Heater Malfunction Not Good

[SeaShine]

I need some help for how to manage my tank at this point. During the night last night my Hygger heater and temperature control system malfunctioned and cooked my tank (I know, I should have a back up. In fact, I do have an inkbird, somewhere...) I have a 20 gallon Nuvo AIO softies tank and I had 4 fish. I lost one of my clowns and my pink streaked wrasse. One clown is holding on but it's swimming near the top of the saltwater reserve I use for AWC he's in and my spotted watchman goby looks okay and is on the bottom. The reserve wasn't heated when I moved the fish so I'm sure they got an extra shock coming from hot water. I thought my serpent stars were dead but to my surprise they're still alive so I moved them into the reserve too. I also have a red legged hermit crab still alive in the tank. I'm not sure how it survived. I have a small in-tank refugium with chaeto in the sump and see a lot of little dead copepods. I didn't know I had so many. At this point I'm exhausted and numb. Both the ammonia and nitrate have spiked. The ammonia was 40 ppm and after a 6 gallon water change in increments of 2 gallons, it reads the same. The nitrate was 40 ppm but is now 20 ppm. Should I keep the fish in the reserve? Move the red legged hermit crab out of the display tank into the reserve or would that be too much shock for it? Do more water changes?

My question is, is there anything else I can do at this point? I've also changed the carbon and left the Chemipure Elite because I don't have a replacement (should arrive tomorrow). I'm not sure if I should leave it or keep it in. I imagine the all bacteria is dead but don't know. The softies in the tank are all fallen over. Some are white and release a substance (powdery looking) when I touch them, although most have little dark green dots on them, so there may be some life. Some zoas show life. My duncan is closed. I have 4 RFAs in the tank. Two look okay, two do not. I also need to drive to the airport in a couple of hours to pick up overnight guests, so I'm in a time crunch. I'm not sure what I can do, but any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

[PharmrJohn]

Bump. While I do not have anything in terms of what you should do at this point, in the future, you may want to add a redundancy in case a heater fails. Now, I know that yours was stuck on, which would have made a redundancy worthless, but it would have been relevant if the heater turned off. Now, something I'm gonna do with my set up once it gets going, I'm gonna replace my heaters at about the two-third mark of its warranty. If the warranty is 3 years, they're going in the garbage at the 2 year mark. I'm gonna play the same game with my Inkbird.

I am SORRY this happened. It sucks. Just don't do what I did when I lost my tank years ago and quit. Don't be me.

 

[JNalley]

How warm did the water actually get?

 

[SeaShine]

Unfortunately, I don't know. The temperature controller malfunctioned. It read 75, when it typically read 79. I saw the water was cloudy and in trying to figure out what was going on, stuck my hand in the tank. It felt about ten degrees hotter than usual, but that's just a guess. I didn't think to take the temperature. I just started to move the fish out. One clown was almost dead at that point so I knew it was deadly.

 

[Drummer98]

Sorry to hear this, hopefully you won't lose any more critters.

 

[SeaShine]

Sorry to hear this, hopefully you won't lose any more critters.

Thank you.

 

[SeaShine]

Bump. While I do not have anything in terms of what you should do at this point, in the future, you may want to add a redundancy in case a heater fails. Now, I know that yours was stuck on, which would have made a redundancy worthless, but it would have been relevant if the heater turned off. Now, something I'm gonna do with my set up once it gets going, I'm gonna replace my heaters at about the two-third mark of its warranty. If the warranty is 3 years, they're going in the garbage at the 2 year mark. I'm gonna play the same game with my Inkbird.

I am SORRY this happened. It sucks. Just don't do what I did when I lost my tank years ago and quit. Don't be me.

Thank you. Yeah, I'm very close to quitting mode right now. The tank and all the corals were thriving and this is just soooo sad and hard to deal with. Except I as struggling with aiptasia and then spinoid worms that were out of control, so that issue isn't really encouraging me at the moment either. They'll probably be one of the few things to survive.

I used Eheim Jaegers for YEARS and never a problem. About a year ago I switched to Hygger because it was part of a system with a controller. The system is less than a year old so replacing it at the 2/3 mark of the warranty wouldn't have worked either. You might want to still do that, but choose a heater that you have a lot of faith in. I've had Jaegers for years -- they actually lasted more than a decade. In fact, I replaced mine because I cracked it, not because it malfunctioned in the tank. I can't remember how the inkbird works (I bought one just didn't set it up), but if I can plug the Jaeger into it I might do that, if I redo the tank. I will say that the Hygger system was very consistent, which was great, until it wasn't. I will never get another one. Also, thanks for the encouragement. I really don't know what I'm going to do at the moment. But I do need to get the two remaining fish back in the tank, or in some tank, soon.

