Let's talk about what NOT to do at waterchange

[adiliegro]

Jesus...I was doing a 50% water change just now and had the water level way down...I thought I smelled something burning, but paid no attention to it. Well, I start filling the tank back up and hear this loud "POP" and my heater had busted! Glass everywhere...exposed electrical stuff to the water! I quickly snatched the plug out of the wall and took it out and cleaned the glass out. Now I gotta go get another heater.

What a bummer. I was only changing it cause my nitrites were high.

So, that is a lesson for us all...dont mess with the water while the heater is running.

[bound_for_obx]

I melted a hole in a carpet with a heater once when I was doing a tank tear down. My parents weren't too happy about it.

[Menagerie]

That is a hard lesson to learn. I always unplug my heater and filter during water changes. You were lucky you were not hurt. I was zapped by a broken heater once. The actual shock wasn't so bad, but when I pulled my arm out, I got a nice big scrape on my arm

[grimlock3000]

I just make sure I have the heater low enough in the water so that nothing sticks out when I change up to 40% of the water. I usually only do 20% a week so the heaters coming out of the water never becomes and issue

[QTOFFER]

I'm glad you didn't get burned, cut, or electrocuted!

This is something that I used to really worry about until I did what grimlock3000 does and orient my submersible heater horizontally a few inches above the substrate. I never change more than 50%, so the heater never gets exposed.

Thanks for posting your story. Look at it this way - this is one of those mistakes that you never make again!

[docrak]

That’s kind of why I got a titanium heater and a heater built into my canister filter. I still have one glass filter and nearly forgot to unplug it once. But don’t feel bad; this isn’t the first time this has happened.

Another thing to remember is to turn off your power heads. Two reasons the main one being you don’t want them to run dry because the water helps cool them. The other reason is that without water there to slow the output things can get really wet. I had a power head pointed upwards to create surface agitation and ended up spraying water out side the tank.

Don’t try to answer a cell phone when siphoning water from a tank. A buddy of mine did that with a python. He sucked out all of the water leaving his poor cichlids high and dry. Fortunately they all survived.

A lot of people say don’t vacuum the whole tank so as not to kill all the bacterial. I’ve never found this to be a problem.

Also don’t remove all your decoration because they contain bacteria. Again never found this to be a problem. Probably because I don’t let them dry out.

Don’t take your fish out of the tank leave them in there. Taking them out is much more stressful. Also you may forget about them. I once forgot about some convicts I had removed for cleaning. They survived I that bucket for two days, poor things.

Don’t wash your hands with anti-bacterial soap before cleaning your aquarium. The theory behind this is that if you don’t rinse properly and remove all of the soap it could harm the aquarium.

[cginflorida]

Wow, scary. Glad you're okay, adiliegro. I've never had to use a heater, the room temp water stays at 78-80. But if we get a cold spell in the winter and I have to use heaters, I think I'll post big signs over the tanks to remind me to unplug!

[shawmutt]

I actually have a power strip that everything's plugged into. This way, one switch, everything's off, and everything is protected.

[oscarbreeder]

I had the same thing happen to me when I was a newbie years ago.
I agree with docrak, I now use all titanium heaters.

Glad your ok adilegro.

[William]

I've never had this problem, and sometimes heaters are 2/3s unsubmerged when I do water changes..