Broken Heater-pls.help!

[zippys]

hi,
i just found out my water heater is broken. i have a 50 gallon fish tank and i have a small catfish, and a suckerfish. i bought a thermometer and it's reading 87 degrees! i've been informed to lower the heater, i've notice some corotion (sorry about the spelling) on the heater, what ever temperature i put it on, the light goes on. so..if the mercury slowly leaks out of the heater, can it actually kill the fish? what do i need to do??? i know i have to buy a new heater, should i do a 50% water change?

 

[GoldLenny]

Mercury is not in heaters. It is in some thermometers... but most aquarium thermometers use the red-dyed alcohol as the indicator liquid. But a failing heater can cause stray electricity to get into your water which can cause the fish lateral line problems, stress and health issues.

Your fish get acclimated to the higher temp as it went up slowly... so you need to lower the temp back down to normal on a slow basis. Do not do a big water change that might change the temp too much, too fast.

Since the heater seems to be stuck in the on position, it will keep getting higher and higher depending on the capacity of the heater.

What is the room temperature of the room where the tank is at? If it is around 78F, you could unplug the heater and give it about 15 minutes to cool off and then remove it. Your tank will cool off to room temperature at around 1F per hour which is a lot but hopefully won't cause any drastic problems.

When you go shopping for a new heater, get two smaller heaters rather than one big one. This way, if either heater ever fails in the on or off position, it won't be able to over heat the tank and it won't cool down too much because the 2nd heater would keep things heated. If you see one heater in the on position all of the time, you would know to test the other heater to make sure it did not fail.

 

[drtim]

hi,
i just found out my water heater is broken. i have a 50 gallon fish tank and i have a small catfish, and a suckerfish. i bought a thermometer and it's reading 87 degrees! i've been informed to lower the heater, i've notice some corotion (sorry about the spelling) on the heater, what ever temperature i put it on, the light goes on. so..if the mercury slowly leaks out of the heater, can it actually kill the fish? what do i need to do??? i know i have to buy a new heater, should i do a 50% water change?

Make sure you switch the heater off and unplug it before removing, if it has cracked, water and electricity dont make a good combination