First tank disaster, sump ran dry!

[apexkeeper]

Well I woke up this morning to the sound of my mag drive pump running dry. For some reason during the night my skimmer overflowed (I have a hose on the collection cup that runs to a container outside the tank) so the sump ran almost completely dry. Aprox 20 gallons of water on my floor.

I immediately shut everything in the sump off and moved the heaters to the display tank. All my fish and coral seem fine for now. But I'm running without a sump, just powerheads and heaters in the display tank. I had no water made up so It's been like this for about 12 hours now.

First is there anything I should do to the display tank for the time being? I probably have another 10 hours before I'll have water ready and be able to get the sump running again.

Next my sump had lots of coraline algae in it, which is all obviously dead by now. When I restart the sump will all the dead algae make my nitrates sky rocket? I scraped off as much as I could but I can't get all of it.

Third I salvaged my chaeto and have it in a bucket with what water I had left with a small heater. My chaeto was LOADED with pods, is it safe to assume they are all dead now?

Any advice or input?

 

[rfgonzo]

Sorry to hear your bad news, one thing you can do so it doesn't happen again run the hose that runs from your collection cup into some other type of container that will hold 2 or 3 gallons then run another hose from that container right back in to your sump, that way if your skimmer decides to go haywire again the water will go in the container and back into your sump. But still give you plenty of room for collection from your skimmer.

 

[apexkeeper]

I ran the hose out of the tank because my skimmer has overflowed before and dumped all the skimmate back into the water... Which now I realize is alot less of a problem then having my sump run dry so I'm ditching the hose all together.

 

[Scubaken]

100% better! the skimmate was in the water to start with! you can use a max / min switch that would cut your skimmer off if the level dropped significantly low.
Do you use a ATO ? That would have left you with a greater problem, a low specific gravity. Best action now ? Find the cause of the overflow, maybe only run your skimmer whilst your in the room ? Glad you didn't blow a pump or lose anything

 

[apexkeeper]

My ATO is a drip system so luckily there's no way it could dump too much freshwater in and my water parameters stayed steady. I figured out the issue with the skimmer, for some reason the stupid venturi clogs up. Lesson learned, I'll have to start checking and cleaning it more often.

First thing tomorrow I'm gonna head to home depot and buy some water alarms and hook them up next to the sump.

I got my sump re-filled, I'm just waiting for the water temp to come up before I re-start the return pump. Doesn't look like any damage has been done.