Behind the 8 ball

underwaterdan · Mar 1, 2016

Well I woke up early this am to a burning smell in the house. Quickly realized it was coming from the tank and turned everything off. After a few hours of turning things on one by one I realized it was my cobalt heater, it was cracked and bubbles with burning plastic coming out of it. Now the house smells, I have windows open and that's cooling the tank down, I added two more 300 watt heaters, so I have 900 watts total running in there now. Few questions. Will the water hold the smell? Will this hurt any fish or corals? Anything I Droid be doing?

melypr1985 · Mar 1, 2016

You can run carbon. it should soak up anything in the water that might want to linger- smells included. Sounds like you found it pretty quick which was a good and lucky thing

underwaterdan · Mar 1, 2016

I am changing my carbon as we speak. Any thoughts if I can add more than usual and if I do will it help the smell go away quicker?

melypr1985 · Mar 1, 2016

Probably wont make that much of a difference. You can get some candles or baking soda for the house around the area (you know... those fridge packs) . The baking soda should act like the carbon except for the air around you. That's probably the most of what your smelling is in the air.

underwaterdan · Mar 1, 2016

Anyone else had a failure like this. I am debating on simply replacing the heater with the same one or changing it.

Diesel · Mar 1, 2016

Bad heater.
I have for years the Eheim Jager heaters never had anything else and I'm talking 30+.
Replace the heaters every two years as I don't want to take any risk as there is too much at stake with my tank.
Here I South TX the heaters won't come on as much up north where you are.

hybridazn · Mar 1, 2016

The older cobalt heaters are having this problem. Keep fresh carbon in the tank, do a nice size water change and contact cobalt and explain what happened. If anything they will replace the heater for you.