cracked fishtank heater

[NJ_ychung1]

Hi. has anyone suffered a cracked fishtank heater killing off your live stock?

i found the cracked heater yesterday. i must have missed it for a day or so and now much of my tank is dead. i removed the bad heater.

first of all is it the stray voltage that kills or is it chemical material inside that tank heater that is toxic.

second. today, i'm going to attempt a huge water change in hopes of recovering anything that might be living. is there any other recommendation besides a huge water change? do i need to remove everything and start over?

anyone experience this? any pointers from experience would be very much appreciated.

 

[rodclement]

Sorry about your loss! My only experience with this was years ago and my fish died of stray voltage since the crack allowed water into the heating element and fried the whole tank...it sucked!

I personaly would do large WC just to be safe, but I am not sure breaking down the system is warranted...anyone else?

Rod

 

[panmanmatt]

Large water change and run carbon for a few days.

 

[NJ_ychung1]

thanks for your tips. ah. that makes sense. running carbon. i'll do that tonight and let it run for a couple days.

 

[Sunny]

It happened to me as well. However I have a ground probe in the tank. When the water entered the heater, the breaker tripped. The pumps and light on that circuit stopped running.
However nothing happened to any fish in the tank.

Good Luck.

 

[NJ_ychung1]

with grounding probe setup, your corals were okay? much of my stonies montis are faded in color as if they are dead or in the process of death. same with my LPS frogspawn and candycane they have severly retracted. my leathers devils hand spaghetti are limp and faded. noticed that leather is shedding/molting again so i'm hoping he'll bounce back.

my cuc's the hermitcrab are not active as if they are dead.

anyway, did you notice any of these? based on the grounding probe theory, i have to believe it's the sheer electricity that's done the damage not anything leaking out from inside of the heater? i had to pick up some loose heating element which i think are made from tunsten. at any rate. thanks for your tips as i'll look into grounding probes when i get throught this mess.

 

[Sunny]

None of my corals or fish were affected. I think the moment the water entered the heater, the circuit breaker did its thing.

 

[NJ_ychung1]

just an update for anyone reading on what survived and what did not.

survivors:
- one head (baby head that split off) of green frogspawn.
- couple of heads of pink frogspawn.
- green toadstool leather
- green/yellow devil's hand leather.
- a few diff types of mushrooms
- few heads of candy cane
- pistol shrimp
- some of my GSP.

dead:
- pink montipora
- some purple green acropora
- majority of my green frogspawn
- all my xenia and anthelia (there were 4 diff genus of these)
- green sphaghetti leather
- kenya tree
- all my hermit crab
- all my asterina stars
- all my brittle stars
- all sorts of worms including bristle worms
- all sorts of snails


anyway, i have a pretty good list of survivors to restart/resume my hobby.

thanks for your ideas. i really liked the carbon idea. i'm going to switch the carbon bags after a few more days. my skimmer has been going crazy removing a lot of dead organic mucus from the water.


Do you think it's safe to add CUC in a few days - perhaps after running carbon for another week and perhaps one more water change?