Every Reefers Worst Nightmare come true -Warning graphic photos

[class clown]

I'll share with you my experience in hopes you can learn from it. After all, that's why we're all here.

Last Night, around 8-9pm, I looked in my tank and all of my corals were sliming as a sign of stress. I reached my hand in the tank to test the temperature of water and received a small jolt. I reached my hand in the sump about 15ft away and received what felt like a slightly larger jolt. I kept pulling out equipment from my sump getting jolted each time until I found the culpret - an almost brand new (only a few months old) Finnex 300w heater with the ends just falling off and bare wires totally exposed had been sending 300W of electrical shocks to my corals, fish, entvertabrites and now me each time the heater turned on. AHHHH!!!!!

By this time, I'm panicking. I stay up, change out my carbon in the tank, clean out my skimmer cup, replace the filter sock, and start to prepare water for a large water change for the following day (today). I end up staying up just watching my corals waste away helplessly until the lights go out thinking about how many hundreds (no, more likely thousands) of dollars this little incident of cheaply made equipment is going to cost me. Then stay up for a few hours trying to think of how I could've avoided this. Here's what I came up with:

• Avoid Finnex heaters at all costs
• Install GFI circuit breakers
• performed more regular maintanence checks on all equipment -even the small stuff that doesn't move, such as heaters
• give more pieces of my coral to friends - so I'd have a backup
• started a seperate frag tank system as a backup

Hindsight 20/20 is what they say, right? I'm dissapointed that it had to happen to me, but we are all on this forum to learn. Hopefully someone can learn from my experience and my thoughts on how this could've been avoided shared above

So far, my "for sure gonners" include:

• my $90 Oregon Tort
• Yellow Miyagi Tort (sp)
• Purple figi pinapple tort
• Purple slimer
• blue sparkler
• Yellow stylo
• Green w/ Purple rim Monti
• creamy Acro w/ purply tips & white polyps
• 2 more creamy acro's w/ Yellow tips
• small blue mili
• gold/blue acro
• A. Tenius
• 2 tricolors
• unk purply/brown acro frag (also pinapple shaped like)
• and probably a lot more....

On my intensive care list, I have:

• ORA tort
• big green slimer colony (now brown slimer)
• Red monti
• green monti
• tan w/ neon green polyps monti
• blue and red monti
• superman's cousin monti
• enchinata
• large purple tip acro colony
• 3 pink mili's
• green stylo
• Hammer
• Frogspawn
• and a purple gorgonian
• insane purple tricolor

I'm hoping I can move some of these guys off of the intensive care list in a few days, but they are not looking so good.

Amazingly, my fish and inverts survived - that's not to say they won't develop signs of stress in coming days, but as of now, everyone is still alive. All softies survived too.

This is such an aweful feeling. Please learn from my lessons above.

Finex heater: look at the writting on the box - says "virtually unbreakable" - comon it fell apart on it's own in my sump with little moving current and fried my tank! give me a break.

Some of the worst:

my Oregon

PLEASE LEARN FROM MY THOUGHTS ABOVE - It's not worth it to risk it. Trust me.

 

[blue_eyes53813]

Oh gosh, I am so sorry,,, I hope the rest pull through for you... I would write to the company.... Tell them what you think of their heaters.

 

[class clown]

Oh gosh, I am so sorry,,, I hope the rest pull through for you... I would write to the company.... Tell them what you think of their heaters.

I just pulled up my warranty info - says the product is warrantied for 180 days from date of purchase. I purchased it just 4 months ago (01/09/07 to be exact). It says they'll repair it or send me a new or refurbished one. - big woop - I don't even want one.

It also says "the warranty does not cover personal injury (me getting shocked), property loss, including livestock or any direct, indirect incidental or consequental damages or specific releif." - basically I'm screwed.

I'm also going to write the company that sold it to me (premium aquatics) and ask they don't carry the product line anymore.

Basically I'm hosed anyway you look at it. I just hope someone can learn from my experiences here.

 

[jezzeaepi]

The corals always look worse before they look better =\ You been watching the progress of BR's display since the incident? A lot of things rebounded there that I didnt think had a chance. Regardless, when things are better in the tank, hit me up and your more then welcome to some frags fom my tank. I got a couple of your colonies that I can frag back to you, and a few you dont have.

Also, I dont know if youve been considering what heater to replace it with, but I have had nothing but good exeriences with ebojagger in my 5 years of fish keeping.

Peace

 

[Slickdonkey]

Sorry to see this.

To tell you the truth I have never found a heater that I like. I currently have two 500W Finnex titaniums... will keep an eye on them. I did have one stop working last year, but I think it's because it was exposed to air. I think they have a non-replaceable fuse in them that blows when this happens.

They certainly did "blow" in your case.

 

[class clown]

Sorry to see this.

To tell you the truth I have never found a heater that I like. I currently have two 500W Finnex titaniums... will keep an eye on them. I did have one stop working last year, but I think it's because it was exposed to air. I think they have a non-replaceable fuse in them that blows when this happens.

They certainly did "blow" in your case.

Slick man - keep a close, close eye on this. literally both of the end caps were so loose that when i lifted the heater out of the bottom of the sump, they fell off. I could see bare wires exposed. Terrible, just terrible.

I just finished writing premium aquatics to ask them to discontinue the product. I also wrote Finnex directly to let them know what happened.

this is just like the worse ever-- I guess I'm glad that it happened now vs. when I get the 240 up and running

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Ben, sorry to hear of this. I have some mild electrical flow that grounds out thru me. Even with titanium grounds, still there. Doesn't blow the GFI circuit. Have never found the cause even by unplugging each pump and heater, etc. Probably the actinics. Never shown any bad signs with the fish (HLLE, etc). Perhaps it is why some of my corals never polyp out much?

