Stupid Me, Disaster Strikes, What a day

[Canadian Man]

Well I had such an amazingly S@#$Y day that I feel like telling you guys about it.It's a long one. If you read it all you get an appreciation that you had a good day.

So the day started with my morning coffee and breakfast over a through reading of the paper as it was my day off. I decided to do all my tank maintainence today, I had the time and because of the snow riding was kinda out of the question.

So I started the day with water changes to my angel fish tanks and that went fine.
once done that I decided to finish painting the underside of my stand to get it ready for my new sump/refugium and everything. Took everything out from underneith the stand and painted the right side. Now, the left side had my fluval 404 with carbon in it which I had to remove to finish painting. so I unpluged the fluval and removed the Quick Release for both hoses and the one side was leaking. I quickly re attached the QR clamp and and to find another way to do it. I raised the input and output in the tank above the water level and poped off the QR again and drained the water into a bowl. all is good removed the filter and painted the left side. at this point i decided i would paint a few spots in the hood which i missed before. BIG MISTAKE. I was using a sponge brush and DRIP.....DRIP.... 2 globs of latex white paint into my tank and with in 10 seconds they were dissolved and my tank looked like i just added 100 lbs of sand.

OH BUT WAIT IT GETS BETTER!!!!!!!!! YES IT IS POSSIBLE!!!!

So I Swearing and cussing and dont know what to do. Well I knew that I had to get carbon running again. Added 2 cups of fresh carbon to the fluval and hooked it back up and it would not turn on.SH*T.....
Went through the same procedure to disconnect the hose's cleaned the impeller of buildup hooked it back up and it turned on,,,,BUT ,,,, it was leaking at the QR connection where the hoses attach....Once againg went through the procedure to dissconnect the hoses and cut 1" off the hoses thinking that the new section would not leak....Hooked it back up and still leaking, grabed the pliers and tightened the nut a little more......SWOOOSHHH... my tank was siphoning onto the floor....the QR connection snaped and no way to stop water. jumped up and ripped the hoses off the tank and there was about 5 gallons of water on the floor, which also leaked behind the wall into the basement which I discovered later.
SO....OH YEA IT IS'NT OVER YET...I had an aquaclear 150 on my angel tank which i had to get going to get carbon on the tank quickly. Hauled off my 50lb hood by my self and had to cut the rim of the tank a little to get it on.
That's about 1/2 of my horrible day. The rest involved spilling my drinks constantly and tripping. AHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!! if you read this far, than thanks for listening. Phewwww..
got a 20g water change in the works for tommorow and suprisingly none of the critters/corals are dead.
Cheers

[Delphinus]

Oh my ... paint in the water! OMG! :eek:

Good luck on the recovery! Let us know if there's anything we can do to help.

[AJ_77]

Jonathan - that truly sucks, what a horrible chain of events. BUT - no loss of life is very good, considering the potential for disaster.

Sorry to hear of your sh***y day - let us know how it goes.

Alan

[Canadian Man]

Well did a 25g water change this morning and going to do another one tommorow. Nothing dead this morning and the paint dosent seem to bother anything in the tank. The only problem i am having is no matter how i adjust my skimmer it makes too many bubles and fills the tank with bubbles. I probably would not do another wc tommorow but i want my skimmer to work.
LOL....

[AJ_77]

Curious - how has the tank been? It's been a week since the Day of Mishaps; everything OK? Any lingering effects?

Alan [img]smile.gif[/img]

[Canadian Man]

No lingering effects, no death's.
Tank is clear as it was before and looking good!
Very Very thankful i was not painting with oil paint :eek:
I have been working on my diy overflow and i finished it this morning. i will try to post some pics this evening. Need batteries for my camera.

Hope my spelling/grammer is correct cause i am typing fast. ;)

[Tau2301]

I think you should type slowly as I don't read that fast... :D