Well last night my girl and I came home from a good productive day to find that the heater had gone ape-$hit and pushed the temp of my community tank to above 30 :evil: (didn't have a thermometer in there but it was like bath water ).

My girl and I did high speed water changes (carefully of course) and also dumped a sealled bag of frozen peas into the water. After a frantic 20 minutes, the temp was down to a decent level and the damage could be assessed. Suffice to say that I lost 2 kuhli loaches, 2 kribs (in full breeding colours and jealously guarding eggs) and nearly a third krib (who seems to be back to normal this morning but very lonely)

Funny thing was that the two siamese fighter females thought this new temp was excellent and my dwarf gouramis were quite happy too. My red spot pleco just looked at me and sighed before nibbling on a pleco chip! :roll:

Fortunately (if thats the right word) I had just swapped the tanks so had put my oscar and firemouth into the other tank or I would have lost them instead. But you can't really compare...

All in all a helluva stressful afternoon, but everyone's stable again. I'm glad we came home when we did...

Wat no thermometer!!!!

No real need for it to be in there, really. Its been stable at 25/26 for about 2 years! Well, until last night... :roll:

Sorry to have to say this but so you know for the future,the high temp probably wasn't what killed the fish, most can handle temps well into the 30 for short periods. it is the fast change in temp that does them in. What you should have done is just remove the faulty heater and let the temp drop slowly so the fish could adjust with it.

I agree with suphew. They can cope with slow changes, it is the fast ones that do them in

I've had my tank of gouramis and my tank of bristlenoses regularly drop to 20 degrees and go over 30 degrees during water changes and, despite my best efforts, it's never killed any that I noticed.