Sad Day...

Z

zed102

Premium Member
I get home from work today only to find that many of my favorite coral are lookng very bad. So I immediately begin running tests to discover the source of the problem, and find that my tank temperature is at 90 degrees. Anyway, to make a long story short, it turns out that my less than one year old heater was stuck on. I am not sure how long the tank was running at that temperature, but my ORA Belina is bleached, my huge frogspawn has completely closed, my green finger leather is withered, and almost all my other corals have deflated/receeded their polyps. Unfortunately, it is still too early to determine what is going to pull through. Guess it will be a long weekend of wait and see. On a positive note, it appears that all of my fish are doing well. Bottom line, with the weather heating back up, make sure that you check that all your heaters are functioning correctly. Don't let malfunctioning hardware ruin years of coral collection for you too.
 
sorry to hear it, i have had this happen as have numerous other people. its the unfortunately eventuality when relying on the built in thermometer on most heaters. one of the best things you can buy is a heater controller to help fascilitate this.
 
Yeah, I know that I am not alone in this problem because I have read the horror storries before, and unfortunately, the heater controller has always been on the list of things to get, but one of those things I just never got around to purchasing. It will defanitely be purchased before I spend another dime on livestock.
 
I agree with Wes and I apologize if it sounds like I am stepping on you at a bad time. But those heaters are notorious for sticking on, having a separate digital controller is the really the safest way to go. And I do understand they are expensive.
For anyone else that finds themselves in a similar situation, if you buy heaters really try to buy a good ones and it is a good idea to get two heaters that are rated for half the size of your tank. Meaning if you have a 100 gallon tank, buy two smaller heaters each rated for a 50 gallon tank. That way when both heaters are working correctly they will each come and heat the tank to the correct temperature. Though if one does stick on, the one by itself will have a hard time overheating a tank that is rated for double it's size to the point of dangerous temperatures and you would have more time to catch it before it did as much damage. And on the reverse side if you only have one heater and it went out when you needed the heat on cold days, you risk the danger of the tank getting too cold. But with two smaller heaters and with only one going bad, you still have the one working to keep the tank heated and by itself it would probably keep the tank from dangerous levels till you fixed the problem. The chances of two heaters either sticking on or both going out at the same time would be rare. Hopefully things will not get too bad and I am glad to hear the fish are doing okay.
 
Don't give up on um' yet. They might still bounce back if they were not exposed to that for an excessive amount of time. Some of these animals live in warmer temps than we maintain our tanks. Get a controller, it's money well spent.

Good luck.
 
. . .
I was talking to my good wife about this post, and she reminded me i lost a tank once this same way.

fooey on heaters. take em out as soon as winter is over. at least unplug them.
 
Unfortunately, I have not seen the tankl with the lights on in two days, so I can not comment on the coral status yet, but they still don't look very good with the lights off. Anyway, to prevent this from happening again, I think that I may be purchasing a reefkeeper lite. Have people had goood success with this device? I will propbably just be using it to control a fan, two heaters, and my two MH lights. I would try and research it more, but I will not be home a whole lot over these next few days, so any help would be greatly appreciated.
 
I've not heard much about the reef keeper, other than it's not all that sexy and requires some work to get them going. The Apex units are nice. They have the Apex Lite units as well, so that's something to look at.

I'll be doing a GB with ReefGeek here soon, let me know if you're interested and maybe get you a cheaper price on the unit.
 
Well today I finally had an opportunity to be at home to check out the damage. So far I have defanitely lost the frogspawn, the belina, and an acan. Stuff that is still questionable are my rainbow nasuta, green finger leather, several other acans, and my sunset monti. On top of the questionable coral all my other sps have lost most of their color. To try and prevent this from happening again, I did finally purchase a controller today along with some other upgrades.
 
As far as the RKL goes, I have one. It was a pain to set up, but that's only because I'm not very tech savy and lack patience [smilie=itwasntme.gif] . Since it has been set up, I've upgraded with PH probe and a salinity probe is on the way. The unit is very reliable thus far, and it controls the heater and Chiller very precisely. It has many useful features for a fraction of the cost of other controllers.
 
I am glad that I don't need a heater... my system will probably need a chiller for the summer. Those things get pricey for a 250 g!

Sorry you have to face that... hopefully those critters will pull through.
 
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