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Lightning/RKE

Tazmaniancowboy

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Well the passing storm tonight decided to play with the electric and I have a feeling it may have fried my Reef keeper. I was watching TV and I heard an electrical buzz from under the tank and then the power went out for 10 sec. When it came back on my moonlights didn't but everything else that should be on was. I looked at everything and switched all of the strips off and back on, disconnected the head unit(which usually powers it down but didn't) and there are flashing lights everywhere. The display is working with the menu, but shows error(no alarm this time) and the input or output screens ate totally blank. After doing all of this and feeling confident the system will be ok as is overnight lightning struck AGAIN, I can't believe it! Same electrical buzz from under the tank before the house went out again. Power has been blinking off and on for almost an hour and is finally on for good I hope. I guess I will have to disconnect all Reefkeeper equip and see if any is salvageable.

I have not been able to enjoy my tanks since I lost about 75% of my coral to Hurricane Irene a few years ago and the rest was lost around Sandy. I have not been able to keep any coral alive since. It has been miserable looking at my 120 and 200 in such poor shape with hardly any life in them. This just might push me over the edge.

Anyway, Has anybody had any similar experiences with RKE? I am hoping it is just one component, not the whole system:mad:
 

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Don, if you go the the DA site, under "support," you can access their forum. Look around there for similar problems or ask a question yourself. Hope that helps.

I say this with ignorance, but I wonder if reloading the firmware would straighten things out.
 
Sorry to hear about this.
Years ago, I had a surge created by lightning which blew out a number of my dimmer switches and a radiant floor heating controller. All the dimmers, had a streak of black where components blew up. After that I installed a whole house surge protector. It was pretty easy to put on, and not that expensive. As a extra level of insurance, I have all electronics on a good surge protector as well.

If you are using a brand name surge protector you can check on the protection warranty on it.
 
Just curious, was the controller on a surge protector? If so, some manufactures will refund money for blown equipment.
 

TanksNStuff

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
I know a few people in the IT field and all of them swear by those Tripp Lite surge protectors. Probably too late now if you didn't have one, but for anyone reading this that wants to learn a lesson... definitely look into one of those!
 
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