Reef Emergency: Air pump fell in tank (Rust)

[Jon Lazar]

I think copper dissolves faster when electricity is flowing, but I don't know why. I say this because the live end of an extension cord once dropped into a bucket of saltwater and stayed there quite a while, unnoticed. Later that day when I finally realized what had happened, the saltwater had turned bright blue. I assume this was from the copper or other metals in the female end of the cord reacting to the presence of electricity and saltwater. The water was steaming hot, too.

 

Jon

[OldReefer]

Actually that is what happend to me. I dropped a fan connector from a 12V power supply in my sump without noticing it. The power supply was plugged in. I checked the tank 10 hours later and it was pretty much destroyed. All the metal was gone from the plug.

[dshnarw]

I think copper dissolves faster when electricity is flowing, but I don't know why. I say this because the live end of an extension cord once dropped into a bucket of saltwater and stayed there quite a while, unnoticed. Later that day when I finally realized what had happened, the saltwater had turned bright blue. I assume this was from the copper or other metals in the female end of the cord reacting to the presence of electricity and saltwater. The water was steaming hot, too.

 

Jon

 

Yup, electrolysis - the energy provided by the electricity allows the reaction to occur much faster than it would sans energy supply. The speed of such a reaction is dependent on the particular current supplied, whether it's AC or DC, etc. Mythbusters watchers should see the "salsa escape" episode

[cabrego]

A little update...

 

Yesterday, I completed a 20 gallon water change directly from the display. I also and took the sump off line and removed about 12 gallons of water and cleaned out the large skimmer section. I removed the skimmer and removed the entire section's water and cleaned out debris. I ran a large canister of carbon in the display, set up an xp1 filled with various pore sizes going down to poly and I also set up an ac50? with the mechanical filter attachment canister and filled it with poly.

 

Today was business as usual for all fish and live stock, the fish, snails, shrimp, appeared to not skip a beat the corals look different in color but they are all alive. Actually, yesterday when I turned out the lights in the afternoon, my perculas decided to get busy and spawn about 3 days earlier than expected.

 

my pod population seemed to take a significant hit. But I do see significant life in the fuge. Overall, I think I dodged a bullet, I'll keep my fingers crossed.