Urgent! Dropped an electric fan briefly into my sump!

[Erick Armanii]

As previously stated, you have the opportunity to make sure you have NO issues by doing a water change. Do the water change.

I don’t think you have much of a concern if it was an aquatic fan but I wouldnt take the chance if I could fix it now.

as long as you have flow in the tank you could go quite A while with general filtration systems off. (Battery backups are for power heads to keep the flow going upto 36 hours.. 5-6 hours isn’t going to hurt anything.

if it’s much longer than that I would move my heater to the display.

 

[KrisReef]

The second fan it water it popped a gfi or fuse and then was literally just sitting there in the water. What chemicals or pollutants could even be on it ?

Oil, lithium grease, copper, and whatever might have been collecting in the dust on the blades and inside the motor area.

Big picture, it probably wouldn't put a lot of chemicals or ions into the tank. A few copper ions are what would concern me most, followed by lubrication (oil, grease) chemicals.

Not knowing what that is, replacing the sump water would dilute any threat.

If you have a hang on filter or canister filter it might be easier to filter the water in the sump for an hour if changing the water is a big challenge?

Polyfilter!

Sell the fan at your next garage sale, as is!

 

[Lizbeli]

+1 for a water change. Why chance it? I have had a AI prime fall into a nano tank with no issues. But then recently my skimmer overflowed and poured into my refugium light. Black crud burnt electrical got in the tank and bleached most of my corals, killed a couple acro frags. On a 70gal system, I did a 40gal water change without being heated to dilute the toxins. I believe thats what saved the rest of my corals. Now everything is in recovery and it sucks. I don’t foresee anything this extreme coming from a fan, but what harm is there doing a water change?