Hope much of your stuff recovers!

 

[class clown]

The corals always look worse before they look better =\ You been watching the progress of BR's display since the incident? A lot of things rebounded there that I didnt think had a chance. Regardless, when things are better in the tank, hit me up and your more then welcome to some frags fom my tank. I got a couple of your colonies that I can frag back to you, and a few you dont have.

Also, I dont know if youve been considering what heater to replace it with, but I have had nothing but good exeriences with ebojagger in my 5 years of fish keeping.

Peace

Jesse - I'll keep my fingers crossed man that things make a good recovery - that is good news about BR's tank. I saw it right after their electrical incident, but havne't been down there in a couple weeks. Glad to hear all is recovering - it gives me some hope. I may go the ebojagger route. thx for the offer on the corals - may have to hit you up on that after the new tank is together, up and running.

 

[Meche]

I was going to do a post about Aqua-Via's SS or Titanium heaters when I got around to it, this seems like an approperate time to mention my problems with them.

I have had two fail in 6months. One failed on and the other failed off. Both of them failed in their controller box. Looked like a relay problem, (mechanical not solid state).

 

[Jan]

Oh my God, Ben, this is awful. I feel so bad for you.

If there's any way I can help you, please let me know. You are welcome to have back some of those generous starter colonies you gave me.

Your green slimer doesn't look dead to me (?) the tips are white...what is happening when the tips are white?

 

[class clown]

Oh my God, Ben, this is awful. I feel so bad for you.

If there's any way I can help you, please let me know. You are welcome to have back some of those generous starter colonies you gave me.

Your green slimer doesn't look dead to me (?) the tips are white...what is happening when the tips are white?

yeah.. not a good couple days for sure. first a botched shipment of t5 bulbs, then this.

The white tips are actually new growth areas. The slimer is on the critical care list, not on the dead list. That has quite a bit of history with me as you know, I hope it pulls through. Here is a shot a couple weeks ago of it which shows the true color. Not quite the same is it?

 

[dailydriven911]

No way! Ben I'm very sorry about your losses I know you had alot of good stuff in there and knowing how much hard work you put into your tank that's really gotta hurt! I know your 240 will be simply amazing but like the above post you still have a chance to save most of your stuff so give it a try It can't hurt. What's really weird is that I was thinking that your temp was a little high at 81.7 degrees last night around 10 pm or so. Usually your tank temp stayed around 77-78 degrees. I'm sure it had to do w/ last night. Hope you don't lose any more sleep over all this! Take care,

Jayson

 

[class clown]

I was going to do a post about Aqua-Via's SS or Titanium heaters when I got around to it, this seems like an approperate time to mention my problems with them.

I have had two fail in 6months. One failed on and the other failed off. Both of them failed in their controller box. Looked like a relay problem, (mechanical not solid state).

Brett - I've gone through a few Won Pro-Heat Titanium II's - 1 got stuck on (almost fried my tank last year), and the other got stuck off (better than being stuck on).

Redundancy is key i've found. Even then, I don't see any way to avoid stray electrical current unless you make sure you have GFI circuits. But as Mike points out, his GFI's don't even trip on those.

 

[Jan]

Are those GFI strips that you plug into your wall plug, good enough to serve for this circuit breaker purpose? The ones that cost ! $15 and have multiple plugs on them?

 

[class clown]

Oh gosh, I am so sorry,,, I hope the rest pull through for you... I would write to the company.... Tell them what you think of their heaters.

You know Jan, I would've thought so, but I have several on my system and they didn't. Someone that knows more about electricity than I do can pipe in here, but I beleive they work in some cases, but maybe not all. My heater is hooked up to my aquacontroller's DC-8 plugs which has a fuse trip on it - it'd didn't trip. I also have one of those ground probe's in my sump b/c I thought that would take any stray current - wrong again. maybe someone else can help answer.

 

[sgwill122]

Sorry to hear Ben, that is terrible. Once the 240 is going come on by and you are welcome to a frag of anything I got. Would be nice to have a backup. I have two WON brother heaters, one has failed on me already but I noticed the day of so did not go higher than 81degrees. I have since plugged them into an external controller. I see the nudi made it through, is he helping or can you tell?

 

[Herefishyfishy]

What was your tank's temperature? Do you think that the electricity caused much copper to get into the water through 120 volt powered electrolysis? Obviously the heater failure was the culprit, but possibly anything other than stray voltage as the cause?

 

[Slickdonkey]

I wouldn't use a ground probe without a GFCI. This can be dangerous. Remember a ground probe is meant to protect you, not your livestock.

Those GFCI power bars are better than nothing but generally unreliable IMO.

This topic has been beaten to death I'm sure, but that is my take on it.

 

[class clown]

What was your tank's temperature? Do you think that the electricity caused much copper to get into the water through 120 volt powered electrolysis? Obviously the heater failure was the culprit, but possibly anything other than stray voltage as the cause?

jesus Mike - now you're scarnig the crap out of me. copper via electrolysis - is that likely?

I'm running a fresh batch of carbon - anything else I can do to eliminate the possibility?

 

[class clown]

Sorry to hear Ben, that is terrible. Once the 240 is going come on by and you are welcome to a frag of anything I got. Would be nice to have a backup. I have two WON brother heaters, one has failed on me already but I noticed the day of so did not go higher than 81degrees. I have since plugged them into an external controller. I see the nudi made it through, is he helping or can you tell?

Steve - sure 'nuff, the nudi pulled through - actually as all of the livestock did strangely enough. I can't tell if he's helping at all, but he seems content wandering around the rocks munching on stuff. Thanks for your offer on the frags -very generous - I may have to take you up that at some point.