55 Gallon Fish Stew :(

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GouramiLover

GouramiLover

Aquarium Advice FINatic
Joined
Dec 2, 2013
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I woke up this morning to my 55 gallon tank radiating heat :(

My two Cryptoheros Nanoluteus pairs, my breeding group of blue star endlers, my group of Pygmy corys, my big bronze corys....All gone :(

I was devastated as I cleaned out the tank this morning. The only good thing is the plants seems to be ok. I kept them in the hot water and I am allowing them to cool slowly. I will see if in the next few days they make it.

This has never happened to me before and I do not want it to happen again, so I would like some suggestions for decent heaters and temperature controllers. I want to make sure this does not happen to my very pricey salt tank or to my shrimp and gourami tank. I am willing to spend money for a heater and controller that is highly unlikely to fail.




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Failures happen. Many people stagger two underpowered heaters that's accumulated wattage will sufficiently heat the tank. The theory is that if one sticks in the on position it will not have enough wattage to fry the tank.
 
TMRC Exotics said:
Failures happen. Many people stagger two underpowered heaters that's accumulated wattage will sufficiently heat the tank. The theory is that if one sticks in the on position it will not have enough wattage to fry the tank.
Click to expand...

This exactly.
 
TMRC Exotics said:
Failures happen. Many people stagger two underpowered heaters that's accumulated wattage will sufficiently heat the tank. The theory is that if one sticks in the on position it will not have enough wattage to fry the tank.
Click to expand...


That is exactly what I was doing. Both heaters appear fine so I am unsure which went haywire :/


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So, what do you all think of temperature controls that automatically shut off or turn on a heater? Anyone used them? Thoughts?


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I use a finnex heater controller for my 150. http://premiumaquatics.com/products...ry-chip.html?gclid=CPmtjrjo6sQCFQYHaQodRHwANA this one


I use an extension cord that has two plugs on one end to plug both of my Aqueon ProHeaters to it. Turn my heaters to 80 degrees and my heater controller to 78, it's perfect. Never had issues with it, it has an alarm to tell you if you fall below or rise above a set temperature. I keep a digital thermometer on the opposite side of my tank and the temperatures always match within 1 degree of each other on both the digital thermometer and the heater controller.


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NigelK8485 said:
I use a finnex heater controller for my 150. http://premiumaquatics.com/products...ry-chip.html?gclid=CPmtjrjo6sQCFQYHaQodRHwANA this one


I use an extension cord that has two plugs on one end to plug both of my Aqueon ProHeaters to it. Turn my heaters to 80 degrees and my heater controller to 78, it's perfect. Never had issues with it, it has an alarm to tell you if you fall below or rise above a set temperature. I keep a digital thermometer on the opposite side of my tank and the temperatures always match within 1 degree of each other on both the digital thermometer and the heater controller.


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Click to expand...


Thanks. I will check that one out. I would rather be safe than sorry again.


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I will say that my Cobalt has a very obvious blinking LED that alerts you if the water temp is not what you set it to be. That is a nice feature, but there's no harm in a redundancy system when it comes to mixing electronics and water.


? Diana Lee ?
? the St. Augustine Redhead ?
http://floridaorchidendlers.com
 
DeeLee2013 said:
I will say that my Cobalt has a very obvious blinking LED that alerts you if the water temp is not what you set it to be. That is a nice feature, but there's no harm in a redundancy system when it comes to mixing electronics and water.


? Diana Lee ?
? the St. Augustine Redhead ?
http://floridaorchidendlers.com
Click to expand...


Yep. I found that out the hard way. Though I have caught issues with my tanks much faster just by looking at them myself. I wish the heater had started to glitch in the afternoon because I would have noticed the odd behavior in my fishes. The redundancy is really for when I am not able to look at the tank like when I am at work or when I am sleeping. Just some peace of mind :)


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SpaceFish42 said:
Are you going for the same setup, or something different this time?
Click to expand...

I am not sure. I really enjoyed the cryptoheros nanoluteus and blue star endlers together. I would love to do that again but the blue star endlers were hard to come by, so I am not sure if I will find then again. I do like the contrast of blue and yellow though :)

I don't think I will restocking this tank anytime soon. I will be moving so it makes more sense to wait, but it sure is sad to see the empty tank :(
 
GouramiLover said:
I am not sure. I really enjoyed the cryptoheros nanoluteus and blue star endlers together. I would love to do that again but the blue star endlers were hard to come by, so I am not sure if I will find then again. I do like the contrast of blue and yellow though :)



I don't think I will restocking this tank anytime soon. I will be moving so it makes more sense to wait, but it sure is sad to see the empty tank :(
Click to expand...


I will be using one of those temperature controls in any case. I would rather be safe than sorry.


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I almost had the same thing happen in my newly-setup 10 gallon puffer tank! I traded some fish I bred for a heater and put it in on Friday. Put 12 of my glowlight tetras in to make sure everything was cycled (the filter was transfered directly from a working 20 gallon so it should have been). Well, this morning all of the fish were huddled in the far bottom corner so I went to check on things; the temperature was 95 degrees!

Thankfully, two things went my way: The glowlight tetras are tough as nails and I didn't lose a single one (in fact now that the temperature is back down in the 80s they're acting quite normal). The other thing is, that after inspecting the heater, I realized it was never broken. I'm just an idiot and misread the temperature the heater was set to. There are two little "knobs" that both look like they could indicate the temperature setting, and I now realize that I was looking at what was clearly the wrong knob. So now the temperature is ACTUALLY set to 78, instead of 93 (what the hell kind of fish tank needs to be 93 degrees anyway....?)

On the bright side, it was kinda cool that I got to observe a natural behavior that you don't see much in fish tanks- attempting to go into deeper water as a form of behavioral thermoregulation.

Does anyone know how the BB react to warm temperatures? I know they grow faster at higher temps and slower at low temps, but now I'm worried I hit the upper limit and killed them all.
 
sinibotia said:
I almost had the same thing happen in my newly-setup 10 gallon puffer tank! I traded some fish I bred for a heater and put it in on Friday. Put 12 of my glowlight tetras in to make sure everything was cycled (the filter was transfered directly from a working 20 gallon so it should have been). Well, this morning all of the fish were huddled in the far bottom corner so I went to check on things; the temperature was 95 degrees!

Thankfully, two things went my way: The glowlight tetras are tough as nails and I didn't lose a single one (in fact now that the temperature is back down in the 80s they're acting quite normal). The other thing is, that after inspecting the heater, I realized it was never broken. I'm just an idiot and misread the temperature the heater was set to. There are two little "knobs" that both look like they could indicate the temperature setting, and I now realize that I was looking at what was clearly the wrong knob. So now the temperature is ACTUALLY set to 78, instead of 93 (what the hell kind of fish tank needs to be 93 degrees anyway....?)

On the bright side, it was kinda cool that I got to observe a natural behavior that you don't see much in fish tanks- attempting to go into deeper water as a form of behavioral thermoregulation.

Does anyone know how the BB react to warm temperatures? I know they grow faster at higher temps and slower at low temps, but now I'm worried I hit the upper limit and killed them all.
Click to expand...


I am glad you were able to catch it! Mine had been setup in the same spot for almost a year with no issues. My plants and the Malaysian trumpet snails made it through just fine, but the fish couldn't take the heat :(

The only way to know if you killed the BB is to monitor for a ammonia spike. Or al least that's what I would do.


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