EVERYTHING DIED OVERNIGHT! Read this, folks..

L

loughrys

New member
Hey everyone. My 46 gallon reef totally disintegrated overnight last week. We found the problem, and I wanted to pass the information along for those who may eventually suffer the same issue.

My heater malfunctioned, and caused electricity to flow through the water. It nuked the entire tank. All my corals (20 of them), 100 hermits, 50 snails, and 4 of my 6 fish are gone, not to mention the bacteria bed is the first to go-- so now I must re-cycle.
Listen up, folks. If you have a glass heater in your tanks, or if it is getting old get rid of it! Go with titanium. Dont suffer the same fate as my tank.

Starting over,

Sean
 
Becareful of titanium heaters too, mine had a bad seal leaked water into the heater and it built up enough pressure to shoot through my sump and knock the wood panel on the stand a 1/2 inch off. I went back to glass heaters.
 
Srry to hear about you tank


Try a Ranco controller this will stop most of your promblems ,
I use one and my heater and my chiller are on a double controller and fans on another one ,Mey be a bt price to have 2 controllers fans heater ,chiller ,but it will save your tank in the long run
 
If electricity flowed through the water then the tank WAS GROUNDED in some way.

Otherwise, a potential would have built up, but the inhabitants would have been unharmed.
A grounded probe keeps charge from building up, but it wont stop current from flowing.
How did you discover the problem was the heater? Did you touch the water is the heater visible from the front of your tank?
 
The current will flow from the water through the ground probe to ground to complete the circuit right? Won't this prevent you and animals from being shocked till you find out where the stray current is coming from and unplug it?
 
My theory is (and I'm no expert) that sometimes when people think that electricity has killed thier fish, it is actually just super-heated water from the electricity produced by a failing device.

The natural tendancy is for people to run to thier tank when an electrical device has failed. I can't stress enough that if you think something has failed, shut off the power to the tank first!!! Then go invesitgate. Otherwise you could end up becoming the grounding probe and you wont like it.

I should add that there are merits to grounding probes.
They can prevent you from becoming toast if a charge builds up in your water and you don't know it.

I just want to stress that when a device obviously fails, you need to just shut off the power. Don't rely on a grounding probe. I also don't think that grounding probes will save your fish when some device decides to self destruct.
 
Last edited:
Very sorry to hear of your loss and very grateful that you informed everyone.

A metal heater in the sump. Is this not the best protection?

I bought a titanium heater for just that reason.

My guess is that at one point in my career, a heater is going to fail. And it's one of those items that when it fails, it can quickly destroy everything. This is perhaps the worst place to skimp on quality. (not insinuating that you bought cheap..but many do.)

People spend vast sums on skimmers, but a skimmer failure won't kill your tank outright, neither will any reactor failure. But a heater failure can, and will.

Best place to invest money as an insurance policy... IMHO.
 
yea that sucks....could have been the copper in the heater too. A GFI and a grounding probe should have solved the solution though. Sorry about it all
 
This is a controller that tests for stray electricity?



<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7314873#post7314873 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by waytoodeep
Srry to hear about you tank


Try a Ranco controller this will stop most of your promblems ,
I use one and my heater and my chiller are on a double controller and fans on another one ,Mey be a bt price to have 2 controllers fans heater ,chiller ,but it will save your tank in the long run
Click to expand...
 
Thanks for everyone's response

Thanks for everyone's response

My reason for making the post was to warn people (especially the newbies like myself) of the dangers of this problem.

The way we found the problem was a bit dangerous. Since I didnt have a multimeter handy, we just kept allowing the eletricity to bite our hand while unplugging components one at a time until we stopped getting bit. The heater was the culprit, however there was no visible damage. The heater is located in the sump, not in the tank itself.

I will look into the Ranco system that a few of you mentioned.

Yes, a ground probe would have solved my problem....if I had known to use one.

Have a great, folks.

Sean
 
Do you remeber a temp reading at the time you found the broken heater ? I bet your temp swing was huge and that caused the death and once one thing dies pollution adds up quick, i dont think it was stray voltage
 
The temperature of the water never changed. I have a thermometer that sounds an alarm when the temps change AT ALL. So Ive ruled that out. The protien skimmer went to work right away as well, due to the fact that there were about 300 dead critters. The only survivors were my Ocelaris Clown, Fridmani dottyback and Sallylightfoot Crab. All 12 of the clams that came attached to the live rock when it got it were disintegrated.

We made some mistakes setting up the tank about a year ago, and now we can correct them. I am considering a larger tank; one that is reef-ready. I didnt even know they existed when I got my tank.

Thanks, folks.

Sean
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7314770#post7314770 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by owlbear
Becareful of titanium heaters too, mine had a bad seal leaked water into the heater and it built up enough pressure to shoot through my sump and knock the wood panel on the stand a 1/2 inch off. I went back to glass heaters.
Click to expand...



wha? it shot thru your sump like a torpedo?
 
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