Broken heater -> Tank Crash in Progress

[Albertan22]

So on Thursday evening I came home to a house filled with a strange electrical smell. My wife had the windows open and informed me that she had unpluged my skimmer as it was overflowing when she got home a couple of hours before me. I opened the stand doors and the smell was definately coming from the water. This concerned me greatly as I had just replaced the pump on my skimmer 2 days prior during a water change.

I pulled the skimmer pump and it seemed fine. I imediately began making up water change water which takes me about 5-6 hours as I typically change about 30 gallons out of my sump (120g DT with a 40g sump (doesn't run full)). I also changed the GFO out of my reactor and replaced it with carbon. After I started the skimmer back up and readjusted it, it started pulling skimate like crazy which was black as coal (not the foam, but the gunk and water the cup collects). Over the 36 hours or so it took to prepare for the water change (couldn't avoid going to work yesterday) I lost a cleaner shrimp, all the zooanthids, polyps and aipstasia (no pitty for these pests) have been closed up and my volleyball sized birdsnest has started RTNing. Fish seem ok, but I'm sure I've lost a lot of my clean up crew as no one came out to dispose of the dead shrimp.

I did the water change this morning and found that the glass heater I have behind my skimmer was broken in half. The smell was definately coming from it and I'm sure it's been contaminating my tank with metals. I've started making water for a second change tomorrow and am continuing to run carbon in my reactor. Is there anything else that I should be doing?

[BlueTang<3]

Dude that sucks if u need water I have 400 gallons of fresh saltwater in my basement made with instant ocean or I have 30 gallons or so fresh ro made up if u need some bring pails over. Aside for removing the heater and cleaning up the tank from debris u can run carbon and change it regularly seems it's Probally too late for your corals. I know the feeling have had 2 crashes in my 180 totally sucks.

[Albertan22]

Wow that's an awesome offer, thanks man. I think I'm ok with water for now, my next batch should be ready in a couple of hours but I'll definately keep your offer in mind. I'm basically running my RODI nonstop now that I'm home and just cycling it into my top-off jugs while I've got the salt mixing in the water change tub.

I'm hoping that I can still save most of the coral. My acros haven't started RTNing yet and my LPS and clam all look pretty happy. Some of the zoos have opened up since the last water change so that's encouraging. I'm thinking that I'm going to have to trim the birds nest down to a large frag size and hope for the best with it though.

[BlueTang<3]

Yeah hope it works out for you, let me know if you need tubs or water or anything we are close by.

[ScubaSteve]

I've had this happen before. You'll probably come out all right.

Birdsnests RTN at the drop of a hat and usually they're the ones that set the other colonies off. I know it sucks but frag off any good remaining chunks of the birdsnest and get rid of it before all your other colonies follow suit. The BN grows like a weed anyways, so it'll be back to full glory in not too long.

[Albertan22]

I think everything is going to be ok. A few waterchanges and running carbon for 3 days seems to have done the trick. Everything is opened back up again and looking happy. I cut my birdsnest back a bit to get rid of most of the exposed skeleton areas that RTNed. It seems the only real casualty was a cleaner shrimp, an unknown number of my CUC, and of course the heater that cracked. I think I'll be looking at replacing my glass heaters with something that's all plastic if I can find something.

[BlueTang<3]

Go with titanium heaters gonna cost u more but they last longer I find and are usually bomb proof

[kien]

Wow sorry to hear man! We need heaters but sometimes heaters suck. Had a heater stick on me once and pretty much boiled my tank over night :-(. Those glass heaters scare the crap out of me. I know thousands of people use them but when I had them I always felt uneasy with the glass on glass clanking sounds. :neutral:

[mike31154]

I think everything is going to be ok. A few waterchanges and running carbon for 3 days seems to have done the trick. Everything is opened back up again and looking happy. I cut my birdsnest back a bit to get rid of most of the exposed skeleton areas that RTNed. It seems the only real casualty was a cleaner shrimp, an unknown number of my CUC, and of course the heater that cracked. I think I'll be looking at replacing my glass heaters with something that's all plastic if I can find something.

