Heater Broken?

[jiffy]

Im not quite sure how this is happening but recently all of my girlfriends rasboras died. First one, then a week later another one, and then the next day the last 5 died. Other fish in the tank appear to be fine.

Anyways, when the 5 of them died, I noticed the water temp had gotten up to 85F. I turned the heater down a bit. Then today, about a week later, my girlfriend said her fish are all hiding and they didn't come out when she fed them.

I look in the tank, see them hiding, check the temp, and it is 90F!!!

I did a massive waterchange to bring the temp back down, the fish seem ok, but one ram is still staying hidden.

So I don't know if the heater is broken, or if someone at her house is touching the heater and raising it or what. Its a PenPlax that came with the tank (kit). It is only a couple months old however I noticed that when it is on sometimes, the coils at the bottom brighten up a fair amount, something I've never seen before.

Her room is usually kinda cold, so I think the heater may have been working to hard to keep the temp at 80, and thats why it would get orange-ish.

I'm going to call the store I got the tank at tomrrow and see what they say about the heater, but I was looking for some opinions from here.


FYI it is a 10 gallon tank witha 50w heater. I am thinking about upgrading it to a 75 or 100w submersible though (ebo jager probably)

 

[Orion]

If it's not keeping a consistant temp then yes, you need to get a new one.

How cold is a cold room? If you go buy the normal recomendations for heaters, most will only raise the water temp 10 degrees at most from ambient room temperature. So if your tring to keep the temp at 80, and say the air temp is 65, then your working that heater pretty hard. So by that, then upgrading to a larger heater would be a good idea. But I wouldn't go over 100W for one.

The best thing to do in a situation where it water is too warm would be to unplug the heater. This will allow the water to cool off gradualy. The temp was raised a little bit at a time, so there wasn't a great deal of stress on the fish from the change in temp, however when you did the water change that made a dramatic change in the temp of the water. Something that should be avoided. But now you know, and hopefully none of the fish are worse for it.

 

[jiffy]

Thanks for the tip on lowering the temp slower instead of faster. The fish are A-OK though, but I'll remember that for the next time.

I took the heater back to the store and switched it for a 100w. In the winter the room is pretty cool, generally 55-60ish.

Although summer time is almost here, do you think a 100w heater in a 10g tank would be able to keep the water at say 75F in a 55F room?

 

[Orion]

Gezz where does she live inside a fridge? lol

If it's really that cold, then you'll want to do some research on the different heaters and see what would be best. But you can try a 100w and see if that's going to do the trick. I would be wary of going for too high of a wattage because you always run the risk of having the heater get stuck in the 'on' position (like you've already figured out) and fry the fish. Most heaters aren't designed for round the clock use, so you may run into problems there with the heater's life running much shorter than what it normaly would be. If she continues to have problems with the heater, I would think about moving the tank out of the fridge.