TANK CRASH: MH Exploded?!

[GMGQ]

No shield separating the bulbs with the tank Single ended moguls. In 6 yrs I've never had a MH bulb blow. My bulbs have had salt creep and splashes on them. I'd just wipe them down once in a while at night with a wet paper towel.

Is the mercury rolling around in the 'big' glass part, or in the little glass bulb thing in the middle of the MH bulb? I have to check if that little one burst...

A few SPS were totally bleached white. But a bunch were white, but the polyps appear to still be there and just retracted... I took out a few, ran them under a splash of tap water, and put them in the frag tank for now.

Yeah I was just in a meeting at work, and all I could think about was the tank :S I'm definitely thinking about getting double ended pendants now, so that there is the glass shield. Sunlight Supply Lumenmax 3 for $130/each, then maybe some phoenix 250W DE bulbs at $66/ea at JL... But sorta hard to think of dropping money on an 'upgrade' right now...

Damnit, tank was starting to look pretty good again too, everything colouring up. Thanks Kevin, I'll hit you up later when this crash blows over...

[lastlight]

You can shield your SE bulbs if your reflector allows for it. I should as well but didn't want to lose PAR or buy the shields. Good luck and sorry to hear.

[Bblinks]

Sorry to hear that Gary, I have a big batch of salt water in the garage mixing if you need, just come by and grab it. Let me know.

[daniella3d]

Another reason why I don't want SE bulb. I prefer to have DE and have a glass in front of it so if something like that ever happen, it will not fall into the aquarium.

I am always afrais that a splash of water on a hot bulb will make it explode.

But maracin is antibiotics and you should never ever put that in your main tank. If you want to treat for cyano in your main tank use Chemiclean instead as it is an oxydant rather than antibiotics.

Originally Posted by GMGQ

This morning as I was just about to leave for work, i glanced at my tank and it was cloudy. I went over and all the SPS are bleached :S Urchin was DOA in the corner, LPS and zoos all closed up and/or spewing :S

Then I looked up and saw one of my Radium 250W SE MH bulbs was broken! The end of it was missing. It must have happened sometime last night between 6-10pm, because I came home after work and it was fine. I couldnt find the glass in the tank, but I was too busy doing damage control to really look.

I immediately started doing a water change, but I only had 10gal of change water on hand, better than nothing. The skimmer is going crazy, but I've extended the drain tubing into a bucket and letting the foam drip into there while i'm at work. I also changed out the carbon reactor with a fresh cartridge of ROX1.3.

The change water tank is refilling with RO water right now, I'll probably boot home to check on everything at lunch. I'm going to have to make more RO water tonight and do another big water change as soon as I can.

Another reason could be that I dosed 1 packet of maracyn yesterday morning to battle some cyano. I've used it before and had no issues though. I put in 1 packet, and my system is about 80gallons. When I looked at the tank after work yesterday, most of the cyano had turned stringy and was floating away. None of the corals looked affected. So I'm still thinking it's the MH.

Any tips or explanations what the exploded MH did?? The metal bits inside still seem to be in tact.

Thanks everyone.

[Reefer Rob]

How are you making out with this? Any improvement yet?

[ScubaSteve]

Dude, how's the tank going? Let me know if you're needing some frags and I'll see what I've got for ya.

[GMGQ]

Hey guys,

So the tank seems to have stabilized.

- most LPS are fine
- most of the chalice frags were down to their skeletons, but some flesh is growing back
- amazingly most SPS are growing back! Albeit it's only a little bit of flesh regrowing at the base, there are still a few that look pretty dead...
- lost my square back anthias

I actually tried to add a couple of peppermint shrimp a week ago, but my mystery wrasse ate one (damnit! Forgot they like shrimp, it left my other cleaners alone, but that was cuz they were there first, but died during the recent crash). The other peppermint wasn't doing well by the next day. I put it in the frag tank, but it died the next day. So that leads me to believe there's still something funky in the tank... I think I'll have to do another bug water change on the weekend...

Kev,
Do you have any Mille frags? My blue mille and pink mille dont show any signs of recovery yet
;(

[ScubaSteve]

I got a mini colony of blue milli from Ken on the weekend that I could probably cut a piece off for ya. I'll take a look to see if I can make a piece of the green milli monster but it's doing some funny things right now and I'm not sure I want to poss it off at the moment. I've got a few branches of a neat purple acro I've been holding aside for you in case you wanted them and I may have a few small pieces of rainbow stylo as well.