bad heater

[leslie]

I posted a couple days ago on my corals melting. Sunday while I was doing some maintenance I noticed my heater on. I turned it all the way down and watched it and the thing never went off. I unplugged it and pulled it out. Well guess what? No more high temps in tank. By the time I went to bed the temp had dropped to 80. When I got up this morning and checked the temp it was at 78, and this evening when I got home it was still at 78. I never would have thought about my heater being bad. I sure am glad we figured it out.
Has anyone else ever had this happen?

[GaryP]

Unfortunately, its not that uncommon. They have a tendency to fail in the on position.

[Ram_Puppy]

I had a similar situation with a pump going bad a while back and it cost me a beautiful tank full of invertebrates (fish all survived). keep an eye on your tank, change the water. any coral that is looking bad may be dumping toxins back into your water. Watch for algae blooms and generally stay on top of your maintenance like a pro while the system recovers from the stress.

[crob67]

My heater stuck on about a month ago while I was gone hunting; by the time I got home I had lost everything in my tank but one clown and one snail.

[Andrew]

my tank went up to 88 F last year because a brand new heater went nuts.
Luckily i noticed the temp and turned it off. . . and didn't lose anything

It's worth it to have two smaller heaters rather than one large one.
HTH
Andrew

[Ram_Puppy]

right on andrew, redundancy there as well.

Mine I believe got up to 92.

[fishcrazy]

Yes, it happend to me also. I turned the heater down to 72 and noticed the next day the water was at 78 and the heater was still turning on. I think it's just a cheap heater because it doesn't happen on my other tank. I recommend putting it on a timer set for the middle of the night in the winter.