Please help!! Temp spike!!

[StephanieR23]

Hi Everyone...

so my tank was fine last night when I got home all looked well... I went to work and came home and a lot of my corals seems closed.. and then I touched the glass on my tank and it was EXTREMELY warm! I freaked!! Looked at my temp and it was 90.1 degrees!!! Both my fish seem to have swollen pouches on their stomachs - I'm hoping they aren't dying.. but after baking in hot water for sooo long, I can't imagine they could survive that... they are both active and ate, but the pouch worries me. Also, my boyfriend who does all this reef stuff and is teaching me is out of town and I can't get ahold of him... how do I drop the temp, I have a fan on my tank right now. Also, any advice regarding the spike in temp, cooling the water down, my fish, my corals.. anything!! Please help!!

Thanks,
Stephanie

 

[kpiotrowski]

water changes and ice cubes, you could place fozen items in plastic bags and submerge then also.

 

[IPisces]

Did your heater get stuck on? Dont know any reason why the temp would get that high.
Check the heater. If it is still running, it has definately malfuntioned and you need to remove it.

 

[extremecoral]

what kind of lighting are you using? remove the heater even if the light on the heater is off. bad heater I guess, try to bring down the temp by adding ice cube in the zip-lock bag so the when it melts the freshwater stay inside. Or you can do water changes for faster result. You have to do it fast I don't think your fish can hold it much longer.

 

[MAC2]

Keep the lid open to the tank and add a fan pointed at the water. If the problem continues and you don't mind coming to Bellevue, you can borrow my drop-in chiller.

 

[N1Husker]

If you take a plastic water bottle, freeze it and float it in your sump or tank. That will drop the temp slowly. Your heater probably malfunction and when the do, they usually stick open or on.

 

[StephanieR23]

Thank you!!

Thank you everyone for your great advice. I ended up doing a 2 gallon saltwater change (I have a 30 gallon cube) and then topped it off with fresh water - then had my fan blowing on the tank and it slowly went down. Those who guessed it was the heater, were right. I don't know what happened but the light kept staying on. I now have a new heater and this morning everything was back to normal and happy. Thankfully everyone was saved and my fish are doing fine now. It might have been myself freaking out about the pouch on the fish stomach.. because they are fine now. I was going crazy last night. I sat starring at my thank for about 3-4 hours, I was so scared I was going to lose everything. Thanks again for all the help!!

 

[StephanieR23]

Thank you for offering the chiller - I appreciate it! Thankfully I figured out it was the heater and all has returned back to normal with a new heater.

 

[Derbird]

Thank you everyone for your great advice. I ended up doing a 2 gallon saltwater change (I have a 30 gallon cube) and then topped it off with fresh water - then had my fan blowing on the tank and it slowly went down. Those who guessed it was the heater, were right. I don't know what happened but the light kept staying on. I now have a new heater and this morning everything was back to normal and happy. Thankfully everyone was saved and my fish are doing fine now. It might have been myself freaking out about the pouch on the fish stomach.. because they are fine now. I was going crazy last night. I sat starring at my thank for about 3-4 hours, I was so scared I was going to lose everything. Thanks again for all the help!!

I'm glad all your little friends pulled though. Temp is always scary when it gets too high. Much better to be too low.

A trick I use to (hopefully) avoid this issue is to use two under sized heaters. That way if one goes nuts its not powerful enough to bake the tank and the other will simply shut off. No harm done. In my 125 I run two 200w heaters and they do the job just fine.

 

[N1Husker]

I have my heater plugged into my Reefkeeper Lite, and it is set to cut power to it if the temp probe senses the temp go over 80 degrees. Love that thing. Last heater malfunction was when it quit working all together. Wouldn't heat, got lucky on that one. It's a shame all the life in your tank relies on a $40.00 unit. Glad to hear everybody's okay.

 

[Holygral]

I also would never run a reef without a temp controller, inexpensive Ranco duel stage ($125), heaters ( 2 small are always better then 1 large) plug into one end, fans in the other and power is shut on and off to keep temps stable, if a heater gets stuck on the controller shuts the power off to it and turns the fans on. Not expensive when you consider a $40 heater almost wiped out your tank. All heaters fail.

 

[StephanieR23]

I'm glad all your little friends pulled though. Temp is always scary when it gets too high. Much better to be too low.

A trick I use to (hopefully) avoid this issue is to use two under sized heaters. That way if one goes nuts its not powerful enough to bake the tank and the other will simply shut off. No harm done. In my 125 I run two 200w heaters and they do the job just fine.

Great idea!! Thanks for the tip!!

 

[StephanieR23]

Thanks again for the feedback, I will definitely look into a controller. I do agree buying a controller would be the best rather than losing my whole tank over a $40 heater!