Shattered Help! - 72" URI Actininc bulb into tank. What to do?

[orthokardia]

I need advice. I broke a 72" URI actinic T12 bulb and it litterally went into the tank. I have a mixed reef with about 350 gal total volume. This was about 12 hrs ago. I also have a large downdraft skimmer running.

I got the biggest pieces of glass out by hand and added 6 capfulls of prime to the water. This morning I threw a bag of purigen into the sump, but i am not setup to run water through it so it just floats.

I will try to siphon the smaller bits of glass out this morning. I guess I am most concerned about any heavy metals in the tube.

Your thoughts are greatly appritiated.

-bart

[Nannook]

How much water can you change? There is an old adage I cannot recall completely, something about "when you pollute, dilute, dilute, dilute". And fresh carbon, this is all good anyway, so a safe approach. I am not sure how to find out what is in Actinic lamps. There is mercury gas in regular tubes. I will try to troll for info on actinic.

[teddyzaper]

i did this in my freshwater, i didnt do anything and it seemed like everything grew better, maybe there is steroids in lights, HAHA i found the secret ingredient. anyways, just to be safe do a water change and make sure to get out all the glass. mine just broke in half, didnt shatter completly

[wrott]

I believe it is gas inside fluorescent tubes, but I would put a few poly-filters in the sump/tank for a week or 2. And carbon+WCs would not hurt. The glass will probably only end up hurting you--so no big deal.

[orthokardia]

thank you both. It has been 10 days and i can perceive no ill effects thus far.

-bart

[Nannook]

I did a bit of trolling and the only definitive (Wikipedia is NOT definitive) was on Wikipedia, "with this entry All fluorescent lights, compact or otherwise, contain small amounts of mercury, which is toxic if released into the environment. Most manufactures have agreed to reduce the amount of Mercury contained in compact fluorescent lights (CFL) to 5 mg or less per bulb. Even so, a broken CFL can release enough Mercury vapor to become toxic"
Good luck and do us all a favor and give this an update either way, so we can all learn from this.