Tank heated to 96 degrees........

[Treehrtsme]

This morning I noticed that all the water and a smaller 13.5 I keep at a very notable green tint to it. This essentially happened overnight. I don't keep livestock in the tank, mainly macro algae that I harvest, and a couple of days ago I had pulled the decent size load from one of my reactors into there and two days before I had gotten in some dragon's breath from a member. My initial thought was maybe the dragon's breath was carrying something but the moment I touched the water I knew something was horribly wrong. Somehow the temp probe on my controller had fallen out and the heater I had in the tank, which I wouldn't think would be capable of getting the water that hot had just kept running.

Do excessively high temperatures propagate some sort of bacteria algae or anything that could cause this. I also attached to nano skimmers to it that immediately started going to town so I consider that perhaps the macro algae I had pulled out somehow carried excessive nutrients that the base filtration could not handle or maybe it was a compound of all these things. I've added more mechanical filtration brought the salinity to normal levels but I'm considering dropping it and have added much more mechanical filtration. The algae itself by some miracle seems fine, but I have no idea what's in the tank so instead of doing a massive water change I figured I'd kind of watch and see what happens. There's no livestock in it and I don't think I have a lot to lose with the macro algae. It's still cloudy now but less green.

This skimmer I put in was basically clean and within a couple of minutes was covered in this green stuff. I would imagine that high temperature probably killed off any beneficial bacteria I had but this was literally an overnight thing

 

[Subsea]

Most likely, excessive temperature caused breakdown of chlorophyll in the macro algae.

I would think some activated carbon would also help your mechanical filtration

 

[n2585722]

Use a backup off for your heaters. I have my controller normally controlling it but my heaters also have a thermostat that I set to around 3 degrees above the controller set point. Also my controller has 2 temp probes in the tank and if either one gets out of a safe range I get an alert sent to me.

 

[Treehrtsme]

I'll attach reactor and see what happens. That actually does make sense. I've just never thought my tank and heat to near a hundred degrees, especially off the tiny heater I had in it. I think I'm going to go ahead and replace it

 

[Treehrtsme]

Use a backup off for your heaters. I have my controller normally controlling it but my heaters also have a thermostat that I set to around 3 degrees above the controller set point. Also my controller has 2 temp probes in the tank and if either one gets out of a safe range I get an alert sent to me.

A week ago I actually had three temp probes in this tank, but I sold a fair bit of hydros equipment and most people wanted a temporal with it so I went down to one. I understand that redundancy can be key and preventing things like this from happening. If I just had a fan attached to the other socket of my temp control it may have balanced the whole thing out

 

[Treehrtsme]

A week ago I actually had three temp probes in this tank, but I sold a fair bit of hydros equipment and most people wanted a temporal with it so I went down to one. I understand that redundancy can be key and preventing things like this from happening. If I just had a fan attached to the other socket of my temp control it may have balanced the whole thing out

Also I typically don't rely on heaters that have temp settings built in in the long term. For my experience it's not uncommon for them to just be all or nothing after a while and the internal thermometer just doesn't work

 

[Subsea]

I run all of my tanks without heaters. Depending on equipment in tank, temperatures fluctuate between 72-78.

 

[n2585722]

Also I typically don't rely on heaters that have temp settings built in in the long term. For my experience it's not uncommon for them to just be all or nothing after a while and the internal thermometer just doesn't work

The built in thermostats on the heaters are just for backup and do not normally turn off the heater so they should last a long time. I had two in my tank that has been setup for over 8 years now and just one has failed recently and the element is open so it would not heat. The other is the original heater. Both are nothing fancy since I got them at PetSmart. Just your typical glass heater. Usually the failure is caused by cycling on and off and the contacts oxidize and cause a high resistance and the heater quits or get stuck in the on position. Instead of the heater doing this my controller does the on and off cycling.