Woke up to burning smell…

[VintageReefer]

My wife wakes me up and asks if I smell burning or melting plastic. I do. We start sniffing around and checking things. I find the area with the strongest smell. And my 75g reef is there. I open the cabinets. It smells like burning. I check all the pier bricks and notice it’s coming from my sump.

My heater controller is acting fine and the tank temp is normal and 77. I investigate further. I see abother hearer in the sump, one I completely forgot about. A 50w aqueon that was thrown in one day when a heater died, just to do something to help the tank while waiting for a new heater

After getting the new heater and controller, I left the 50w aqueon as a backup, and to kick in if needed on a cold day

3-4 years later this heater exploded. It’s the source of the smell. There is a hole in it also.

Is there anything I should test for? All corals are looking ok. I was by the tank last at 2:11, no smell, went to bed, and at 3am the house stinks. Heater was identified and removed 3:20 am

 

[Ironwill723]

Run some carbon. Maybe do a water change if you are worried.

 

[VintageReefer]

Good thing heater is only 50w. But my concern is anything potentially leaching out of it. Glad it was caught quick

 

[VintageReefer]

Run some carbon. Maybe do a water change if you are worried.

It’s around 80g water volume and I have 2 bags of Chemipure elite, each bag is for 50g

I have spares also, I can let this run overnight and replace them both tomorrow

 

[VintageReefer]

And the spares are downstream the heater on a media shelf right before my return, so I guess that helps because all water from the heater area would have to pass through my chemipure

 

[Ironwill723]

Looks like it was corroding inside the plastic for a while now. Chemipure has probably already been helping the water conditions before it burst open.

 

[VintageReefer]

Junk. I only use titanium heaters. Several years ago this was put in as a backup to hold me over a day or two, and I decided to leave it in the tank. That was a stupid move on my side.

 

[TheNoLegFisherMan]

My wife wakes me up and asks if I smell burning or melting plastic. I do. We start sniffing around and checking things. I find the area with the strongest smell. And my 75g reef is there. I open the cabinets. It smells like burning. I check all the pier bricks and notice it’s coming from my sump.

My heater controller is acting fine and the tank temp is normal and 77. I investigate further. I see abother hearer in the sump, one I completely forgot about. A 50w aqueon that was thrown in one day when a heater died, just to do something to help the tank while waiting for a new heater

After getting the new heater and controller, I left the 50w aqueon as a backup, and to kick in if needed on a cold day

3-4 years later this heater exploded. It’s the source of the smell. There is a hole in it also.

Is there anything I should test for? All corals are looking ok. I was by the tank last at 2:11, no smell, went to bed, and at 3am the house stinks. Heater was identified and removed 3:20 am

Hey vintage reefer! Sharktooth John here. have you left your heater unplugged for approximately 24 hours to reset the cooldowns of it? usually when these things overheat (and oh boy do they. dealt with many of these puppies in my lifetime) I found it's best to let them rest for 24, even up to 48 hours so the cooldowns reset.
hope this help! ~Sharktooth John

 

[Garf]

Junk. I only use titanium heaters. Several years ago this was put in as a backup to hold me over a day or two, and I decided to leave it in the tank. That was a stupid move on my side.

Can you get your hands on polyfilter? No idea if it actually works as described in the sales blurb, however, may make you feel like you've done something constructive.

 

[VintageReefer]

I have a giant bag of it. I can throw some in

 

[msloan21]

I’d run carbon , water changes and an ICP test

 

[VintageReefer]

Two near disasters in one night. Had to emergency frag my gold wall hammer or I would have lost half of it (I documented in a thread I created tonight if you’re interested in seeing a wall hammer frag method). And then the heater a few hours later

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Smells (organic chemicals) will be best removed by GAC.

Copper could be a concern. A live copper wire that is flowing electricity through seawater is far more of a concern than a simple piece of copper in the tank because electrochemistry can drive the dissolution of copper at the wire/water interface.

 

[kevgib67]

Thank god you were home, in my experience things only go wrong when I’m not home and/or on vacation.

 

[Fish Styx]

Can you get your hands on polyfilter? No idea if it actually works as described in the sales blurb, however, may make you feel like you've done something constructive.

I was about to suggest the same thing for any metals.

 

[Lavey29]

But the old aqueon heaters are "vintage" technology....glad nothing serious developed for you...

 

[skilter]

I had a heater fail and ran one of these right away.

 

[Totroc3]

I had the same thing happen with an Eheim 300 watt. They are very long and I was worried about heavy metals so I put in a large amount of carbon and everything was fine. It’s the smell that gets you worried and panicked.

 

[randomfishdude]

I had something simalar happen a while ago exept a protien skimmer leaked and the water got into the power strip. Causing it to literally blow off the little protector things and start melting the plastic and sparking.

 

[dadnjesse]

I'm surprised the Breaker didn't trip. Do you have a GFCI outlet on the tank. If not maybe you should.