bad,bad day and a major screw up

[golfish]

for give me,I haven't slept in 24hrs. Last night was my first night back on Graveyard shift so I didn't sleep that much yesterday. I came home this morning and noticed my sump was a little low.....OH! I forgot to turn the sipedon float switch back to auto......I screwed up and turned it to ON. Flooded the living room with about 10 gal of water,not to metion I dropped my S.G. down to 1.012....I had to do something, NOW. I pailed off about 10 gal of water and added about 5 cups of salt to it.I added the water back to the tank to bring the S.G. back to within range 1.025....I didn't know what else to do.I couldn't let the water stay that low. I didn't let the salt mix very well but I had to get it up....CRAP! On the 4th too. I guess its a good thing I had salt mix.

I off to sleep, I hope..wish my corals good luck.

Mark

[AquaNut]

Hey Mark...
Sorry to hear about your misfortune...I've got my fingers crossed for you...how are the corals looking right now...actually I'd be more concerned for the other inverts and fish.

Keep us updated...
Have a good rest! [img]/ubb/wink.gif[/img]

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The NUT!
Alex's Ocean Realm
GO FOR A DIVE!!!
http://home.earthlink.net/~amariquit/thereef

[FishTechie]

sorry to hear about your mishap mike, good luck with the tank, but you didnt say how your corals looked when you got home, they may have been ok since the salinity dropped slowly, unfortunately with the addition of the 5 cups of salt your salinity should have shot right up, causing more stress and shock for the tank...hope everything works out ok for you, keep us posted...

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[jadeclam]

sorry dude, good luck, i feel you


Jade

[tendar]

[img]/ubb/rolleyes.gif[/img]Man this hobby has to many things that can go wrong. Need to put alarms on everything to keep us from making all the silly mistakes.

[golfish]

[img]/ubb/smile.gif[/img] update......The water had dropped to 1.012 in about 40 minutes,That's about how long it took me to get it back up to normal. I was worried most about putting in the 5 cups of salt not mixed up very well. Also, I was worried about the purple starfish and brittle stars........GOOD NEWS after 5 hours of sleep for me and 1.5 hours of stress on the tank everthing seems fine....its party time.

Mark

[Rob]

Enjoy party time... you've worked awful hard on this project, you've earned it.

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Cheers,
Rob
New York City

[omegatron]

Good luck only time will tell if you lose anything especially brittle stars they may start to fall apart watch out i have had that happen once to me and its no fun

[golfish]

Its a good thing I had the Steam vac. I have to make dinner now because I got the whole family up at 6:30am to help with the tank...everything seems ok.

Just think. I have a 35 gal top-off tank that I just filled a few days ago. Good thing I caught it..LIVE AND LEARN


Mark

[This message has been edited by golfish (edited 07-04-2000).]

[Joaco]

Glad to hear it wasnt a big disaster after all [img]/ubb/smile.gif[/img]
This top off accident and the lowering of the salinity has me thinking (yeah, once in a while I try to [img]/ubb/biggrin.gif[/img]).
Do you have any tips to avoid something like that, e.g. a valve that prevents the top off water from emptying more than a given max. amount of water in the sump all at once? just brainstorming...

Joaco

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My webpage Updated 3rd July 2000

[rededteck]

Firstly, very pleased you were able to get your tank back in working order... that is probably the worst nightmare of a fish enthusiast is to find the inerts of his tank not in his tank.

Joaco,an excellent topic of discussion for sure... good choice for Alex's topic of the week, "is your tank properly setup to avoid this type of disaster?

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"It's the end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine..."

[AquaNut]

Hey Ed...That's a good idea and will post to that effect right now...thanks Bud!!!

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The NUT!
Alex's Ocean Realm
GO FOR A DIVE!!!
http://home.earthlink.net/~amariquit/thereef

[ScottC]

Could be worse, could have cracked the glass on the bottom of the tank and lost ALL your water!!
Scott

[golfish]

Scott,
Don't have to worry about that..its acrylic.....

Yeah guys, this was a close one. It was all my fault, for not paying attention. I had not had any sleep for awhile and just flipped the switch in the wrong postion.

Jacoa,
The only advice I have for NOT making a mistake like this, is to be 100% "there" when dealing with the tank.

Mark

[Mermaid]

Mark, Glad to hear you averted disaster.

Joaco, We prevent this type of huge swing in case a Float Switch has a problem (getting stuck on after time by salt creep or algae buildup, or human error) by using 5 gallon salt buckets for our replacement RO freshwater reservoirs. On most tanks, they only need to be filled weekly, so we go around with a long acrylic hose plumbed to the RO FW bucket and fill them all at the same time. Even if there was a problem, we would not have a huge salinity change with only 5 gallons max possible, plus only a few gallons could get onto the floor which is also better.

[Macimage]

Mark,

Just read your post and am very glad everything is ok.

We had a wet floor experience Monday ourselves. Leanna & I tore down her reef and redid it. We had started late in the day and hadn't allowed enough time for the sand to clear up. So by 11:00 pm we were both pretty tired and still at it.

Anyway, we were using a Fluval and her sump with a filter cloth to filter out the dust clouds. We had just changed everything and she said put the fluval discharge in the outside overflow box. I did and left to get a bandaide. She was standing on a step stool trying to restart the siphon on the overflow. Well of course the fluval pumped water into the overflow which went down to the sump and overflowed as she hadn't restarted it yet!!

When I returned with the bandaged finger, I stepped in huge puddles of water, which of course she hadn't noticed since she was standing on the ladder.

It was a huge mess and it was only about 10 gallons.

Her tank looks great now, but what a night and what a project.

Joyce

[JohnVlahos]

I had a similar 'lesson' when my siphon broke due to a large air bubble, late one night. Well, I was still in an intense meeting and my wife called really upset that water was overflowing into the livingroom. I talked her through shutting down the pump and not kicking me out of the house.

The next day I made a hole at the top of the siphon tube and connected a power head's air inlet to it. The power head is connected to the wave timer. So everytime there is a wave, any excess bubbles are sucked out of teh siphon tube.

It's also useful for staring the siphon. It's really important to keep the connection clean.

jv

[toptank]

Mark I hope everything is back to normal? I transfered more coral into the 90 gal and it is starting to look great. The clams LOVE those 12,000 bulbs. [img]/ubb/smile.gif[/img] I got them on the bottom till they get use to them and don't have them on all day.

Joyce, sorry to hear that you and Leanna had all those problems. Hope all is well with her tank as well. Let me know when we can go spend some of your money [img]/ubb/smile.gif[/img] [img]/ubb/smile.gif[/img] We are still working on Mark card but it won't take long [img]/ubb/smile.gif[/img]

Barry

[Staceon]

Mark I think there was some bad karma in those bottles of solution you sent me. hehehe. On the 4th one of my tanks put out about 10 to 15 gallons onto second story floor. My fault too, the line of the return hose came off. The PVC was sitting next to the tank, not yet installed.

Lucky this was the FOWLR, not the reef, so I tend to panic a lot less. Pisses you off though doesn't it. Even that brief thought of "(*&^ it, I am tearing the damn thing down" went threw my head.

Tell you what Mark, how about you be CEO and I will be the CFO on the wet floor club.[img]/ubb/smile.gif[/img]