Broken heater - are my fish condemned?

ADL

ADL

ADL

Associate
Joined
27 Jun 2008
Posts
94
Hi all,

In any other forum, this would be a ridiculous question...it still might be but I need advice.

I've not long bought a fish tank and I've spent a month "cycling" it without fish and doing everything properly. I finally invested in ten fish last night and was made up.

Cut to tonight where I've come to do a water change and STUPIDLY drained the water so the heater has run "dry". Now I've filled the tank back up, the heater's cracked and you can quite clearly see water bubbling away inside it.

My question is, what do I do? If I leave it on, I'm assuming it will probably explode and charge the water thus killing the fish. If I turn it off, I could get one by 9am tomorrow but would the water cool down too much? I've tried pretty much everywhere within a 20 mile radius but unsurprisingly, they're all shut.

For what it's worth, the fish are Tetras.

Please help!

Thanks,

Adam
 
wrap the tank in as many towels as possible to reduce heat loss, and turn on room heater up high and leave it on over night, both of those should reduce the speed at which the water cools down, then early tomorrow pop out and get two heaters for the tank :) (set them both the same, and either put them both in, or keep one as a spare).

[edit]
if you've got a large, all night Tesco or Asda superstore near you they may well sell small tank heaters which would help (I'm sure I've seen them in a large Tesco before).
 
It depends really. If it were me, id take the heater out and get one 1st thing in the morning. But i would leave the heating and tank lights on in the room overnight to help with the temperature.

You could also join a fishkeeping forum and appeal to people in your area with a spare heater to buy/borrow.

Edit - Wow i took a long time to write 3 lines....
 
Thank you both very much for your suggestions. I'll nip to Tesco now and pray that they have something I can use. (I'll also make some urgent pleas to fishkeepers in my area!)

Thanks again,

Adam
 
Fill a plastic bottle with hot water and put it in the tank.

Might have to fill it a few times but it will stop the drop in temp.


Hope it helps


PS I have had this happen a few times and only noticed when going to do a
water change that the water was cold - fish were fine.
 
Hi everyone,

Well, just a quick post to say thanks for all your helpful advice which I took note of! Ended up buying a massive quilt from Asda and wrapping the tank. Miraculously, the temperature stayed exactly the same overnight!

Anyway, I bought two heaters this morning and everything seems ok. Quick (potentially stupid) question though...given the last heater exploded, do I have to worry about mercury in the water? Would a thermostat in a heater even still use mercury? The fish haven't grown legs or anything so I'm assuming I'm ok!

Once again, thank you very much for all your help.

Thanks,

Adam
 
Heater thermostats don't contain mercury. There's a thing called a bimetallic strip inside the vast majority of them. This is basically a thin sliver of metal with steel on one side and copper on the other. As it warms up it bends which opens the contact and turns the heater off. When it cools down, the metal straightens and a magnet pulls it back into contact with the electrical connection, turning it back on and warming up the water.

If you unplug it and remove any broken bits and replace it as quickly as you can the fish should be fine. As someone has already said, floating some bottles of warm water in the tank will help keep it warm until you get a replacement heater. Personally, I'd recommend going for something like a Rena SmartHeater. They're shatterproof and have a special cut-off switch in them, so if you do inadvertently expose the heater to air it will just turn itself off.
 
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