MH bulb burst while on 3 day vacation

[chase33]

I just got back after being away on vacation from Wednesday to Saturday. My wife performed a top-off for me on Friday. She didn't feed the fish but they were fine. They were all okay and at well today when I fed them. The tank was a little dirty though moreso than normal. I don't understand because the only thing I would have done during the three days was clean the glass. The one big problem was a MH bulb which burst. Luckily only a few glass fragments fell into the tank and most of it remained intack. I was able to unscrew the remaining piece and remove. Other than that all else seems to be fine.

 

[dsmlrussell]

thats strange i had the same thing happen to me with a coral vue bulb, it just shattered for no reason at all.

 

[ezy33]

IME if water get on a hot bulb it's going to explode. Also the chemicals in the bulb could be hazardous to fish and family. Maybe you need a shield between the light and the water.

 

[chase33]

If I had to guess it was probably water though no way to tell now. Funny as nothing has changed over the last 5 months.

 

[tecwzrd]

If you don't have a shield between the water and bulb I'd get one ASAP. All it takes is one overactive fish to splash water on the bulb. Plus you should have a UV shield to protect your stock anyways.

 

[ellisz]

UV shields are only needed on double ended bulbs. SE bulbs have it built in the glass. You just have to be careful, IMO. Plus things happen. I never had one bust in the 4 years I have been using them ...

 

[chase33]

Just read another thread where the same thing happened to someone else. They said they read that the bulb can shatter when the power comes back on after an outage. My wife said we did have an outage on Friday so I wonder.