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hello, my two angel fish have died within a day of each other
what i think happened was maybe they had an electric shock ( jamie had 2 while trying to remove the broken heater) i tested the water and everything was fine and the temp didnt drop to much at all because we seen naughty ac break the heater and replaced it within an hour i also done a 50% watwer change after testing just in case
could the heater have killed them ??? and if so why did the neons and plecos live ?? and is there anyway to protect the glass covered heater from naughty plecos and their flicking tails ???
please help me as im unsure what to do next shall i do more large water changes or will this do more harm than good ???
cheers joey x

Hi Joey,

Sorry to hear about you heater.

Firstly I am unsure what killed your two angel fish. I don't think it would have been a shock as the fish would have needed to be grounded. The water and tank do not conduct electricity so to get a shock the fish would have to be touching something like the gravel.

There should (I wait to be corrected) be nothing in the heater components that would kill the fish, a heater is just plastic, glass and metal.

As your other fish are o.k, I don't think it is the water.

In order to protect your new heater, you can buy heater guards or you can use a piece of PVC piping.

If using a piece of PVC piping make sure you do not just create a new hiding piece for your pl*cos.

I would personally not do another water change as you would be replacing too much of the mature water.

Regards,

Iain

Electrics in the tank is not good, and different fish may well react differently to this. I can't say what killed your Angels, but broken heater CAN kill fish.

A heater-guard (a plastic mesh-tube that goes on the outside of the heater) will possibly help. Alternatively, a heater that is made from plastic rather than glass would also work. Or a filter/heater combination, either internal like in the Juwel tanks or external like some of the Eheim products.

If you want to protect yourself and the fish from being electrocuted, I'd suggest putting a RCD (Ground-fault-breaker) on the mains-supply to the tank. It will break the power to whatever it's connected to as soon as there's any hint of trouble - electrically speaking - and is a good insurance policy in case things break.



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Mats

catfishCain wrote:Firstly I am unsure what killed your two angel fish. I don't think it would have been a shock as the fish would have needed to be grounded. The water and tank do not conduct electricity so to get a shock the fish would have to be touching something like the gravel.

Ehm, how would the gravel be any different than anything else in the tank. Pure water is indeed a very poor conductor. However, pure water isn't usually what you find in a fish-tank, it contains all sorts of dissolved matter, and for electrical purposes dissolved salts of various kinds. The measure of conductivity is what shows how much (or litte) of these salts are dissolved. The levels of conductivity in freshwater is indeed fairly low, particularyly when compared to for instance marine water.

The gravel is almost certainly a good electrical insulator, but even if it wasn't, it's still not in contact with GROUND - there's glass in between the gravel and anything that would be ground - and most fish-tanks stand on some sort of wood-frame, which is also not a good conductor.

However, further down the line of the electrical supply-chain, we do have a ground, that is connected in contact with the water - the electrical supply has two lines : live and neutral. Neutral is essentially ground, just that it's not connected to ground locally, it's connected to ground at the electrical supply-station, same place where the live is connected. Both live and neutral go into the heater, otherwise there wouldn't be a complete circuit through the heater element (one side of the heater element is NEUTRAL, the ohter side LIVE, and the current used throuogh the wire of the element would be what's causing the heat generated).

Finally, I do agree that it's not determined that the electrics killed the fish - it's quite likely we'll never find out.

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Mats

thank you both for your advice and help, hopefully it was just one of them things that happened n all my other fish wil be fine

I had a heater catastophy some years ago that wiped out a large tank with a huge Panaque lineatus. It burst, killing nearly $600.00 US in fish instantly, as the tank was on an iron stand. Thus, it is quite possible the poster's angles were killed by the heater malfunction.

Since then, I use titanium heaters in all my tanks, primarily in the sump, and all my fish room outlets are GFI circuits.

Dave

djw66 wrote:[snip]as the tank was on an iron stand. Thus, it is quite possible the poster's angles were killed by the heater malfunction.

Since then, I use titanium heaters in all my tanks, primarily in the sump, and all my fish room outlets are GFI circuits.

Dave

Dave,

I'm pretty sure the iron stand has nothing to do with this - if the iron isn't in contact with either the heater or the water, it wouldn't make any difference - glass is a VERY good insulator and there's absolutely no way that the iron would affect the conductivity of the water if it's not in contact with the water (in which case, I suspect you'd get rust-problems pretty rapidly, unless it's actually stainless steeel).

Also, for an iron stand to actually make any difference in where the current goes, it would have to be connected to ground (or Neatrul!) in some way. This can either be by directly connecting it to ground, or through conductivity through whatever it stands on. However, wooden, plastic (pvc, etc), Linoleum, ceramic, concrete, plaster or carpet types of floor materials are definitely poor conductors, so unless your flooring is metal (or contain conductors in the form of "antistatic" material), the stand itself would not be grouneded anyways [oh, it could of course be leaning onto the radiator and be grounded in that way].

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Mats