Heart still racing after really bad shock

I can not believe I made that mistake. I was thinking one thing and typed the wrong thing. ( tucks his head in shame as I've been a licensed sparky for a long time )

 

I picked up a meter and was going to connect the negative to the houses ground off the breaker box and put the positive in the water but before I even did that or touched the prongs I set it to ac volt measurement and apparently there's 70 Volts jumping through the air. It was a cheap meter but can you help me here so I can try to test the water. It was cheap radio shack pocket meter.

 

Also are millivolts dangerous to fish?

 

millivolts aren't dangerous. 70v is weird. Plug it into your prongs on the wall and make sure it reads 120v on AC. If your scale sets itself automatically I would assume that 70v is actually 70 millivolts across open air. If you cross the prongs on your multimeter the voltage should drop to 0 as well.

 

Don't think the GFCI will always save you. It senses current going to ground instead of the neutral and if you're getting shocked through the hot and neutral just hope you can pull away. Offhand I can't think of any plugs from my aquarium that are grounded and if the tank is on wood it's pretty well isolated from ground.

 

... also if your heart is still racing or has a "different" beat seek medical attention.

 

My outlets are reading 118 to 119v so its working however I tried to test this by putting the negative prong in the grounding hole and the positive in a glass of water to see if it would read 0 and it read 400 to 500 mv and was constantly changing. If I didn't even tough the positive prong to anything and just put the negative prong in the ground it read 200 mv. I'm so confused

 

Cheap electrical test equipment is untrustworthy at best. Honestly in your situation I wouldn't worry too much about "stray voltage" readings in your tank.

Go get yourself a GFCI and be done with it...

 

To answser your question about M_Voltage reading jumping around......If you touch the leads to each hand, you'll get a voltage reading. This is not an inaccuracy, since all of us have natural electricity coursing through our bodies. You can run a clock with two halves of a potato. Look it up.

You know you're using your multi meter correctly when you see 118-120 v while probing your electrical socket. NO....you are not going to short out your outlet if you touch the wrong leads to the wrong holes. Just do yourself a favor and don't touch the metal while doing so, or you'll regret it....LOL.

Now, when testing your tank, the best way to test stray voltage is to set your meter to 200v (red) voltage, stick the red lead into the small side of the vertical hole, and the black lead into the water. Most people will end up with about 20v's running through their system. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's only life threatening when it's 120v in the water, such as Loinfish's experience was, but I expect that shock wasn't anywhere close to 120, as they were able to write this thread.

 

After having my pump die this morning with the water in that chamber being extremely hot I put it in its own bucket of cold water and nothing happened. As I was pulling it out I noticed black flakes of some adhesive or seal. I now know what shocked me and this is the second mag drive I've had that has failed. I will be the next owner of a eheim or sicce.