ground probes whats your thoughts?

It most likely is your house wiring.

Being an electrician by trade and using grounds to protect myself on a regular basis, I will always have both a ground probe and a properly wired gfci on my systems. A gfci should interrupt the circuit if any current is seen on the ground wire. Thats why there is a ground and a neutral.

Any bad equipment should be replaced immediately.

As for a ground providing a path to ground and causing discomfort to fish, lets use the bird on the line example. Those lines are carrying current. And despite popular belief current doesn't take the easiest path, it takes every path. So theoretically some small amount of current should pass through through the birds. Apparently its not enough to cause them discomfort or they wouldn't hang out on them. Working on high voltage lines I know that the only discomfort (however small) comes when you actually make and break contact. Because the fish are surrounded by an equipotiental grounded field they should be protected and feel nothing. Similar to a faraday cage

 

Rick the gfi does kick when there are problems and actually the first gfi kicked and burnt out with the first tank flood.
since the electric wiring of this house doesn't actually have a ground wire running to it. I'm told the electric is grounded threw another way.
and the gfi was tested with sticking the tester in both prongs it tested as grounded .
would hooking the ground probe to my baseboard to ground it and bring volts to 0 be a good or bad thing?
i have been getting small shocks when i put my hands in the tank, minimal normally. like you get with a cut. but with the recent flood and on a wet floor i really got a nice zap. I'm guessing i became the ground.

i dont understand electricity at all. but want to do whats best. since i recently got zapped again when pulling a sock out of the sump and having my hand in a splashing of water on the floor. and guessing there is still a bit of dampness on the cement from the flood.
i didn't think i was going to hook a ground back up. but after what i seen when i tested with a volt meter i wonder if hooking the ground probe to the baseboard heat by wrapping the wire around the copper pipe might be a good idea.

 

Something has to be shocking you. Need to find out what that is and replace it. When you check for voltage check for dc voltage too. I had dc pumps that were faulty and gave me little zings when I put my hand in the water. You shouldn't get more than a volt or 2 when checking from the tank to a ground.
I am not a residential electrician so I don't the best way to remedy your problem with the house wiring. I would hope someone else can answer that for you. I know I saw someone with an IBEW in his name.
Grounding probes are optional and highly debated, that is just my preference

 

Did you unplug every device? Refer to my previous post that I believe it is induced by electro magnetic fields. My voltage didn't drop to zero until I unplugged everything including lights.

You maybe correct. The outlet ground, if there is one, is not connected to ground. This renders your ground probe useless.

Now you have a functioning ground probe.

Not exactly true. The GFCI works by detecting a difference in current between the hot a neutral wires. A circuit functioning normally will have the same amount of current flowing through the hot and neutral wires. A faulty circuit can have current flowing through the hot or neutral wire, into a person, through the concrete floor and into the ground. In this case no current is flowing through the ground wire but the current is different between the hot and neutral wires. The GFCI will not trip until a certain level of current. You may feel a mild shock and the GFCI will not trip. It will trip before a lethal shock however.

The fish are not surrounded, they become part of the grounded field. In a faraday cage, current flows through the cage into ground and not into the person or object inside. In the aquarium, ever object in the aquarium becomes part of the cage and current will flow though each object.

Told you this topic was filled with controversy. There are many opinions on each side.

 

I thought about that after I wrote it but decided not to bother editing as it wasn't worth it.

Yes they are part of the equalized potential grounded field. And like a faraday cage a person inside it is not insulated or not shocked even if they are touching the cage. Whether any detectable current flows through the fish is the debatable and unprovable part.

There are many scenarios where safety devices wont work, nothing in this world is 100 percent, that doesn't mean you should not use them though.

 

i am taking in all the thoughts on this and learning. and want to thank all who have posted . i know one way is often not always best. i know different people have different routes of running a tank.
and from all the reading i have done there is so many opinions of what is correct.

 

tritonsgarden, i don't get the zap or even slight zap when i have the power off to the pumps in the sump, my light is on another outlet and isn't hooked to the tank wiring. i can tell you when i touched the electric wires when the floor was wet i got zapped threw the isolated wire.

here is a odd thing. not sure what this means... when testing with the volt meter on the ac setting as i have read to test. i get no reading when its at the 10 or 50 spot on the meter than when i put the meter to 250 i get a 110 volts reading.

when the volt meter is plugged into a 110 outlet in my home i get 110 at the 250 setting...and the meter pegs at 10 and 50 as it should. so why with the tank do i not get any reading at the 10 or 50 setting on the volt meter? but at 250 setting I'm getting a 110 reading.
at this time the ground probe is in the sump and my tank volt reading is zero no matter what setting i set the meter at.
i plan on watching my fish closely and seeing if i spot any changes in them. I'm still not sure whats going on but i do like seeing a zero volt reading.

and yes there is so many different schools of thought on this some say the ground probe causes problems with fish, and others say it causes problems with fish to not have one. after all the reading i have done I'm still not sure what way is the best way. i do know i like not getting shocked though.
guess its like the uv sterilizer thing. thats another subject full of controversy

 

Rick whats your thoughts on that reading i explained above? does it make sense?

 

OK trying to follow, I am not sure if I have it right, still on my first cup of coffee.
First a cheap voltmeter is not good for much more then telling you that there is voltage present. You should be getting closer to 120v, we set our voltage at 123v at the substations here.
Second a low battery will give you all kinds of weird reading, I can't tell you how many people and even electricians I have gone behind claiming to have 180 volts, when what they had was a low battery in there voltmeter.
Third be careful, more people are killed in the US with 120v than higher voltage.

OK based on what you are saying the getting zapped stops when the pumps are turned off. That tells me right there it's probably in the pumps. You need to check both the sump and the display whenever the return pump is off. With the return pump off these 2 would likely be isolated from ea other. Once you get it down to one or the other you can keep checking from there

When the pumps are on do you get a volt reading from water to either the neutral or ground in the outlet? When you are testing with a volt meter you need to have the ground probe removed. If you do get voltage, unplug one pump at a time until the voltage goes away. Or if they are all unplugged you can do it the other way.

 

all my pumps/power heads are in my sump i have nothing electrical in my main display. i have checked each pump and don't get a reading change on any pump,( there are 4) i even checked my temp probe but i have not checked my ph probe or salt probe. i thought i must be doing something wrong so i had someone else check my findings they are getting the same results.
no reading on volts at 10 or 50 but a reading at 250
the meter works when testing outlets in the home. so why the odd reading in the tank?

tonight I'm going to have the outlet that the tank is plugged into checked again. if that outlet is not grounded would the tank than be acting as the ground for it? i never had this problem till the flood, as i said i think the wood is still damp between the cement and the wood floors. what makes me think this is why when i touch the electric insulated wires that aren't in water do i feel the current and can get the same shock as if i put my hands in the water. the shock happens with one wet hand touching it and the other wet hand on the floor. I'm not even sure if my thinking is correct, just a theory . could i be acting as the ground for that outlet?

this is driving me nuts! its been 2 weeks of one thing after another with the tank, flood, heater went, now shocks. the shocks started after the flood. i thought the shocks were gone, left but after adding a water on floor sensor to my apex i noticed them again. one of the sensors is face down on the floor.