Reef Angel Forum

Good morning all,

Question, on 1 box i have an ATI 60" fixtures (80W) which takes up 3 plugs,

Daylight (6 bulbs) and Actinic (2 bulbs) and Fan. at full power its supposed to be drawing 432 watts

In addition I have a return pump (Waterblaster HY16000W) (250W)

2 heaters (2x 250w heaters)

and a skimmer. (45w)


This box kept tripping last night at the RA box where i had to hit the reset button. Can the box be overloaded? It does this every few months. But now im starting to get concerned. Please advise

Too much...
The overload is 10A and you are going above that when your heaters kick in.
During summer, you never noticed you were overloaded because the heaters weren't kicking in for too long.
Now that temperature is going down, the heaters are staying on for longer which causes the breaker to pop.
Breakers by nature of design are not instantaneous trip like fuses. If it were a fuse, you would have been changing fuses for a long time. The breaker needs a certain amount of time to sense the overload and pop.
At 12A, it takes about 2 minutes for it to pop.
So for example, if your heaters turn on and turns off within this 2 minutes, your breaker would never pop, because it wasn't long enough to sense the overload.
So, make sure you plan your load evenly through the 2 boxes and also account for full load, including stuff that turns on sporadically, especially heaters and chillers.
They are energy hogs.