 

[JNalley]

I can't remember how the inkbird works (I bought one just didn't set it up), but if I can plug the Jaeger into it I might do that, if I redo the tank.

Ink bird, has two models. if you have the one that does heating and chilling, has a temp set point, below that point it will power a heater on one outlet, and above that point it will run a chiller on the other outlet.

I use the dual heater one since I don't need to worry about cooling. It turns off the outlets above the high heat point. I use two undersized heaters instead of one regular sized heater.

 

[braaap]

Bump. While I do not have anything in terms of what you should do at this point, in the future, you may want to add a redundancy in case a heater fails. Now, I know that yours was stuck on, which would have made a redundancy worthless, but it would have been relevant if the heater turned off. Now, something I'm gonna do with my set up once it gets going, I'm gonna replace my heaters at about the two-third mark of its warranty. If the warranty is 3 years, they're going in the garbage at the 2 year mark. I'm gonna play the same game with my Inkbird.

I am SORRY this happened. It sucks. Just don't do what I did when I lost my tank years ago and quit. Don't be me.

No need to toss out heaters because of a warranty period. I still have glass eheims that are 20 years old and work fine.

 

[PharmrJohn]

No need to toss out heaters because of a warranty period. I still have glass eheims that are 20 years old and work fine.

Oh, I know they can last. I had mine in my tank x5 years with no issue. It's just such an important part of life support. Call it mistrust. We Boomers are a little cynical. It's an age thing.

 

[ca1ore]

Ooof ….. hopefully the Inkbirds are better than they used to be. I wouldn’t touch them with the proverbial 10 foot pole. Unfortunately most of the heaters and controllers available to us are hobby grade junk. Always use multiple smaller capacity heaters. Using one that materially exceeds necessary wattage is a disaster waiting to happen.

My choice would be the EBJ heaters with a Ranco controller (industrial grade).

 

[Uncle99]

I have relied on My INKBIRD 306 wifi for years as it has a number of pluses.

It has two probes which monitor temp and they are matched with each other to ensure if one probe goes out of line with the other, it will shut down the heaters and send me a notification it had done so.

It takes a reading every 15 minutes and charts for me, and keeps daily fluctuation records.

It allows me remotely to shutdown the heaters, or restart them.

It will send notifications of too high/too low as soon as these levels encountered.

Combined with digital heaters set only 2 degrees above the INKBIRD high setting, if the INKBIRD failed, it’s unlikely both heaters would fail at the same time.

Never quit, just enhance.

 

[gbroadbridge]

No need to toss out heaters because of a warranty period. I still have glass eheims that are 20 years old and work fine.

I toss mine out after 24 months regardless of how long the warranty is.
I have two alternates, so one gets tossed every 12 months.

Thats a cheap $30 piece of gear that is life support for $15k worth of life - not worth the risk

 

[braaap]

I toss mine out after 24 months regardless of how long the warranty is.
I have two alternates, so one gets tossed every 12 months.

Thats a cheap $30 piece of gear that is life support for $15k worth of life - not worth the risk

That’s just silly. Go ahead and waste your money. Or do it right and have the heater turn itself off and then have the inkbird or tank controller as the last resort.

 

[gbroadbridge]

That’s just silly. Go ahead and waste your money. Or do it right and have the heater turn itself off and then have the inkbird or tank controller as the last resort.

My heaters are controlled by two temp probes connected to a Profilux which switches using two separate outlets so it has all the redundancy it needs.

In any event, heaters are cheap consumable items upon which the life depends.
They're like oil/air filters in an engine, just toss them and then don't worry about heater problems.

If I were worried about the cost of a $30 heater, I wouldn't be running a reef tank.

