When tanks fail, what happens to the heater?
- Thread starter Nereus7
- Start date
The heaters usually burn out and crack, but I've always caught them before anything really damaging happened, other than cooked fish. It's a pretty obvious electrical smell when they start to burn out, can't help but know something is wrong when you walk in the room.
Hello; I guess the fail you picture is a tank that leaks dry. The heater may come on if the air temp is low enough but I cannot think of any ordinary thing that a heater might contact to cause a fire right off hand. In my two major tank fails so far, the issues have been water damage and loss of fish.
One fail that happened during the summer and I do not recall what happened to the heater. The heater may not have been affected due to warm air temps, but was not a fire hazard. I came home from a weekend trip to find a nearly empty tank. The heater was the type that hangs on the side of a tank.
The other fail was caught at the point of having leaked about 1/3 of the water. I was able to move the fish and shut things down before it went dry.
My first thinking is that tanks are likely to be one of the least prone to be a fire hazard. I do not worry about that myself.
One fail that happened during the summer and I do not recall what happened to the heater. The heater may not have been affected due to warm air temps, but was not a fire hazard. I came home from a weekend trip to find a nearly empty tank. The heater was the type that hangs on the side of a tank.
The other fail was caught at the point of having leaked about 1/3 of the water. I was able to move the fish and shut things down before it went dry.
My first thinking is that tanks are likely to be one of the least prone to be a fire hazard. I do not worry about that myself.
They are supposed to turn off if exposed to air. If it doesnt, replace it with a not so cheap one. If you are refering to say, titanium heaters of higher wattage, these wont do much but the plastic they touch(like the sides of an acrylic tank), including the wire thats attached to them will melt, as will the plastic bracket attaching it.