Every Reefers Worst Nightmare come true -Warning graphic photos

[Snowboarda42]

Hey its the least I could do, after all you totally hooked me up with $130+ of Coral for $50 and have given me great advice as well. Your one of the first in line to get some of your own stuff back once it grows a little (my slimer is haulin balls). I'm thinking of starting the BlueCoral Method just to get you peices back quicker :lol:

 

[SRV]

Sorry for your Loss!

Ben
I feel terrible about the heater problem and ultimate demise of your tank inhabitants, but your response from the manufacturer is pretty typical IMO. CTA - cover their a$$. In this case the dollar sign does mean something to them. Didn't see them jumping up and down trying to protect their product reputation with anything but a minimal effort. Maybe your forum will put a bug in their ear, if not at least a hurt in their wallets. We can always hope. In any case, it sounds like your on the road to recovery. I apologize for not catching your post sooner, but I don't often read this thread. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help, with this or your new tank. Always up for a road trip and meeting new people in the hobby.
Rick

 

[tamarindthai]

opps! how can i missed this tread big time..
Sorry to hear what it happened,,,it happened to me too from brand new titanium heater 4 weeks ago,but i cought it with the tripped GFI,,sorry Ben.

 

[jsmkmavity]

glad to hear no copper on the first test, will look forward to a big fat ZERO on the next test too! keep us posted!

 

[dragoneggs]

Ben,

sorry to hear of this incident and to be so negligent in missing this thread.

FWIW I have had a 75W ebo jager for 1.5 yrs and two 250 Ebos for 1 year without incident. Belive it or not my junker 100W petco heater has been faithful for make up water for near a year now as well.

After reading through this, I suddenly have quite a few frags with your name on them.

ORA rose mille
Pink stylo
Green w/ purple tip pocillapora
tri color acro (the one you just gave me) Ill keep a baby frag and you can have the rest
blue green stag
Yellow mille
Blue mille (when I frag it again)
And the list goes on......... YOu will just have to come by to see what you want when you get a chance.

Wow!!! Maybe I need to fry my tank

 

[dragoneggs]

opps! how can i missed this tread big time..
Sorry to hear what it happened,,,it happened to me too from brand new titanium heater 4 weeks ago,but i cought it with the tripped GFI,,sorry Ben.

After all I am hearing, I think I should take Scooter's advice and put heaters in only when required and keep them clean and dry the majority of the time.

 

[DonW]

I use a different approach to control stray voltage. I have a stainless probe probe in my sump. That is connected to a tiny signal ssr. The ssr trigers a IO on the controller, just like a float switch or any other input. The controler test for the problem. It shuts down heater #1 if the voltage is still there it turns it back on. Then moves to heater #2 again if no problem it turns the heater back on. Then it goes to the submersible pumps. When it sees the coltage go away it leaves that device off and triggers a alarm. The sytem will then act on what ever happened because the the component is no longer on line. So if it found a bad chiller pump it would leave that pump off, trigger an alarm then it would act on a temp increase caused by no chiller feed. Cost about $25 to add to my existing system. I test it every 6 months by putting a little 24vac into the sump, works every time.

Don

 

[tamarindthai]

I use a different approach to control stray voltage. I have a stainless probe probe in my sump. That is connected to a tiny signal ssr. The ssr trigers a IO on the controller, just like a float switch or any other input. The controler test for the problem. It shuts down heater #1 if the voltage is still there it turns it back on. Then moves to heater #2 again if no problem it turns the heater back on. Then it goes to the submersible pumps. When it sees the coltage go away it leaves that device off and triggers a alarm. The sytem will then act on what ever happened because the the component is no longer on line. So if it found a bad chiller pump it would leave that pump off, trigger an alarm then it would act on a temp increase caused by no chiller feed. Cost about $25 to add to my existing system. I test it every 6 months by putting a little 24vac into the sump, works every time.

Don

just love what you got,,could you lead me through.

 

[64Ivy]

Sorry to hear about your problems; seems heater malfunctions make up an unusually high percentage of all mechanical break downs in this hobby. Whenever this happens to someone I know, I always ask them to check and see if they even NEED a heater. Sometimes the heat given off by pumps and metal halides (if applicable) can get you just about where you need to be. I only keep a heater around in the unlikely event that our power goes out for an extended period of time during the winter months AND my generator also fails. Needless to say, I've never had to use it.

 

[SRV]

just love what you got,,could you lead me through.

Hey Don
I'd like to ditto Dang's request!!
rick

 

[Jan]

me too, please Don.

 

[DonW]

me too, please Don.

Your creating a ac voltage trigger. So you need + and N ac. Use a old grounding probe or titanium bicycle spoke. Connect that to the + on a rectifier bridge and connect the N to the N on the rectifier bridge. Now any real ac current in the tank will go to the rectifier and be converted to dc. Now that goes to a relay that will trigger at 3-90 vdc. The output of the relay are just a switch. Now connect that to the controller to switch on and off a IO. Set up the logic and your done.
Sounds hard but its real simple if you actually have the parts in your hand.
Of course its all mute unless you have a controller that can perform long logic strings. Not real sure aquarium controllers hold enough logic strings since I dont own one.


