design or financial decisions. But you can easily add individual GFCI to the Energy Bar. They sell short GFCI extensions.
Click to expand...
Also, the average customer plugs Apex into a GFCI. That would be multiple in series.
You do not want to plug one GFCI into another GFCI.
It can double the trip current (a bad thing) depending on how exactly they do the current measurement.
 
So on GFCIs in series if you put one downstream of the other:

1) The one with the lower threshold will trip first.
Might be first one, might be second one, depending on manufacturer, age, and even random.
That can be a slight pain when debugging failures.

2) It is usually BUT NOT ALWAYS just a waste
Assuming a modern properly working GFCI, they do not interfere with each other much.
So really just a waste of money.
The problem is in the details of how they measure current imbalance.
Most do that by trickling a bit down the earth ground.
That does affect things slightly, especially on older models.
So if you are near the threshold, or have several in series, it might start to matter.

So:
If you do have 2 in a row already, I would not stress over it.
But if planning a setup, don't do it.
 
The outlet I had installed near the tank for tank use is on GFCI outlets. And as you may recall I had the "Metal Halides of Shock and Awe" which were quite shocking if I touched them and they would shut down the entire aquarium if I accidentally bumped a reflector with my elbow while cleaning the tank. Yes, they were replaced.

However a few times, whatever was the cause (might have been a bad power strip that the halides were plugged into) would take down the entire tank. "Luckily" it usually happened when I was at home and it might be a splashy fish (for some reason some of them suddenly dart around near the surface which splashes water out of the tank) I have the BT-11 D-battery powered air pumps that trigger when power is lost, and they are quite loud, so I can always hear when the normal sound of the tank shuts off and the buzz of those pumps kicks in (highly recommended of course!)

I think if the GFCI didn't kick in when I got shocked, maybe it would have been worse (for me) than the temporary shock before it kicked in.

So.... I would rather the system shut down, and the loud battery powered pumps kick in than, uh, die or have a fire or electrified fish.

V
 
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