JasonJones Posted March 23, 2012 Share Posted March 23, 2012 Wednesday I suffered one of those unfortunate set backs we have sometimes and learned a good lesson from it. I use my controller to control everything, especially the heater. The controller has an overheat function that will turn off the heater if the tank ever gets above 83, as well as the lights and some pumps. Because I want the controller to control the heater, and not the heaters dial, I turned the dial all the way up. I have run all of my tanks like this for years and never had a problem. However, I now advise to never turn your heater dial above a certain point, I have selected 83. I spilled some water on my controller a week ago and once everything was dried, it has been working fine, but sometimes freezing. It has never been a big deal and I just unplug it and plug it back in. There was an upgrade out for the reef angel that provides all new hardware, so I just ordered that and ran it in the meantime. Well, the other day the controller froze while I was at school. I guess the heater was on when the controller froze, so the heater was left on and the safety cutoff at 83 did not happen because the controller was frozen. I came home to a tank that was 91.6 degrees. All the fish were swimming around. I put ice water in bags and floated them in the tank and brought the temperature back down over the next hour. I lost my prized Hawkins Echinita, a bicolor frogspawn I recently got from Grim that I loved, three acans and a blasto colony. While the losses are devastating, I was lucky I was not gone and that it was not the whole tank. Long story short, never really solely on one piece of equipment and never turn your heater dial up all the way, even when it is controlled by something else. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+Hydro Posted March 24, 2012 Share Posted March 24, 2012 Man I'm sorry Jason, that sucks. I too had something similar happen with my reefkeeper except I didn't pour any water on it. In the middle of the night for some reason it turned on all 2000 watts of MH lighting, didn't turn on the chiller when the tank got warm and didn't turn the lights off when it hit the high heat shutoff. My tank went from 76 to 84 in about 4-5 hours. I lost some sps, some of my favorites. I now have a master controlller that I made from a modified ranco 111-000 temp controller. I have the setpoint at 81 degrees and when it hits this everything but my main pump turns off. I have it setup on a high powered relay because it can only run 15 amps through it. It has a trigger cord that turns on/off the high power relay which turns off my entire breaker panel for the tank (pump is on a separate circuit). I've thought about making these and selling on the club because they can be a tank saver and aren't really available as a stand alone unit. They are a little tricky to build for most people but if a person has less than 15 amps to control its not to bad. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+KimP Posted March 24, 2012 Share Posted March 24, 2012 Oh man, sorry to hear about that. I'm glad you only lost a few things! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Grim Posted March 24, 2012 Share Posted March 24, 2012 Hey I'm sorry to hear that bud... but let me know when your ready And I'll get another piece/frag free of charge just send me a PM Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JasonJones Posted March 24, 2012 Author Share Posted March 24, 2012 Thanks for all the support guys. Grim, I will get in touch with you after I am certain the tank has stabilized. I really appreciate it. It was something I never really thought would happen and wanted to pass along the info to help others avoid. It is so easy to avoid, but similarly easy to overlook. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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