Massive tank death

[mike31154]

Yow, that's unfortunate. Hope your rebuild goes well and cheers you up. I'm away in the winter usually for a couple of 7 day stretches and often worry even though I have folks looking after things. You definitely will want to add some redundancy to the electrical set up. I run GFCI as well, but more than one so there's some level of safety there, although nothing is entirely foolproof, especially when things are more complex with dosing et al... Anyhow, best of luck with the rebuild.

[amoreira]

I went on a vacation recently with the whole family. The aquarium was left in the hands of one of my trusted buddies (who knows squat about marine animal husbandry). Anyways, sure enough, the unthinkable happened while I was away. The GFI tripped that supplied power to the recirc. pump and all the equipment (skimmer, ATOF, Ca reactor) in the basement sump. For nearly 2 years this system had been operating without a GFI trip and it had to happen when I was on vacation.

Here's the thing, fortunately the powerheads in the display tank (DT) were on a separate circuit. That alone wouldn't be enough. Because the recirc. pump stopped the water in the DT drained back into the sump and it became low enough that air was being sucked into the suction of the powerheads (essentially aerating the aquarium). If the water was just recirculating in the tank, then I don't think there'd be any oxygenation and removal of CO2 that would quickly accumulate in the main tank and kill the fish. Normally if the recirc. pump goes, the tank dies in a few hours as the fish asphyxiate.

On the phone, I told my friend to switch the power source to the regular circuit. The recirc. restarted and all is fine. Except, he didn't switch the ATOF over and I came home to a find a big sucking noise from the basement as the sump level fell (as the ATOF wasn't making up any evaporated water) and the recirc. pump was being starved of water. The timer on the main display tank lights had also shorted and god knows how long those were off (I had noticed a lot of coraline algae die-off). It seemed that any failure that could happen did when I was away :-(. I measured the water parameters and the nitrates were high. Luckily I didn't lose much - just a horseshoe crab.

I had left lots of instructions, but next time I'll have to consider getting a more bullet-proof system. Nothing protects you from a power failure, though, except an expensive back-up system (large UPS or diesel powered generator).

[Navarchus]

Originally Posted by Ya Dude

GFI 's were always my source of problems.

What is GFI?

[kien]

Ground Fault (circuit) Interrupter. More than you'll ever want to know about it here :-D

[Lance]

Originally Posted by PoonTang

Will be there some day for sure Marie. Thanks kindly for the offer, you are a Saint. Some of the frags I got from you before truely were becoming very large colonies. Heart breaking to lose them.

So sorry to hear this Darren! Really sucks!
Make sure you stop in to see me as well. I'm sure you can find some pieces you like.