blakers82
Member
Greetings everyone,
Unfortunate news to report regarding my reef tank. I didn't make it it out of Snowpocalypse 2011 unscathed. To make a long story short, the majority of my SPS are bleached!
I came home 2 nights ago and my aquarium was not running. Shortly before I arrived home, my girlfriend heard a very loud "Pop" and said all electronics on the tank stopped. It smelled like an electrical fire. Well, as it oddly turns out, the issue was NOT due to user error. One of my heaters exploded in my sump. I tripped the breakers and assessed the situation. The top of the heater was completely separated from the shaft and a nasty residue was across most of the sump's water surface. There were many small flakes of black foreign material and heater inner-workings on the floor of the sump too.
Side Note: The explosion had knocked my ATO sensor out of the tank and it landed in an awkward position and actually filled up my sump!! But fortunately it opportunistically (for me) stopped at some point to save me from more clean up.
So I skimmed the sump surface as best as possible and pumped out all of the nasties where the blast took place in the middle sump section. I already had saltwater made up so I temp matched and topped it back up. I installed another heater. (I do have a backup heater on my tank's controller.) I turned up my skim and had carbon running overnight.
Yesterday the majority of my corals indicated the bad news. Severe bleaching on majority of my stony corals, which is most of my corals. Some now look radioactive, and not in that, "Man, your corals look radioactive!" kind of way. I guess I didn't do a good enough job with removing foreign particles, despite draining the blast section dry, wiping it down and cleaning the skimmer section too. :sad1: All fish are behaving normal. Some pieces show some polyp extension, but the main thing to note is that the normally very light colored new growth tips on the stonies now have a smokey, dark coloration to them. My hydnophora has kept its color and my zoanthids actually look quite healthy right now. :strange: My Acans are also "out."
I performed a 20% water change yesterday and I'm mixing and set to perform another tomorrow. Figured I'd do another 20% in another two days after this one and see how things look. I'm guessing that the damage is already done. This heater was bought locally within the last 2 years (I think) and it is a major brand. Any advice on this subject would be appreciated.
Some pics
Broken Heater
Black flakes from heater, cleaned a good amount of this from the return section of sump
Heater debris/splash on underside of tank!
Do you see ANY red in this rose millepora?
Unaltered iPhone pic of odd coloration under actinic lighting. They look like Day-Glo colors!
So that's that. I hope some will survive. Malfunctioning stuff sucks.
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On a completely separate note, does anyone have a drill bit wide enough to get a pH probe into my calcium reactor?? I've been controlling my regulator by going off of the pH of the effluent and I have a second reactor chamber thus making it even harder to dial in! I received a drill and drill bit set for Christmas but they aren't wide enough.
I'm also in need of another regulator/solenoid if anyone has one.
This is an extreme example but I don't want to deal with anything like THIS anymore...
Unfortunate news to report regarding my reef tank. I didn't make it it out of Snowpocalypse 2011 unscathed. To make a long story short, the majority of my SPS are bleached!
I came home 2 nights ago and my aquarium was not running. Shortly before I arrived home, my girlfriend heard a very loud "Pop" and said all electronics on the tank stopped. It smelled like an electrical fire. Well, as it oddly turns out, the issue was NOT due to user error. One of my heaters exploded in my sump. I tripped the breakers and assessed the situation. The top of the heater was completely separated from the shaft and a nasty residue was across most of the sump's water surface. There were many small flakes of black foreign material and heater inner-workings on the floor of the sump too.
Side Note: The explosion had knocked my ATO sensor out of the tank and it landed in an awkward position and actually filled up my sump!! But fortunately it opportunistically (for me) stopped at some point to save me from more clean up.
So I skimmed the sump surface as best as possible and pumped out all of the nasties where the blast took place in the middle sump section. I already had saltwater made up so I temp matched and topped it back up. I installed another heater. (I do have a backup heater on my tank's controller.) I turned up my skim and had carbon running overnight.Yesterday the majority of my corals indicated the bad news. Severe bleaching on majority of my stony corals, which is most of my corals. Some now look radioactive, and not in that, "Man, your corals look radioactive!" kind of way. I guess I didn't do a good enough job with removing foreign particles, despite draining the blast section dry, wiping it down and cleaning the skimmer section too. :sad1: All fish are behaving normal. Some pieces show some polyp extension, but the main thing to note is that the normally very light colored new growth tips on the stonies now have a smokey, dark coloration to them. My hydnophora has kept its color and my zoanthids actually look quite healthy right now. :strange: My Acans are also "out."
I performed a 20% water change yesterday and I'm mixing and set to perform another tomorrow. Figured I'd do another 20% in another two days after this one and see how things look. I'm guessing that the damage is already done. This heater was bought locally within the last 2 years (I think) and it is a major brand. Any advice on this subject would be appreciated.
Some pics
Broken Heater
Black flakes from heater, cleaned a good amount of this from the return section of sump
Heater debris/splash on underside of tank!
Do you see ANY red in this rose millepora?
Unaltered iPhone pic of odd coloration under actinic lighting. They look like Day-Glo colors!
So that's that. I hope some will survive. Malfunctioning stuff sucks.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
On a completely separate note, does anyone have a drill bit wide enough to get a pH probe into my calcium reactor?? I've been controlling my regulator by going off of the pH of the effluent and I have a second reactor chamber thus making it even harder to dial in! I received a drill and drill bit set for Christmas but they aren't wide enough.
I'm also in need of another regulator/solenoid if anyone has one. This is an extreme example but I don't want to deal with anything like THIS anymore...
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