Reptile & Amphibian Forums

I found this to be very frightening, and confusing. I've never seen anything like it in all my years of keeping reptiles.

This morning I went to turn on the heat emitter over my BRB's tank (it's a 150 watt, I keep it off at night), and within 10 minutes of turning it on, the thing literally shoots purple/red flames out the top and emits this EXTREMELY loud, popping, electrical noise. It seriously terrified the pants off of me, but I rushed over and unplugged the dang thing once I realized I wasn't being shot at by wizards or something. As I turned it off, the cord that goes from the outlet to the ceramic middle of the holder popped out of the holder, and the end was on FIRE. As it slid off of the holder, it burnt a hole in the middle of the metal part of the holder before being snuffed out.

The excitement is over now. It smells like fireworks in my room... I am left feeling very, very confused. And my dog is, of course, too scared to sleep on his bed now I am obviously going to replace the holder, but the actual heat emitter is perfectly white and seems fine. The emitter itself has got to be like a year old, but would that have caused the problem in the first place? Or was it just the holder?

Seriously just WHAT THE HECK? Does anyone know what happened?? I don't want this to happen again, while I'm not home. That is a SERIOUS fire hazard!
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Innocent as a dove you will harm no one, but wise as a serpent no one will harm you. - Haug

is the fixture ceramic as well? If plastic it can easily overheat and crack over time. Otherwise, it could be the wire where it bends right after the fixture, over time, broke and caused a short.

Or it could be a defective emitter....
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PHLdyPayne

It was ceramic. And now that I think about it, the wire seemed to be what could have caused it... It had gone through some stress over the years. I had no idea it would explode because of that though... Very scary
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Innocent as a dove you will harm no one, but wise as a serpent no one will harm you. - Haug

Hang around with herp folks over time and you will hear about people having fires started by defective heaters, lights and thermostats. Some of us rig up stuff that may not be adequate for the application. Some of it just gets old. High humidity in and around cages also contributes to corrosion and electrical problems. Be very careful with this stuff.

Always a good precaution to inspect heating sources and lighting...to check for frayed wires, loose connections, warping or discolouration of heat tape, etc. I try to check my heating and lights every once in awhile to see how they are holding up. I already had two heating pads fail on me, one just stopped working, another shorted but I caught it early so it only managed to warp the plastic tub and the snake escaped any damage, though the floor has a few burn marks. The heating pad that stopped working, was harder to spot as the power light for it was still on, it was just by accident I placed my hand on it and noticed it was not producing any heat. It certainly explained why the snake inside stopped eating, she probably thought it was being cooled. Fortunately my apartment rarely gets below 73F even on the floor...so she wasn't too cold.
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PHLdyPayne