Neotherm aquarium heather melt down

[tswanso3]

So this morning I woke up to an electrical smell down in the basement. A Cobalt Neotherm heater had somehow melted itself and cracked open. In my refugium, on top of the water, was this brownish sticky substance. I turned off all the pumps and got as much crap out of the water as I could. I'm going to put two large bags of carbon in the tank. Does anyone else have any experience with this? I have a 180 fully stocked SPS tank and I'm hoping this heater didn't release a bunch of toxins in my tank.

 

[AdamNC]

There's a major discussion about these heaters on the other big reef forum. A lot of people have had similar issues.

 

[tswanso3]

So I read over at that forum... My heater did the exact same thing... Luckily we were home and all it did was crack and not fill the house with smoke. Now the waiting game to see if I lose any of my fish, coral, inverts... I would suggest anyone running Cobalt heaters to replace them. It is not worth nuking your tank or house over. I had 2 heaters on my 180 so my titanium heater is still going strong.

 

[Jlobes]

dang, sorry to hear about this!!
which neotherm were you running!?

 

[tswanso3]

It was the 200 watt version..... but you could not pay me to use any of their heaters after seeing what this heater did. The thread I read about it had a lot of worse stories so I consider myself lucky.