Don

 

[class clown]

Your creating a ac voltage trigger. So you need + and N ac. Use a old grounding probe or titanium bicycle spoke. Connect that to the + on a rectifier bridge and connect the N to the N on the rectifier bridge. Now any real ac current in the tank will go to the rectifier and be converted to dc. Now that goes to a relay that will trigger at 3-90 vdc. The output of the relay are just a switch. Now connect that to the controller to switch on and off a IO. Set up the logic and your done.
Sounds hard but its real simple if you actually have the parts in your hand.
Of course its all mute unless you have a controller that can perform long logic strings. Not real sure aquarium controllers hold enough logic strings since I dont own one.

Don

Don - this sounds like an excellent product to bring to the market. no chance you sell them commerically do you? think it could be done w/ a Neptune AC III?

 

[DonW]

Don - this sounds like an excellent product to bring to the market. no chance you sell them commerically do you? think it could be done w/ a Neptune AC III?

I know the neptune can use logic but I dont know to what extent. I have unlimited capacity, I guess if you can run 50 or so lines of code on a single IO it would work. Also assumes your controller can control the ac to each divice that you would want to check. I can control as many as I want so something else to think about. I probably wont sell the IO but may do a easy diy when I get some more time. I guess I can stock the parts to make it easier.

Don

 

[tamarindthai]

Your creating a ac voltage trigger. So you need + and N ac. Use a old grounding probe or titanium bicycle spoke. Connect that to the + on a rectifier bridge and connect the N to the N on the rectifier bridge. Now any real ac current in the tank will go to the rectifier and be converted to dc. Now that goes to a relay that will trigger at 3-90 vdc. The output of the relay are just a switch. Now connect that to the controller to switch on and off a IO. Set up the logic and your done.
Sounds hard but its real simple if you actually have the parts in your hand.
Of course its all mute unless you have a controller that can perform long logic strings. Not real sure aquarium controllers hold enough logic strings since I dont own one.


Don

could you give me the rectifier # and size of DC relay part #(small potter brumfield maybe ?),,opto I/O work better with AC relay?,,for to manually open heater circuit./no need to have the contrller to be involve with,,advice please

 

[DonW]

could you give me the rectifier # and size of DC relay part #(small potter brumfield maybe ?),,opto I/O work better with AC relay?,,for to manually open heater circuit./no need to have the contrller to be involve with,,advice please

Radio shack has the rectifier any full wave will be fine. I'll see if there is a number on mine. You could just open the heater circuit but as soon as it shut off the voltage would go away and it would turn back on so it would just pulse rapidly. You could latch the relay but what if it was not the heater and the problem was a pump or different heater. Make sense.
If you had a controller you do somthing like this.

If IO #1 (voltage sensor) turns on
Then Heater 1 off
If Io #1 is on and heater is off
Then Heater 2 on

and so on. That would be 4 lines per device, I guess not that bad. I looked at mine and it 121 lines just for the voltage sensor and 1590 line total for the tank and another 3223 for the house.

Can aquarium controllers use variables?????

Don

 

[pledosophy]

Sorry man that sucks.

 

[Snowboarda42]

I'm so confused right now...

 

[Ichthys]

Sorry to resurrect such an old thread but it is pertinent to me. I was about to pull the trigger on two 300w Finnex Titanium Tubes for my new 150 build and came across a bad review on the online store website. It referenced this thread which I have just finished reading, this reefer (Class Clown) lost a huge amount of stuff from a heater tube just basically falling apart in his tank. Scared the bejeebus out of me. So now I am looking for a reliable break-proof heater, any suggestions. I wonder if Finnex ever addressed this issue? I have found other bad reviews on them, and horrible reviews on the Won Bros heater tubes. This thread also led me to Class Clowns 240g in wall build thread which is definitely worth your time to look thru, it is one of the most beautiful fully stocked reef tanks i have seen, I am sorry this reefer has moved on and is no longer an active part of RF.

 

[Ichthys]

Premium aquatics wrote me.. had some interesting stuff to say...

Hi Ben,




I'm very sorry to hear about the coral losses. We certainly are very sensitive to any losses customers could get from products we sell and we watch quality control issues very carefully.




The whole Finnex problems have been very hard for us to decide on. It goes back years to other brands. We have sold Won Brothers for almost 10 years and there were great, then tons of problems, overheats, duds, etc. Then Finnex came along and for the first several years had less then 1% defects and all but 1 or 2 isolated overheats, just duds. So they were by far better quality then any other brand we could find out there. So we started recommended these over Won and others. Then we started having issues with them and found out the manufacture had some type of issue and was fixing the problem.*




We pulled our inventory and waited about 3 months before restocking them with the newest version and since then haven't heard of problems.




I don't have any problem pulling the plugs on these or any other brand if they are not reliable. The main problem we face is I don't think any of the titanium heaters are real trustworthy, but customers want them because they are so powerful of heaters. It seems all of them are made in China. If I could find a quality German or Japan titanium heater I would get it, but so far haven't been able to find anything.


and probably the most valauble info, when I asked for a recomendation on a heater:

In this post it looks like the guy from Premium Aquatics is saying that Finnex did something to address a known issue, would like to make sure of that before trusting a finnex heater again. What are peoples experience with titanium heaters, they are popular but are they trustworthy, seems most "Old Salts" stick with Ebo Jager.