Sump Temperature to ~120° - Now what?

[sg1838]

So, the other day when the west side of the city lost power, my RKL didn't come back on correctly. For some reason, it had an iTemp error, and didn't turn anything back on. When my wife called me to tell me that the lights never came on (I was in Buffalo at the time), I told her not to worry about it, I'd just turn them on when I got home. Well, when I got home (about midnight) I noticed that not only were the lights not on (the sump light at this point), but the return pump wasn't on either. When I opened the doors on the stand to see what was going on, I saw steam coming off the top of the water in the sump.

So, it appeared that for some reason though the RKL didn't turn EVERYTHING on, it did turn the HEATERS on. One of my heaters has a thermostat, the other does not (it's one of the titanium heaters without the thermostat because when you have an RKL, what do you need a thermostat for on a heater anyway, right?) Well, that heater had been running for the better part of 12 hours, and the water in the sump was a good 120° (too hot to comfortably put your hand in it). Thankfully the return pump DIDN'T turn back on, as Lord only knows was the DT temp would have been had it been on.

So, at this point after unplugging the network cables on the RKL and plugging them back in, the RKL woke up and started working again (I still don't know what caused this behavior). So, everything is cool now (pun intended), but I'm wondering what I should do with the Chaeto that's in my sump. Anything that was living in there is most certainly dead (cooked). So, should I toss the Chaeto and start with a fresh piece? This was my inclination, but I figured I would check with a few experts before I did so.

Thanks in advance for the advice...

 

[naprestsleep]

Ive seen chaeto be pretty hardy with cold temps, don't know about warm, err hot ones. Let me know if you toss it out and need more, I always got plenty to spare.

 

[mr86mister]

D....a....m.....n. That's hotter than I can stand in a jacuzzi! I would toss out the Chaeto just in case it dies anyways. Do you have LR or a sand bed or any of that in your sump?

 

[sg1838]

The Chaeto seemed to survive, but I'm sure all the little pods and starfish have to be dead. I don't know that for certain, but I couldn't keep my hand in the sump for more than a half-second, so I'd be shocked if they weren't all dead.

No sandbed in the sump, but I do have a couple of extra pieces of what was live, and is probably now dead, rock. I'm guessing I should take that out too and toss it, huh?

:|

 

[SkiFletch]

If it actually made it to 120 degrees yeah, lots of stuff is dead. The cheato may "look" ok for now, but it's probably toast. You're well into protein-cooking territory at that temp . I'd toss the chaeto, drain the sump, re-fill with seawater and "cook" the rock, or at least QT it for a while and monitor the ammonia on it's storage container.

 

[mr86mister]

If it actually made it to 120 degrees yeah, lots of stuff is dead. The cheato may "look" ok for now, but it's probably toast. You're well into protein-cooking territory at that temp . I'd toss the chaeto, drain the sump, re-fill with seawater and "cook" the rock, or at least QT it for a while and monitor the ammonia on it's storage container.

+1 for sure! Hope everything settles down soon for you. Glad nothing made it to your display.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

is the controller on a GFI?

if so, did you need to reset it?

no doubt almost everything in the sump is cooked...

 

[sg1838]

Everything is on a GFI, and at first I thought that was the problem, but it wasn't. The RKL powered back on, but the best way I can describe it is that it came back on completely "dumb", not knowing what to do. It had power though...that definitely wasn't the issue.

Well, at this point I have removed the Chaeto and live rock and tossed them in the trash (there wasn't enough live rock to really worry about keeping...just a few odd pieces that I had left over). I'll definitely be in the market for some new Chaeto if anybody has a good amount that they can part with.

What's next...new heater with a built in thermostat to prevent this from happening again? Sigh....

For some reason this motivated me to clean my MP40 wet sides and reconfigure them as well. As I was doing so, I found one of them had the flow turned ALL the way down to almost nothing. So, I fixed that problem too.

In the end, it could have been worse...

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

thank goodness it wasn't any worse.

you should get things up and running and simulate another power outage. See if things fire back up properly........

 

[sg1838]

Agreed Gary. I posted a message regarding my experience in the DA forum. Before I try to recreate the problem, I'm going to see if they can give me any idea as to why it happened. If they can't give me any indication, then I'm not sure what I'm going to do. Since my aquarium is now on a dedicated circuit (after I tried to burn the house down), it will be easy to recreate a power outage.

I'm thinking one of two things:

1. There's something wrong with the iTemp probe (this seems very possible).
2. There's something wrong with the head unit (I hope this is NOT the case, as I'm currently using EllieSuz's head unit!)

 

[SkiFletch]

It's probably some kind of messed up software glitch Jason. Re-creating it might be more difficult than you think

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

is it possible some of the relays in the power strip got stuck?

 

[EllieSuz]

Tomorrow is maintenance day for me and I will be trimming Chaeto. Let me know if you want some.