Too many GFIC's.??

Donn2390

I recently installed a waterfall in the back yard. It has two pumps, 4amp each, running off of a 20 amp circuit, and wired with 12/2 wire. it also has six underwater lights.
last week I unplugged one pump to see how well it would funtion on one. When I did that, the lights got brighter..! My first thoughts were, it's overloaded, or has a bad connection somewhere. It shouldn't be close to overloaded with pumps running at just under 8 amps total. The lights are tiny, low voltage lights.
In troubleshooting the problem, I discovered the guy who did the wiring has GFICs on all of the outlets..! Usually there is only one GFIC to protect an entire circuit. I don't see any other problems in the system, so I was wondering if the extra GFIC's are causing the problem..?
I might be calling out a knowledgable electrician, but wondered if anyone could shed some light on the subject.
Thanks in advance...

Scuba_Dave

You can have one GFCI protect downstream outlets.
The other outlets must be wired off the LOAD side of the GFCI
If anything causes a fault all outlets are dead
The other outlets CAN be GFCI - but this provides no added benefit

2nd option
Wire multiple GFCI's with LINE feed (hot power) going to each GFCI
Each GFCI will kick out ONLY if its load is a problem
Other outlets are unaffected
Benefit: Everything does not shut down, easier to determine which device caused the problem

To test:
Press the button on each GFCI one by one & see what happens
If only that outlet is dead then you have power to each GFCI
If all kick out then they are all wired off the load of one GFCI