I live in a rental apartment, and it came with a poor quality fridge. It's your standard plastic box with a cold plate around 1/4 of the way down. The upper part is the "freezer" and the lower is the regular fridge. There is little to no insulation, all the freezer part does is gather ice and can't even keep an ice cream from melting.
Anyways, today the ice started melting for no apparent reason. The temperature slider is in the same place (max). I can't see what's going on with the cold plate since there is still a solid couple of inches of ice around it. The engine is still making the same old sound. Its melting at like 2 drips per second? I've gotten around half a gallon of water out of it over the day.
I've put a towel under it to collect the water, I don't really care for the well being of the fridge, I'm more concerned with why its suddenly being worse than usual. Could the ice have cracked the cold plate or something? Would the fluids from the cold plate be dangerous?
EDIT: thank you to all answering, there has been a development:
I started defrosting the fridge a little while before posting the thread. Couple of minutes ago, the bottom half of the ice that was stuck to the plate just fell off and into the plastic thingy below it which also fell to to the bottom of the fridge. Nothing broken there, the plastic is just naturally flimsy.
Now that I can see the plate, it appears to be tilted (I'm assuming its supposed to be horizontal) by around half an inch. Shortly after that, I could hear some more dripping except this time it came from somewhere I couldn't see and made this kind of boiling noise, I'm assuming that would be the coolant. I don't know if that's normal since it only lasted a few minutes, could be a heat adjustment thing, its completely silent now.
EDIT2: I tried turning it on again, the engine started up for a few seconds but then stopped. I can also kinda smell it now, a faint smell thats somewhat like the window cleaner fluid in cars. My theory is that the weight of the ice must have been enough to bend the pipes holding the plate (they are literally the only thing) and that they broke.
EDIT3: I finally got the fridge out of its hole (it fits exactly inside one of the counters) and got a look at the backside. One of the pipes leading from the compressor to the inside of the fridge is almost 100% rust at the point where it goes through the back wall. I'm guessing since that was the cold pipe and the radiator bit was right next to it, it was a good place for condensation to form. It has a big gash in the middle (like a good centimeter), frankly I'm surprised its worked so far at all.