Good to hear you're more or less out of the woods with minimal losses. Not sure plastic heaters are the answer either if you're contemplating that. There were some issues with those exploding as well. I have one of each at the moment, an exploding plastic one (that hasn't exploded, thankfully) and a glass one. At least I can tell when the glass one is actually hot due to the indicator light. The plastic one I never know unless I grab it.

[kien]

I think I've solved my stuck heater potential by putting them all on the controller. It cuts them out when the tank gets a certain temp. So I guess for all I know any one of my 3 current heaters could be stuck ON, but I wouldn't know unless I took them off the controller and plugged them in independently somewhere?

[Midway]

I had a heater it went hay wired on me once too. It took a few corals out but the system recovered pretty good. I'm with Kien on this one, Have the heaters controlled by controllers...priceless big piece of mind. If heater gets stuck, controller shut it off at the temp you set yourself when setup heater on the controller. If the heater/s for some odd reason fail to turn on, there's go an email to your email account saying the low temp you set up yourself too has been reached so you can react right away. I know controllers are not cheap but they paid them selves big time saving you money and big time head aches in the future.

[mike31154]

Trouble with a controller is, sure it will prevent a stuck heater from cooking your tank, but it won't stop a heater from bursting or exploding. Nor will it keep your tank from getting too cold if a heater doesn't work. It's another level of protection for sure, but also another point of failure itself. No absolute guarantees no matter what you do. You can decrease the odds of something ruining your day by adding levels of protection, but there's a point where redundancy also becomes complexity. Daily personal monitoring is the only way to really be sure. If you're away a lot, your odds increase of something going wrong no matter how many backups you have. Even an email from your controller that something's up while you're on the beach in Mexico enjoying a Cerveza is not going to do that much to prevent at least some chaos until you either return or have someone fix it pronto.

Kien makes the point by saying he has no idea a heater is working or not unless he unplugs it from his controller & hooks it up independently to see whether or not it's working as it should. One of the reasons I went back to at least one glass heater is because I can see the pilot light turn on/off as the heater thermostat is doing its thing.

[BC564]

I use more then one heater at a smaller wattage.... and not glass type.....if one sticks on...it doesnt hurt anything and the other one doesnt kick in.... for more then one to fail together would be amazing....

[Spyd]

I agree. I use 3 x 250w Jagr heaters in my 180G setup. All are plugged into a controller. That way, if one gets stuck on, the controller turns it off. If one ends up crapping out, there are 2 others to back it up.

That's about as good as you can get with back-ups to ensure heater issues. Saying that, I have heard of heaters cracking and exploding so going to a Hydor inline or Titanium heater may be the way to go.

I recently had my water change heater leaking electricity into my main display water. It tingled my hands when I touched my sump and was turning one thing off at a time to try and see what the issue was. By the end, I had everything off on my main display and nothing... Finally, I decided to touch the water in my water change tank and got zapped! The water in the water change tank was separate from the display at this point. Turns out the heater in my water change tank was plugged into a power bar and the electricity must have been flowing down from there into my other equipment. It was an old crappy heater and luckily I caught it very early so no damage was done to my tank.

[Midway]

Well obviously a controller is not gonna stop a heater from exploding or cracking or anything like that. A controller its a really good backup if a heater gets stuck or a heater fails to turn on or stuff, of course the controller will prevent the tank from getting cold if you set it up to send you an email if the temp is falling from what you set it up at. The controller will NOT stop the tank from getting cold, you will prevent it by getting an early warning by the same controller.
I'm not saying that the controller will replace checking your equipment yourself once in a while, making sure everything is working as it should. The controller is a really good level of automation from preventing disaster from happening to a point IMHO.