Sad discovery

[Naz_Nomad]

Today I lost two bronze cories and some albino gardneri killie babies due to a faulty heater.

Upsetting though it is, I decided to post to warn folk of the problem heater. I hate losing fish.

I have a small two foot tank in the spare room, to house my few killies until I move house and can set up the breeding tanks. In it initially were three American-Flag Fish, four bronze cories and a handful of albino Gardneri babies I got from Tim. It has a simple, cheap but adequate chinese filter and a 50W Jebo heater.

I dropped into the room this morning to feed the guys before going to work and there was steam coming off the water - temperature 34 degrees in a cool room! The heater was going full blast and burnt my hand when I removed it. Seems that the thermostat died in the night and the heater just kept on going and going. It was set to 22 degrees and had been fine for the last couple of weeks.

The survivors of this little disaster are two cories who don't look happy and the three American-Flags who don't seem to care what happens in their tank.

I did a reasonably large water change and left the tank to cool a bit more before adding another heater, which seems to be working fine. I have thrown out the Jebo.

I am very very sad at the loss of the killie babies - they were going to be my initial breeding project along with the American-Flag Fish and some swordtails and Kribs I have in my community tank. They were babies. It just makes it worse in my eyes.

[David R]

Sorry to hear that.

Quite timely, I just got home to find my 4' tank at 30C because I forgot to unplug the faulty heater (no thermostat) I use to help warm the water up faster after a big water change!

:oops:

[dwalk]

I'm sorry to hear that too, I narrowly avoided this problem last Sat. Dead aqua one heater, locked on Aaahhhh!

[matthewY]

I use external digital meter for measuring temp. The one it has is settings to enable an alarm for tropical and discus setups. Was $30 from dicksmiths years ago but I dont think they stock it anymore, though sure you can get it from elsewhere or something similar.

really great for when you are sleeping, not so great when you are out of home but another thing that makes me sleep a bit better at night.

All the best for the survivors

[Leviathan]

Yes i have the Aquaminder - you can get them from HFF and on trademe...

Pretty much a little consol on the side of the tank, with a wire which goes in and suction cups to the glass.

You can program a max and min temp, and if the water reaches either of these an alarm sounds!

You can also program weelky water change reminders, filter mainteneance reminders, and system check reminders.

Pretty handy! I paid about $25 for mine.

Altho if you have MTS then it could be very expensive..

[Whiskas]

It is very sad when a heater dies without you realising/while you are asleep or away. I had the opposite happen the other day - my tank went down to 12 degrees. As it is a tank with livebearers and a couple of sparklng loach (i think) they seemed not to mind and i only lost a couple of babies (would have no idea how many though).

[Afrikan]

Sorry to hear about your loss..

[Keri Anne]

I'm sorry to hear that too, I narrowly avoided this problem last Sat. Dead aqua one heater, locked on Aaahhhh!

That happened to me last Tuesday, luckily I was doing water changes and noticed the problem as it was my day off.

[tonka]

Sorry to hear about your loss. But thats unfortunatly what you get with $20 sh*t heaters. Buy a JAGER heater , they are more expensive than the cheap china ones , but pay for themselves cause they wont crap out in any great hurry, so you wont have fish losses.

And they heat larger volumes of water, and you can re-calabrate them.

This will no doubt annoy some of you 'hard core' hobbyists who insist on doing everything on the super cheap and who never seem to support the LFS , and will be the first to b*tch and moan when more close down due to ever increasing overheads , and lack of customers supporting them.

Happy Fishing all. 8)