Possible mystery solved

[fman74]

Over the last two months I have had mysterious fish and anemone deaths in my 40 gallon IM. I test the water over and over. Used two different kits and even took it to a trusted store for testing. I still lost 2 beloved clownfish hermit crabs, snails and two sexy shrimp. Was going nuts until a water change today. Decided to pull every thing out for a deep clean. I found this:

 

[tekjunkie28]

Wow man. Yea that could be a cause. This is very interesting.

 

[oldbones]

Whoa, that's not too cool.

 

[fman74]

Oddly enough, temp never had a big swing. I can only imagine the stuff it musty have leached in the water. Even stranger, no loss or damage to clam or corals. I was having a problem with brown hair algae.

 

[nuttyd]

Curiosity. Are corals affected by electricity or just fish and cuc?

 

[Flippers4pups]

What brand is it?

 

[fman74]

Pretty sure Marineland.

 

[thegrun]

I would run a Poly-Filter, there is a good chance you will have copper and other heavy metals in the tank, it may take a while to get it all out.

 

[CuzzA]

Curiosity. Are corals affected by electricity or just fish and cuc?

Yes. Stray voltage has been documented to adversely effect inhabitants and kill people.

Eheim Jagers are the only heaters that go in my tanks. I've used them for decades and never had a problem.

 

[stingeragent]

/goes to check heaters

 

[fman74]

Changed filter media. Looks like I'm going to do 2-3 water changes a week. Chemi-pure will go back in tomorrow. (New) Wondering how often I'll have to change that. I knew something had to be wrong with my bubble tip acting so weird. Never had a problem with it. It was growing big and had been in the same spot over a year. Then it would move all day long.

 

[CStrickland]

Curiosity. Are corals affected by electricity or just fish and cuc?

Like, you don't want uncontrolled electricity running through your tank, obvi. But here's a cool story about how they are using electrified man-made rock to reverse bleaching on natural reefs. So in that sense maybe coral like it?
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/12/071204-AP-bali-electrified_2.html

 

[scottwhitson]

Stray voltage is a highly debated subject. If you don't run a grounding probe in your tank then there is no path for the electricity to flow so no damage is being done (think of a bird on the power line) however if you have a grounding probe and not a GFCI outlet then you are causing current to flow and will cause issues. In my opinion the best thing to do would be only use a grounding probe just prior to sticking your hands in the tank and of course have that hooked to a GFCI outlet. That way if you do have a big enough issue to harm you it should trip the outlet before you provide the path to ground.

 

[slief]

Pretty sure Marineland.

Yep. They had a ton of failures with that heater. Eventually they issued a recall on them. I think that happened after some fires and complete system losses. As I recall, they covered some serious damages for people who had catostrophic losses as a result of the POS heaters. I had one fail in my mixing tank and it wasted 100 gallons of water and forced me to scub that mxing tank for hours to clean it. I'm glad I have never had to run a heater in any of my tanks!

Given some of the failures I have seen with those heaters, I would consider yourself very lucky it wasn't worse.

 

[Buzz1329]

Sorry for your losses, but thanks for sharing this. With no big swing in temp, I would not have suspected the heater. I use Eheims, controlled by RKL, but next water change, I will turn them off, pull them out, and eyeball each one.

 

[karimwassef]

I use titanium heaters. They shouldn't break.

Do you have your equipment plugged into a GFCI? If you do, that should have tripped way before anything died...

 

[rt67ghy]

Yes, GFCI outlet is the way to go. Everything I have is connected to them and this saved me once from a serious accident when a cord to a wavemaker I had cut and extended fell in the tank with electricity running through it. The GFCI tripped and everything was fine.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Yes. Stray voltage has been documented to adversely effect inhabitants and kill people.

Eheim Jagers are the only heaters that go in my tanks. I've used them for decades and never had a problem.

I finally bought one and have had no problems with heaters since. Great buy and not expensive at all IMO

 

[fman74]

Ironically I'm a firefighter. I have an external gfi at the outlet. I use an Apex controller so I have been able to keep track of the temp. I noticed the sump water smelled yesterday. I have a lot of work ahead of me.

 

[karimwassef]

You have a GFI and it didn't trip? Something's not right here.