Overheating safeguard???

[friendtothefish]

Hello All,

So over the weekend the heater in the tank at my office malfunctioned. It thought it was 82deg and kept heating and the temp just went up and up... :mad2:

We lost everything. The tank was probably 105deg when I got here this morning. I spent most of the morning draining the tank and pulling out all the fish mush... ewe...

Well what’s done is done and I don’t think I will get any help from the heater company.

What I am trying to figure out is how to stop this from happening in the future. This is not an issue I have dealt with and never thought of having a safeguard to stop it.

So is there some kind of device that will shut the power to a heater if it senses a certain temp? I would assume there is such a device but never seen/heard of anything.

Thanks,
Sad Friend

 

[Roy G. Biv]

http://www.neptunesys.com/

 

[HBtank]

Sorry for that horrible experience... I can't imagine..



Besides the controller above, you can get a dedicated temperature controller for a less, though I recommend the Aquacontroller as you get MANY other features for a little more investment, and is what I use.

http://www.drsfostersmith.com/product/prod_display.cfm?c=3578+4900+13967&pcatid=13967

 

[friendtothefish]

Yea, after thinking about it some more, I realised that if you go with an external unit like that it would help, but if that unit fails you have the same problem.

So a good suggestion from a guy at marinedepot is to have two small heaters that if one fails it wont be enough to boil the water. The temp would go up, but probably not enough to kill everything. Both would have to fail to boil the tank...

But I was hoping there is an extra failsafe that would stop the heater if it sensed a higher temp. cause the issue is that is the thermostat fails you have the same problem...

 

[friendtothefish]

The issue was that the Won Bros heaters only have one point of failure... So if the thermostat failed the heater keeps heating.

With the new setup I ordered the heater has a temp control and I am adding a second thermostat. So they would both have to fail for the same thing to happen.


BTW, Thanks for all the condolences... HBTank your the only one!

Friend

 

[HBtank]

Those external units do not fail in that way ever, if at all... Much more likely would be to have a probe get pulled out of the aquarium and get the heater stuck on when the probe is sensing room air temperature. And remember, your heater will still shut off on its own if set properly

In the case of what happened to you, you would have to have a double failure (your external controller which is HIGHLY unlikely, and the heater itself..) to have a problem.

But yes, multiple small heaters is another safegaurd that can also be used, and is used by people who have had this happened. I do not blame you if you want to use triple redundancy.. I probabaly would to.

 

[Roy G. Biv]

Two small heaters is a good suggestion as pointed out. The work around for the aquacontroller failing is to set the heater to say 80 degrees. This way if the controller fails, the heater will not rise above 80. This way there is redundancy.

 

[loosecannon]

I have two 150 watt heater`s, in stead of one 300 watt. If one gets stuck in the on switch it will take much longer to heat up the tank.

 

[LobsterOfJustice]

Ranco dual stage temp controller