Broken heater -> Tank Crash in Progress
 

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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:

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.

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?