 

[Uncle99]

I need some help for how to manage my tank at this point. During the night last night my Hygger heater and temperature control system malfunctioned and cooked my tank (I know, I should have a back up. In fact, I do have an inkbird, somewhere...) I have a 20 gallon Nuvo AIO softies tank and I had 4 fish. I lost one of my clowns and my pink streaked wrasse. One clown is holding on but it's swimming near the top of the saltwater reserve I use for AWC he's in and my spotted watchman goby looks okay and is on the bottom. The reserve wasn't heated when I moved the fish so I'm sure they got an extra shock coming from hot water. I thought my serpent stars were dead but to my surprise they're still alive so I moved them into the reserve too. I also have a red legged hermit crab still alive in the tank. I'm not sure how it survived. I have a small in-tank refugium with chaeto in the sump and see a lot of little dead copepods. I didn't know I had so many. At this point I'm exhausted and numb. Both the ammonia and nitrate have spiked. The ammonia was 40 ppm and after a 6 gallon water change in increments of 2 gallons, it reads the same. The nitrate was 40 ppm but is now 20 ppm. Should I keep the fish in the reserve? Move the red legged hermit crab out of the display tank into the reserve or would that be too much shock for it? Do more water changes?

My question is, is there anything else I can do at this point? I've also changed the carbon and left the Chemipure Elite because I don't have a replacement (should arrive tomorrow). I'm not sure if I should leave it or keep it in. I imagine the all bacteria is dead but don't know. The softies in the tank are all fallen over. Some are white and release a substance (powdery looking) when I touch them, although most have little dark green dots on them, so there may be some life. Some zoas show life. My duncan is closed. I have 4 RFAs in the tank. Two look okay, two do not. I also need to drive to the airport in a couple of hours to pick up overnight guests, so I'm in a time crunch. I'm not sure what I can do, but any suggestions would be appreciated.

Let the system fall back to normal running temp first.
Stabilize temp.
Remove anything which is dead.

I doubt everything is toast, but some maybe very unhappy for a bit.

Since we don’t know the high temp and for how long, much is a guess.

But save what you can by bringing temp in line, (I’m sure you done that already)

 

[vetteguy53081]

I need some help for how to manage my tank at this point. During the night last night my Hygger heater and temperature control system malfunctioned and cooked my tank (I know, I should have a back up. In fact, I do have an inkbird, somewhere...) I have a 20 gallon Nuvo AIO softies tank and I had 4 fish. I lost one of my clowns and my pink streaked wrasse. One clown is holding on but it's swimming near the top of the saltwater reserve I use for AWC he's in and my spotted watchman goby looks okay and is on the bottom. The reserve wasn't heated when I moved the fish so I'm sure they got an extra shock coming from hot water. I thought my serpent stars were dead but to my surprise they're still alive so I moved them into the reserve too. I also have a red legged hermit crab still alive in the tank. I'm not sure how it survived. I have a small in-tank refugium with chaeto in the sump and see a lot of little dead copepods. I didn't know I had so many. At this point I'm exhausted and numb. Both the ammonia and nitrate have spiked. The ammonia was 40 ppm and after a 6 gallon water change in increments of 2 gallons, it reads the same. The nitrate was 40 ppm but is now 20 ppm. Should I keep the fish in the reserve? Move the red legged hermit crab out of the display tank into the reserve or would that be too much shock for it? Do more water changes?

My question is, is there anything else I can do at this point? I've also changed the carbon and left the Chemipure Elite because I don't have a replacement (should arrive tomorrow). I'm not sure if I should leave it or keep it in. I imagine the all bacteria is dead but don't know. The softies in the tank are all fallen over. Some are white and release a substance (powdery looking) when I touch them, although most have little dark green dots on them, so there may be some life. Some zoas show life. My duncan is closed. I have 4 RFAs in the tank. Two look okay, two do not. I also need to drive to the airport in a couple of hours to pick up overnight guests, so I'm in a time crunch. I'm not sure what I can do, but any suggestions would be appreciated.

Sorry to hear. I highly recommend both a titanium heater with a built in thermostat such as Finnex (the one ive used for years) and via aqua titanium. Also have a backup unit as failure can occur.
Depending on temperatures in your area, you may not need the heater running unless you get cool days and nights yet.

 

[Dragen Fiend]

Dang that sucks. Yea this is why I do heaters with built in temp controllers with the inkbird as a fail safe.

 

[Lebowski_]

My immediate response would be to get as much air into the water as you can - point flow at the surface, use air stone, skimmer etc. what ever you have on hand.

For ammonia there is prime, but a water change would make more sense right now imo. Just make sure the new water matches temp, no new stress.

 

[gbroadbridge]

For ammonia there is prime, but a water change would make more sense right now imo. Just make sure the new water matches temp, no new stress.

Just a correction:

Prime does nothing to Ammonia.
That has been proven over and over and there are many threads concerning it.