Yesterday morning, anemone tank seems to be running normally. Then about 2 PM my wife comes in through the basement past the tank and says, “what’s the burning smell downstairs?” Uh oh…
I hurry downstairs and it smells bad. Check tank lights, heater, pump, powerhead, power strip. It all kinda smells but nothing looks melted or burning. The tank water smells burnt too and anemones are gaping and puking brown stuff. Black junk collecting in the filter floss.
Throw some carbon in and keep just the pump running for life support, but no time to do water change until later. Clownfish is swimming around like nothing is wrong so I feel slightly reassured.
Later at night, kids are in bed, I do a 30% WC and start cleaning and carefully checking all equipment I had pulled. On the very old RIO power head, black gunk and bubbles slowly leaking out into the bucket! Oof, so old and so risky. I gambled and lost.
Put tank back together, throw a big bag of carbon in and hope for the best… this AM the smell is gone and anemones look pretty normal so maybe I dodged a bullet. Ironically I have a new gyre for the main tank arriving today so I was about to swap out that old powerhead. One day too slow!
I hurry downstairs and it smells bad. Check tank lights, heater, pump, powerhead, power strip. It all kinda smells but nothing looks melted or burning. The tank water smells burnt too and anemones are gaping and puking brown stuff. Black junk collecting in the filter floss.
Throw some carbon in and keep just the pump running for life support, but no time to do water change until later. Clownfish is swimming around like nothing is wrong so I feel slightly reassured.
Later at night, kids are in bed, I do a 30% WC and start cleaning and carefully checking all equipment I had pulled. On the very old RIO power head, black gunk and bubbles slowly leaking out into the bucket! Oof, so old and so risky. I gambled and lost.
Put tank back together, throw a big bag of carbon in and hope for the best… this AM the smell is gone and anemones look pretty normal so maybe I dodged a bullet. Ironically I have a new gyre for the main tank arriving today so I was about to swap out that old powerhead. One day too slow!
