Folks, if your not into reading sad stories, then I suggest you stop at this period.


So, I came home from a long day of work, where I was all by myself because my coworker called in sick. I knew on the 45 minute drive home from work that, there was one thing next to my Wife and 3 year old son that would make me happy. It was my fish. The joy of them knowing it's time to eat when they see me, and the beauty of their color. Staring at my fish tank is the one thing that eases my mood and sets my brain off far far away.
Knowing that it has been 90+ degrees here in MO the past couple of days, I set my heater on my tank down to 60, because I hadn't turned the AC on in my house yet. Little did I know that this would be a costly mistake messing with the heater. I was about to walk into disaster.
So I walked in my door, walked right passed my fish tank and went upstairs to greet my wife and son, and tell them goodnight. (I don't normally get home from work till about 11:00pm) Tucked em in gave em kisses and walked back into the living room to greet my fish... They were ALL DEAD. ALL OF THEM. ALL MY FRONTOSAS. ALL MY DATNOIDS. MY REDTAIL CATFISH, MY CLOWN KNIFE, MY JACK DEMPSEY, MY ALLIGATOR GAR, MY JEWEL, MY FLAGTAIL. ALL OF THEM. Over $500 worth of fish... gone... I thought to myself how the F**K could this possibly happen!!!! I immediately looked at my thermometer and stuck my hand in my water. It was 94 DEGREES!!! I then looked over at my Heater. It had malfunctioned from this morning when I was messing with it and the temp on it was maxed OUT! With the temp on the heater sky rocketing and the warm temp of my house it had made the water temperature that high. Sucked all the oxygen clean out of my tank with temps that high. I the knew all my fish had reached a miserable demise of... suffocation.
I hope you all will read my story and share a tear with me, as I spared many of them. Let this also be a lesson learned of just take your heater out of your water as the warm temperatures start coming in, so that you may not have to tell your own horror story of death, demise, and heartbreak...

Yours Truly,
Clint

Oh man, that is one very sad story and I'm sorry to hear it. But at the same time thanks for sharing it. I live in TX and it's getting warm here and you make a good point. Thank you.

first off sorry for your loss.
turning the heater down to 60 degrees won't do anything to keep the tank temp down, I don't understand that method of maddness, however I do understand malfunction. what brand heater was it? I keep mine heaters set to 77 year round and use clip on fans to direct the heat from my MH away from the tanks surface as soon as the outside temp reaches 75 which really helps.

Sorry to hear that you have suffered such a loss. I also never adjust my heater once I have it set where I like it. If the house temperature keeps the water warm enough then it just won't run. No need to turn it down.

ouch, I was going to wait a little while to take my morning meds, but I think i will be taking them right now.

Sorry to hear about your loss. Heaters are always a problem for people. Once it starts warming up outside I just turn off my heaters to avoid any problems. The tanks stay a little warmer then the house at 73 degrees.

I keep thinking about making a temp. shutoff system. Pretty much something that would have a max temp set and if the temp reached that it would kill the power to the heater. A sort of fail safe system you would plug your heater into and it would have one of thos digital temp readers coming off of it.

knock on wood I have never had problems with my heaters.
I live by the motto "Buy cheap... buy twice."

ouch. Sorry to hear my friend.
I have 31 tanks. And that is the reason none of them have a heater/.

Easier to have a setup with no heaters when you live in the south. Where I live we still are running our furnace at night.

I guess if you really wanted to not have the heater run in the summer time on the off chance that it would...you could just unplug it instead of changing the setting. You would be doubly sure it wouldn't run that way.

very true but thats a double edge sword:) keeping what I keep if I lived down south I would need a chiller on all the tanks. trust me chillers are expensive, I just bought one last weekend for the Seahorse tank..lol I will stick with needing great quality heaters:) I had 2x300 watt heaters on the 180 and still ended up needing another 300 watt to keep my temp more stable this past winter thats 900 watts in my sump keeping this 180 @ a steady 77 degrees and that is important when keeping SPS.

sorry for you loss ...

So sorry to hear this. I think we have all had disasters of some kind happen in some way or other and can feel your pain. I myself did the dumbest thing last summer that killed our three 20" Koi and all the fancy goldfish in our outdoor pond. I won't go into the whole story but we always realise our mistakes after it happens. They can be sad and expensive ways to learn.