Well there goes my tank

M

mpy18

New member
My heater was in my sump, and it shattered somehow. Glass shards all in the water, water is yellow and smells like burned electronics.

At first I didn't even know what was going on, my sump was filled up I thought there was a clog, I shoved my hand right in there and got a nice 120 volts through my body, that was fun. I took all my fish, starfish, and hermits out. They are all in a 6 gallon bucket for another 7 hours until the LFS opens up and I can hopefully bring them all to a tank there for a day or so.


Anything still alive after I'm back up and running will be a bonus, I've unfortunately already written everything off. This is a terrible night.
 
Damn that sucks mate, don't let it discourage you from the hobby.

Hope casualties are a minimum preferably none.

Sorry bud
 
That's awful, I'm so sorry to hear that. I hope the critters pull through. Get a GFCI if you don't already have one.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
At least you get another chance at life. Redundancy and safety measures with the heating equipment is a wise investment.
 
Sonyardo said:
At least you get another chance at life. Redundancy and safety measures with the heating equipment is a wise investment.
Click to expand...

ranco+couple of heaters+set them in PVC pipe for protection.

That's about the best you can do.
 
I have a pair of titanium 500 w heaters. Controlled by apex. I had some other brands, and they wear out and become unreliable

Don't you have a spare heater? Just clean out that section of the sump, vacuum out the glass and refill with NSW. For the 2 hours that would take nothing in the DT would be affected.
 
Perform large water change. Run GAC and a filter sock. In a couple of days do another large water change.

As stated already, run your heaters on a controller to keep them from sticking on. I also never run my heaters completely submerged. Depending on the heater construction, Leave the top of the heater above water. The seals over time may fail and water finds a way into the heater.

Here's mine: image.jpg
 
Flippers4pups said:
Perform large water change. Run GAC and a filter sock. In a couple of days do another large water change.

As stated already, run your heaters on a controller to keep them from sticking on. I also never run my heaters completely submerged. Depending on the heater construction, Leave the top of the heater above water. The seals over time may fail and water finds a way into the heater.

Here's mine: View attachment 349324
Click to expand...

That's incredibly difficult to do with 21" jäger.
 
Hi all, thanks for all the responses I appreciate the help.

So I had a long eventful night.

The heater was a Visi-Therm 300 W, it's been working for a long time. I at one point bought a 400w and it burned out within 2 days. I went back to using the 300W, it's been working fine, until I moved it in the sump last night. Something happened in there.


The heater literally shattered into dozens of large and particle sized pieces. The entirety of the water, tank and sump were yellow and smelled terrible.

I was able to run to my dads house and get 10 gallons of water from his tank to hold some rock and fish overnight. The lack of heater and circulation caused my Big Eyed Squirrel and Clarkii Clownfish to die in there.

My four Sgt Majors, two Yellowtail Damsels, Dragonette(Sandsifter), Yellow Wrasses, Brittle starfish and chocolate ship starfish, a sandsifter Goby were all still alive. Barely. They are all in a tank at the LFS and now it's time to get my tank back up and running.

Everything is disconnected and emptied. Sand and water is gone. I am going to wipe the algae off the glass while its empty, and also have to do some pvc pipe work because a ball valve decided to start leaking on me last week.

Wet/Dry is all dry and no wet right now, LFS suggested leaving the bio balls when asked about converting to a sump. My reason of 'everyone on the forums talks about it' wasn't enough.

Bought an Eheim 300w heater, 6 bags of 20lbs of sand, 2 bags of 50gal worth of salt, an air bubbler pump for when this hopefully never happens again, and some extra tubing.

If you guys have Snapchat and want to follow whats going on ill be posting some things I'm sure. Snapchat is Mpy

Thanks!
 
FWIW, my son had a Visa-therm heater explode in his little 10g tank which blew out the back panel of glass. Water, sand, rocks and livestock all over the carpet.

Invest in a well made heater!
 
I thought the Visi-Therm was a good brand, I bought it at another LFS, but I guess you just learn from these things.

The entire tank is gutted, ripped my pipe work out since my bulk heads were leaking and I couldn't tighten them since the pvc glue locked them tight.

It's ok tho, I can't wait to come back bigger and better :)
 
Man that really is unfortunate, hopefully some of your livestock lives and you have a place to start over.
 
I never did research on any heaters, now it sounds stupid, but I just walked into a LFS said give me a heater for this size and walked out.

The eheim I have now seems pretty decent, says shatterproof so that's a plus lol
 
I would also invest in a a couple quality GFCI outlets and a ground probe to put in your sump. Might have made this much less of a problem.
 
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