Gauges going all the way on startup + smoke

All the gauges worked out fine until this saturday. waiting with the engine on at a gas station it turned out that the e-fan fuse blew out and the temperature went up to 240f or so, so some teams started to come out of the coolant reservoir. I turned the engine off, and used water to cool down the radiator until it came down and was able to check the radiator coolant level. It basically sucked back all the liquid so it was not bad really, the car ran just fine afterwards, fuse was replaced and working, no leaks, etc.

The problem is that apparently the temp gauge went all the way up (I didnt see it because I has talking to my daughter) and now the gauge is dead, is if totally cool all the time. I can monitor the temperature using the edelbrock proflo application, but would like tha gaue to work again as I dont always have the proflo app open.

I searched the web to see how this can be fixed, but found mostly "tests" for the gauges, I will perform this tests during the weekend but fear that the gauge itself broke or something because of the previous incident, besides, all other gauges work fine except for this one. If broken I wonder if I could take a working gauge and just replace the needle and graphics faceplate so they all look the same?, mine have a black shiny finish, I have seen others and look matt finish so apparently I cannot just swap it because it will look different than the others.

As a side question, what is the ideal running temp for this engines both performance and efficency?. I have my fan set at low speed at 194f and high speed at 205f.

Thanks for your feedback.