Gonodactylus
Premium Member
Got to bed last night around midnight and was well into REM when the phone rang. It was 1:30 am and a student in my lab was calling to say that one of the 100 gal. tanks in the main lab was leaking. (Take note: students should be in the lab at 1:30 am on a Monday morning.) I figured it was a leaky hose connection or a skimmer overflow and told him that I would be in at 6:30 to take a look. He seemed to think that it was more serious, but I assured him that it would be alright. I was too far gone with too much left over turkey to do much more.
After 15 minutes of staring at the ceiling, I realized that I was not going to get back to sleep and by then I had figured out that it was probably my large Lysiosquillina maculata tank housing a 30 cm pair that I had had for three years. They were in a large u-shaped burrow in a partitioned 40 cm sand bed. Worse yet, I was temporarily storing 4 blue-rings in the other part of the tank.
I dragged myself out of bed, dressed, and drove to campus. There was a stream of water running out of one corner of the tank and about 40 gal of water on the floor soaking boxes, file cabinet, etc. The lab has floor drains, but this tank was in the one spot that did not have one. The powerheads and skimmer were running dry, so I pulled them. The blue-rings were each in a 1 gallon plastic jar with small holes, but I never put holes in the bottom inch, so they has enough water to survive. They were moved to another large tank. I started bailing out water and when the level got down to about 20 cm, the leak pretty much stopped. The silicone sealant had failed, but only the top half of the joint I could spend the rest of the night digging out a couple of hundred pounds of sand so that I could get to the PVC burrow in the bottom housing the Lysios, or I could stabilize the leak and leave them until morning. Fortunately, L. maculata often remain in burrows at low tide that are partially exposed and they can do well for hours in stagnant, really nasty water. I remembered several years ago buying a set of 30 inch cabinet makes clamps that I thought might come in handy building tanks. I dug around the soggy boxes under the tables holding our tanks and found them still in their box. It was an easy task to clamp the joint and stop the leak completely. The canister filter was still running, so I switched the outflow to the sand size of the tank containing the burrow so that the animals would get filtered, oxygenated water, did a quick mop of the lab, and got home by 3:30.
I came in this morning at 6:30 and the Lysios were fine as were the blue-rings. Now I get to spend the day digging out the sand and installing a new tank. Such is the life of a marine biologist. I guess the moral of the story is that all tanks fail - eventually - and when they do, it will be at the worst possible time.
Roy
After 15 minutes of staring at the ceiling, I realized that I was not going to get back to sleep and by then I had figured out that it was probably my large Lysiosquillina maculata tank housing a 30 cm pair that I had had for three years. They were in a large u-shaped burrow in a partitioned 40 cm sand bed. Worse yet, I was temporarily storing 4 blue-rings in the other part of the tank.
I dragged myself out of bed, dressed, and drove to campus. There was a stream of water running out of one corner of the tank and about 40 gal of water on the floor soaking boxes, file cabinet, etc. The lab has floor drains, but this tank was in the one spot that did not have one. The powerheads and skimmer were running dry, so I pulled them. The blue-rings were each in a 1 gallon plastic jar with small holes, but I never put holes in the bottom inch, so they has enough water to survive. They were moved to another large tank. I started bailing out water and when the level got down to about 20 cm, the leak pretty much stopped. The silicone sealant had failed, but only the top half of the joint I could spend the rest of the night digging out a couple of hundred pounds of sand so that I could get to the PVC burrow in the bottom housing the Lysios, or I could stabilize the leak and leave them until morning. Fortunately, L. maculata often remain in burrows at low tide that are partially exposed and they can do well for hours in stagnant, really nasty water. I remembered several years ago buying a set of 30 inch cabinet makes clamps that I thought might come in handy building tanks. I dug around the soggy boxes under the tables holding our tanks and found them still in their box. It was an easy task to clamp the joint and stop the leak completely. The canister filter was still running, so I switched the outflow to the sand size of the tank containing the burrow so that the animals would get filtered, oxygenated water, did a quick mop of the lab, and got home by 3:30.
I came in this morning at 6:30 and the Lysios were fine as were the blue-rings. Now I get to spend the day digging out the sand and installing a new tank. Such is the life of a marine biologist. I guess the moral of the story is that all tanks fail - eventually - and when they do, it will be at the worst possible time.
Roy
