TANK CRASH: MH Exploded?!
 

This morning as I was just about to leave for work, i glanced at my tank and it was cloudy. I went over and all the SPS are bleached :S Urchin was DOA in the corner, LPS and zoos all closed up and/or spewing :S

Then I looked up and saw one of my Radium 250W SE MH bulbs was broken! The end of it was missing. It must have happened sometime last night between 6-10pm, because I came home after work and it was fine. I couldnt find the glass in the tank, but I was too busy doing damage control to really look.

I immediately started doing a water change, but I only had 10gal of change water on hand, better than nothing. The skimmer is going crazy, but I've extended the drain tubing into a bucket and letting the foam drip into there while i'm at work. I also changed out the carbon reactor with a fresh cartridge of ROX1.3.

The change water tank is refilling with RO water right now, I'll probably boot home to check on everything at lunch. I'm going to have to make more RO water tonight and do another big water change as soon as I can.

Another reason could be that I dosed 1 packet of maracyn yesterday morning to battle some cyano. I've used it before and had no issues though. I put in 1 packet, and my system is about 80gallons. When I looked at the tank after work yesterday, most of the cyano had turned stringy and was floating away. None of the corals looked affected. So I'm still thinking it's the MH.

Any tips or explanations what the exploded MH did?? The metal bits inside still seem to be in tact.

Thanks everyone.

That sucks, i don't think the MH in the tank would cause a crash unless the centre arc tube dropped in the water as well, there could be some nasty stuff in the tank then. As for why it exploded, they can over time, manufacturing defect, etc. but if you've been running it awhile, then might have just been a gust of cold air as it was cooling down. I cracked one a couple weeks ago testing it, then walking outside into the cold. The temperature drop popped it like a balloon.

As for most recovery's, water changes and carbon will be your best bet. I'm just getting over one and it SUCKS... but even some coral that had totally bleached is actually returning.

Hope everything gets better.

Was the bulb shielded with a plate of glass under it? If not I'm sure you nuked the tank with UV... Also all these bulbs contain mercury as far as I know... the radiums definitely do.

Ah crap dude! That really sucks.

If it was the halide that caused it, there could be a couple things going on (just going to toss some ideas out there). Metal halides use mercury vapor and some keep a small mercury pellet inside to keep the vapor pressure up; may e that got I to the tank. Is there something that hit the lamp and got fried (jumping fish, etc)? Re the bulbs SE or DE? Were they uncovered?

The coral behavior sounds like a chemical issue to me. Run tons of carbon and add an ammonia remover pad to battle the die off. I am suspicious of the maracyn.

Let me know if I can help you out at all.

Edit: sorry for the stupid iPhone autocorrects. Apparently the default language on my phone is illiterate hillbilly.

I've heard of a few partial tank crashes caused by exploding MH bulbs on this forum so that could very well be the case.

Christy had a bulb break but continue to run:
UV burn...what to do??
http://www.canreef.com/vbulletin/sho...ht=broken+bulb

No shield separating the bulbs with the tank :( Single ended moguls. In 6 yrs I've never had a MH bulb blow. My bulbs have had salt creep and splashes on them. I'd just wipe them down once in a while at night with a wet paper towel.

Is the mercury rolling around in the 'big' glass part, or in the little glass bulb thing in the middle of the MH bulb? I have to check if that little one burst...

A few SPS were totally bleached white. But a bunch were white, but the polyps appear to still be there and just retracted... I took out a few, ran them under a splash of tap water, and put them in the frag tank for now.

Yeah I was just in a meeting at work, and all I could think about was the tank :S I'm definitely thinking about getting double ended pendants now, so that there is the glass shield. Sunlight Supply Lumenmax 3 for $130/each, then maybe some phoenix 250W DE bulbs at $66/ea at JL... But sorta hard to think of dropping money on an 'upgrade' right now...

Damnit, tank was starting to look pretty good again too, everything colouring up. Thanks Kevin, I'll hit you up later when this crash blows over...

You can shield your SE bulbs if your reflector allows for it. I should as well but didn't want to lose PAR or buy the shields. Good luck and sorry to hear.

This happened to another board member on a local forum. A dragon wrasse jumped out of his tank and smashed his MH bulb. The chemicals in the bulb are volatile and extremely poisonous.

Metal Halide bulbs use rare earth salts along with argon and mercury vapour. The metals and vapours are poison.

Your best bet to ensure the survival of your fish and coral would be to do HUGE water changes.

I always have a quarantine tank running as a back up filled with water from the DT. If possible, transfer everything to a friend's tank ro a quarantine tank until you clean out the tank completely. The metal and poison will not decay and will stay in the water for a very long time.

Sorry to hear that Gary, I have a big batch of salt water in the garage mixing if you need, just come by and grab it. Let me know.

No, it's the old style with a mogul at the base, and above the bulb is a wide chrome reflector. No housing around it.

Thanks for the tip.

I have a 30gallon skimmerless frag tank which has 4 fish in there already. Maybe I can move a few of the smaller fish over...