I'm going to tell you a story that [actually] happened
about eight months ago and
I'm finally ready to talk about it as you might have guessed from the title or the thumbnail of this video
my Rays are Dead and
today, I want to tell you the story of
What happened? I've decided that to tell this story
I'm just going to start from the night of the incident
April 25th of [last] Year was a Saturday and
As a lot of Saturday's my daughter has sleepovers with her friends
They usually take over the basement when they have their sleepovers the difference though was at one o'clock in the morning
I woke up to [my] daughter screaming that there is a fire
[I] am [a] deep sleeper, but when you hear your daughter screaming for you, you immediately wake up
I had no clue if there was a fire or how bad it was
But as soon as I came down in the basement the smell was overwhelming
[I] ran downstairs and got the kids out [of] the basement and all of my family out the back door I came [back] in and
Realized that the smell was coming from my fishroom. I go into my fishroom and I can see my
300 gallon sump has black smoke coming out of it
I quickly get over to it, and it's bubbling up this black smoke
[I] immediately pull all [of] the power cords from the wall which shuts down all [of] the tanks
I do a quick check around the house to see [if] there was anything else and there [wasn't]
But by this time the ventilation in my house had carried all of that smell from the fire downstairs
Throughout the rest of the house, so I opened all the windows and started airing [out] the house
And then the family came back in and kind of went to fed
They were all a little bit shaken up and worried, but I basically told him it was nothing to worry about
Even though I was about to go through the longest night of my hobby [I] knew something failed in myself
There's only one electrical component in my sump and those are heaters
I start inspecting all of my heaters
And I realized it was one of my Kobalt [neill] therm
200 watt heater out of the five that I had only one was causing the problem
[I] pulled the heaters out and I quickly realized that only one of the [Kobalt] heaters was affected
But it was pretty bad [it] appeared to have exploded
the bottom Had blown off and this black ooze was coming out of it [as]
I set it down on my concrete floors. It was still smoldering
at this point everything had [happened] so quickly and
I hadn't really paid [attention] to the fish the arowana was up by the surface acting kind of weird
But my rays were not moving with the tank [shutoff] and me noticing that it was only the rays that are Dead [I]
Decided that I need to remove whatever toxins are in the tank water, so I started to do a hundred percent water change
At about two o'clock in the morning [the] rays were dead and had to be moved though
But being such a big animal they have to go in the dumpster and up until this point
I guess I would say that I was kind of in shock by it all almost numbed by the
situation and sort of just going through the motions it wasn't until
The moment that my rays were thrown in the dumpster, and I closed the lid [that] it all hit me
everything before and everything after
Did not affect me nearly as much as throwing my ray's in the garbage. I was up till [about] 5 o'clock that morning
Doing [the] water changes monitoring the fish
Making [sure] that everything was you know still [ok], I woke up the next morning, and I was mad
Not only did I just lose my rays
But there was a lot [of] damages to the house. We couldn't get the smell out. [I] have dropped ceilings in my basement and
those all had to be replaced [I] also had to dry clean all [of] the drapes and blinds with in my house that cover the
Windows and
paint all of the Walls again
I did this over the course of a couple weeks while I mourn the loss of the [race] even at that point
I was not ready to tell anybody or even talk about it in fact
I decided I would not talk about it until the time was [right] for me. [I]
Didn't want to relive the [night] the rays died over and over and over again every day
So I basically just played it off like the rays were fine
[I] didn't talk about them
And if somebody asked how they were doing I would say fine and kind of cut it short I decided to contact my insurance
Agency because at this time after [the] dry cleaning the painting and replacing the ceilings
Not to mention the cost of the raise. [I] was out thousands of dollars after
[several] weeks of working with the insurance company. They finally said those heaters are not CSA approved
There's nothing we can do now before we go any further
Aquarium equipment fails all the time there is no company or product out there that that will never fail
Everything is prone to fail eventually
Some things more than often we could do everything we can to prevent it, but at the end of the day
These things happen so originally
I wasn't expecting these to be faulty heaters, or that there was anything wrong with them
But I kind of decided to look into it anyways, and when I simply typed in Cobalt [neill] therm blew up
I got over 50 instances on the first page alone who was at this point. Where I realized
I'm not the only one and this is [a] big problem
And I will admit that I was very angry
all I wanted to do was immediately turn on a camera and
Scream into the camera how horrible these heaters are I'm truly happy I didn't do [that] because I don't think
Cobalt or the neel therm heater deserves it. I think cobalt does a lot of great things for the Hobby and
We need more companies like them, so I certainly hope this video doesn't come across as if I'm out to get them
This is not the case
But I was angry the more and more I looked into it the more and more stories. I heard during my searching though
I did find cobalt involved in discussions about the heaters blowing up and
Acknowledging that there is an issue all of these discussions happen way prior to my heater blowing up
So I immediately thought you knew something was wrong and didn't do anything if you would have said something
perhaps my rays would still be my anger went from anger to rage, but again I
can't just jump on camera and try to
Destroy some company because I'm angry [I] gave myself more time to collect my thoughts and become more level-headed about the event [I] wanted to
wait [until] I was no longer financially motivated as well as
no longer
emotionally motivated when I felt the time was right I contacted Cobalt and
Asked for the truth. What's wrong with these heaters?
Obviously, there's something they told me that the hundred and fifty watt and two hundred watt neel therm heaters were originally launched in the united
States in October 2012
But there had been European versions of these heaters
Already in service for several years prior with no problems about 18 months into launching these heaters they started to get reports on the heaters
Cracking over the next month they heard a few more so obviously they knew there was an issue with the heater and upon investigation
They discovered that it was possible to
Assemble the heater in such a way [that] it allowed the resin inside of it to be unevenly distributed
When this happened the hardened resin could potentially liquefy and crack the casing
Obviously this didn't happen to all of the heaters. It was just a very small amount
But those numbers don't matter when it's you that it happens to Cobalt then stopped producing the heater and spent a year
Redesigning and testing the production process which would eliminate the possibility of the earlier
Production process during that time they also changed the resin that was in the heater previously cobalt also told me that all
Customers were taken care of through their warranty process
including myself
[even] with the flaw [that] the [neo] therm had the cobalt heaters returned rate is still amongst the best in the industry
[if] not the best according to [cobalt] meaning that their failure rate is really low
To sum this up the old design of the heater basically allowed for the odd heater to fail, but that number was really low
Now it's been solved and there's virtually no issues with the new here during my [discussions] with coal
I wanted I told them that all I really wanted was
Information to tell you guys I didn't want to create a frenzy [or] a panic with anybody that has cobalt heaters thinking
They're going to fail. [I] hope that I put you [guys] at ease with this
I don't want to make this sound like this is a recent problem either the cobalt neo therm having that issue
What happened a [couple] of years ago?
I was [just] recently affected about eight months ago really happy that I did learn the facts of this though
because if I didn't I would have let my emotion get the best of me and
Did some irreversible damage? I just wish I could have talked about this sooner
[but] I was absolutely devastated over these rays and really didn't want to talk about it
I know that might sound silly
But I'd be reliving the death of these rays every day if I had told you when it first happened
And it was just too soon for me now. You guys are probably wondering
What happened since then what has life been like after the Rays?
What's my hobby been like would have I done [what] am I going to do? What's coming up next where do we go from here?
[and] I'm going to talk about all of [that], and show you everything that's changed next Sunday
Anyways, I'll see you guys