Glass thermometers, DON'T USE THEM!

[etszoo]

Was going to do a water change last night (it's been a while due to no more
cyano..phew!). Anyway, didn't want to pull the electronic therm out of my
display, grabbed my cheapo out of my new quarantine tank. I let it sit in the
freshly made salt water for about a minute, looked in the water and saw stuff
blowing around. Needless to say the bottom of the therm had blown out. I
pulled it out as fast as I could and dumped the 10 gallons out off the deck.
Hopefully the bin is ok to make water again. And now I figure I'll have to dump the qt tank due to the possibility of the therm leaking into it. I know
this has been posted before...just venting I'm a little FRUSTRATED!

 

[stang8s]

shouldnt have been a problem. the small steel weights and alchohol and glass wouldnt have hurt anything.

 

[etszoo]

Still a pain in the butt.

 

[montec24]

HAd one break in my main tank a few weeks ago. Used my magnetic cleaner to pick up the balls, siphoned the glass of the bottom. No other problems.

 

[etszoo]

Rea-he-he-heally. So nothing unsafe for my tank? I could have just strained out the
pieces and been ok? ....I did not know that.

 

[montec24]

I broke one in the sink about a year ago, freaked out thought I was going to die from Mercury poison, turns out no mercury these days, pretty harmless.

 

[etszoo]

Live and learn I guess.

 

[Brian]

I remember one cehm lab back some 10 or so years ago there were two kids at the back of the class breaking the old thermometers, combining the merc into big balls and then racing them across the lab tables by blowing on them and stuff... Rather amusing sight to see, though the teacher had a bird when she finally realized what those giant silver puddle/balls were Ahh, the good old days... Uhh Oh, but yeah your tank should be fine

 

[Greg Hiller]

The cheap thermometers just have a bit of alcohol in them with a dye to give it a bit of color. I wouldn't recommend leaving the steel weighting balls in a tank after a thermometer breaks, but it would likely just fuel a little bit of algae growth as the balls slowly corroded/dissolved.

 

[Piscevore]

10 years ago? Even ten years ago it was common knowledge that mercury vapor is toxic and Hg can leech into your blood through your skin. 40-50 years ago mercury was thought to be harmless at low levels, and therefore was handled a great deal more and incoporated into a number of products. These days, Mercury isn't allowed IN schools period, nevermind actually having it exposed to the air. Stuff accumulates in your body and causes among other things teeth to fall out and dementia, not to mention cancers.

It is supposed to be sweet tasting, and was used as a tonic/cure for veneral disease and a number of other ailments in the past. It also causes a respiratory/circulatory response when it enters your body, aka, it gets you moderately "elvated" (comparable to a really kickin' caffeine high)

I attended a high school (a while ago) that had an incident where are sphygmomanometer happened to get the boot in the nurses office, and hit the floor, dispensing a significant amount of mercury in the school clinic.
The entire -school- was evacuated, hazmat was called in, the room was hermetically sealed and cleaned for 2 days. School was shut down for the entire process, and parents/teachers had an emergency town meeting info session before kids were brough back into the school. Crazy. I can just see your silver blob gliding to the edge of the table, rolling off the edge, and hitting the floor to smash into a trillion micro globules.... hehehehe

 

[Scuba_Dave]

So, how do you get rid of Mercury?...like quite a bit....

 

[Matt L.]

We get large Hg spills on ocasions, usually froma broken manometer in the hydraulics lab. I once opened a drawer here to find it full of Hg. I mean, like the entire bottom the drawer was reflective. Fortunately, you can vacuum Hg up and then dispose of it as hazardous waste, which is what we did,

Matt