My Heater Exploded This Morning!

[alohami]

Well, about 12:30 a.m. I was lying in bed and all of a sudden the power went out and about two seconds later I heard a loud pop. So I woke up my husband and we both ran downstairs and smelled something burning.
It took a minute to realize that the smell was coming from my tank and when we shined the flashlight in you could see that my heater was in two pieces! It's not even a glass heater, it's a Visi-Therm Stealth, but somehow the plastic housing separated from the cap and exposed the "guts".
I am in the process of upgrading to a larger tank, so luckily I did not have hardly anything in this one, but the few corals I have look terrible. My peppermint shrimp is no where to be found, and I can't imagine that he survived. Even my aiptasia is all shriveled up!
So, if there is one positive to the situation...maybe they got zapped enough to kill them!

 

[andy51632]

Scary, I use stealth heaters.

 

[azfishgal]

OK, that's not very encouraging as I have two of those heaters in my 125 gallon tank :scared: . Anyone else have this problem with this heater? Do you know why your power went out? Do you have a surge protector?

 

[xnikki118x]

Holy cow, I hope everything is okay!

 

[xdave]

Is your heater in a spot where the hot part gets exposed if the electricity goes off?

 

[sepulatian]

Originally Posted by xDave
Is your heater in a spot where the hot part gets exposed if the electricity goes off?
I am wondering that as well dave.

 

[badoleross]

Hmmm, I have 3 Stealth Heaters in my 220. Make sure you have GFCI outets and grounding probes on your tank.

 

[fbm]

I had a glass visi therm do this but I think it was caused by vibration. I use the visi therm stealths as well now, never heard of this happening with them. I hope this isn't normal.

 

[alohami]

Okay. To clarify a little bit, the power went out immediately before I heard the "POP", so I think something went haywire in the heater and tripped the breaker right before it broke apart. I know I should have a GFCI, but it is in a temporary location because I moved it out of the way for a bigger tank. It was plugged into a surge protector which also tripped.
The heater was completely submerged in the water. It's just like the long tube portion that covers the elements inside the heater separated from the top. Looking back, I noticed earlier in the day that my tank was a couple of degrees cooler than usual, but I didn't think much of it at the time. I'm sure it was a freak thing, but I did want to post it so anyone else who had one could keep an eye out.
Unfortunately, I think it fried everything in my tank. Thank goodness I didn't have much in there right now. The biggest loss was a really cool Pagoda Cup, so I'm sad about that, but on the positive side the aiptasia seem to have gotten fried too!
I need to buy a heater for my new tank, and I think I'm going to go with a titanium unless anyone has a better suggestion. I'm just spooked about heaters in general after this!

 

[zman1]

Sorry to hear that. Stay away from the WON ProII heaters as well, The ones I have went bad, not in the fasion yours did.
Did it look anything like this
http://205.243.100.155/frames/mpg/XfrmBlast1.mpg

 

[alohami]

LOL. I didn't actually see it happen, but I don't think it was quite that bad.
So, does anyone have heaters they can recommend?