Added Kalkwasser to my ATO and this morning it smells burnt

[BAYMAC]

I don't think it's the reason your heater failed. However, having such a large heater in a small tank is less than ideal and kind of a waste of money. The larger heaters have much larger heat sinks, so even when they turn off, they will continue to heat the water.



I checked Reef Central. It looks like a handful of people with the problem and a cobalt rep even came on and said that they have sold 13,000 heaters and only 3 confirmed failures at the time. The problem heaters seem to be with a specific run of heaters and a manufacturing flaw. It might be that people are just chucking the heaters, but I just don't think this is a widespread problem since these heaters continue to have 4.5-5 star reviews on BRS and MD. Even on the RC thread, everyone that was having problems is giving the company props for their service and handling of the issue.

The guy that posted that he lost 3K of fish has 1 single post on reef central (the one bashing the heater). One other guy claiming problems had 12 posts, most in that thread. Another guy claiming to have problems only had 18 posts. RC is full of trolls, you can't trust everyone that posts there.

Heaters suck. Heat, water and electricity are a bad combination over time regardless of how well the heater designed and manufactured. When I first set up my tank my Eheim heater failed after about 3 months. The replacement Eheim heater (purchased from a different LFS) exploded about two minutes after putting it in the tank. Other people have phenomenal experiences with Eheim, but googling "eheim heater failure" would make you think that the company is purposefully trying to electrocute every aquarist on earth by selling the crappiest heaters known to man...

My suggestion is for the OP to call Cobalt and ask for a replacement. From what I've read, they are going to take care of you. They'd probably give you a more reasonably sized heater as a replacement if you ask...

Eheim was a much better made heater prior to Eheim/CP&G buying them up. But they still are basically the benchmark. There are better heaters, and far more bad heaters on the market.

 

[Prisonfood53]

Finally got a reply from Cobalt and they already shipped 2x 100W to me on the 25th and should be here tomorrow.

The smell is gone from the tank, been running fine carbon and carbon floss and it seems to have taken care of anything the busted heater put into the tank.

Birdsnest is still not doing too well. I lowered it in the tank so it wasn't so close to the light. The polyps were sloughing off but that seems to have stopped but there is no polyp extension at all where before the polyps would be extended pretty far. Hopefully it will recover if not I have asked Cobalt if they would replace it but we'll see how that goes.