It is with a very heavy heart....

[Whitten]

that I must inform you all that I lost everything last night.



I got a phone call last night at 3:30 in the am informing me that something had happened with my tank. My roomate came home really late and went to turn the lights on and nothing happened. It was then that he noticed that the tank wasn't on, and went to check the curcuit breaker.


Everything seemed normal there but he went ahead and called me and I walked him through my check procress. After doing that he tried to reset the breaker and nothing happened but he did see a blue flash and killed any power that might still be going to it. The weird thing here is that neither the breaker tripped, nor did any of the power strips.


He then informed me that he could see all my fish dead in a pile right up front along with all of my bristtle worms....yeah I know...

I told him just to enplug anything tank related from the wall and not worry about that I would take care of it but thanks for calling.

Two hours later and here I am back in Auburn driving down from Atlanta completely torn up about everything. My tank was finally at a point where I was happy with it and I was letting things grow in.

After getting home and seeing the devestation I checked for the cause. There was a mystery puddle of salt water in my stand but only on the sides wher I had the power strips tilted unti I mounted them to the side of the cabinet. It appears that a snail got stuck in the overflow tube and caused the tank to overflow into my stand. Where I get fuzzy is why none of my surge protectors with built in GFCI kicked in or why the breaker never tripped. At any rate my tank looks like a death zone. I managed to get the pump, skimmer, and light up and running last night as my heater went with the rest.
Tank temps are comming back to normal but everything is either RTN'd or doing so quickly. Bought the only thing that has survivied well was my frogspawn, and ofcoarse my softies. As for all the frags that Chris, and Paul so generously gave me....I will continue to try and save them but I have lost all of my SPS.


I litterally cried last night as I flushed my fish, and syponed nasty water and slime from the corals.

I honestly have no clue what I will do now, I am sure rebuild but as of now I am broken, sleep deprived, and really emmotional which I guess is normal if you just lost something as precious as this tank was to me.

~Michael

I will update as I find out more.

 

[Sk8r]

That is so bad. I had it happen to me. The only thing I can say is that the best cure for the pain is seeing that tank with clean water and life starting up in there.

 

[8BALL_99]

Sorry to hear it. That really sucks. Powerstrips wont trip.. They will melt and still not trip..Breakers only trip if they are overloaded. A wet powerstrip or even a melted one wont trip the breaker inless its pulling more then 20amps... The only safe way about it is to have a GFCI outlet in the wall.. At least you have a Good lesson for everyone with tanks.

 

[scothew]

Man i'm terribly sorry to hear.

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I am so sorry to hear about your losses.

Don't be discouraged. Once you get your tank and equipment back in a working order, I will donate some SPS frags and I am sure there are others who will do the same.

I installed a GFCI outlet on my wall. It is an inexpensive one I bought from Lowe's (cost about $10 to $15), but it works great. (I accidentally tested it twice so far )

Tomoko

 

[Whitten]

Thanks everyone, I really appreciate the support. I am doing a bit better now. I did a big water change and have been steadily removing skimmate until it has now kinda steadied.

Tomoko, the FrogSpawn Lives!!! I was so happy when I saw it perking up. I can give you a frag some time next week when I come up to B-ham for work. On a good note several of the softies are starting to improve. It looks like I will have mushrooms, rics, star polyps, and the like. And get this, some of my Monti's survived. Anything with Acropora in the name is certainly a goner.

At any rate thanks everyone, and don't worry I got pics so that I could document this. Even bleary eyed last night I still took a few so that I could pass on my lesson.

~Michael

 

[Tomoko Schum]

I am glad that the damage was not as big as you initially thought.

I will bring some acro frags for you when we meet.

Tomoko

 

[eclecticvibe]

Sorry to hear Michael!! Let me know if there's anything I can do to help you get started back up.

 

[Rollin]

That really does suck. Once you get things back in order you'll have to come by and grab some some more of my accidental frags. It's good though that the softies are coming back.

It's crazy the things that have to fall in just the right order to cause a disaster. About 2 weeks ago I noticed my floatswitch was close to my filter bag so I decided to move it over a little to keep it from getting stuck. What I didn't notice was that now it was too close to a hose coming back from the chiller. At any rate the float touched the hose and stuck in place. That afternoon I walk into the kitchen to find about 1/4" of water covering the entire kitchen floor. I shut everything off and filled my 16g shopvac 2 times cleaning up. That knocked my salinity down to 1.015. Luckily nothing was too stressed and I slowly pulled the salinity back up.

Hang in there and feel free to let me know when you're ready for some frags.

~chris

 

[huff3294]

yeah i was wondering about your tank yesterday. i was at the exchange all day and we had a HUGE thunderstorm and a crap load of wind and the power went off at my place for 2-3 hours. thats a bummer man. if you ever need any help watching your tank. i will be there all summer long for school. or just a helping hand, give me a call.

 

[c_stowers]

That really stinks! I lost all of my acros in a move about a year ago but have since replaced them. If you are ever up my way let me know and I will gladly give you a few acro frags to get you started. When all of mine died several people helped me out and I couldn't have afforded replacing everything so quickly.

 

[wpecoul]

Michael -

Anything I've got that we can break a piece off of is yours. Really sorry to hear about this, but we'll get you back up and going when you are ready.

It has to have been the weather last night - it was wicked fierce.

Will

 

[Amphiprion]

Sorry to hear about that--especially after seeing the splendid pictures of it. Don't give up on it. Just restock what you can and go from there.

 

[Whitten]

Hey guys thanks so much for the words of encouragement, I am much better now that I have come to grips with it and all. I am going to be working alot this summer in B-ham so my plan is to get things stable and then let them be that way for a while. Do some water changes get things back to normal and then begin doing Kalk drips again in anticipation of the new coral. In the mean time my new grow out tank should be here so I will start making provisions for that. After things have settled back in I may start begging or buying frags off of ya'll.

Chris you are totally right about the crazy events that occur and what they cause.

Thanks again to everyone, it means so much to me that you all are so generous. Like I said before with out you all my tank wouldn't be possible.

Huff, thanks so much for that extra heater by the way, it is now my only heater.

I will keep you all updated as to how things start to look.

Thanks again,
~Michael

 

[cwegescheide]

Oh geez... Thats TERRIBLE!! I've heard people using (i think its called gutter guard) to keep snails and stuff from getting stuck in overflows and such.

I need to get some of that stuff myself to keep my dang starfish out of my overflow...

Good luck and hang in there. Lesson learned, unfortunatley it was the hard way.

Thanks,
Chris

 

[edwar050]

So whats the verdict, what finally made it what did not. Sorry to hear about the crash, I think thats the biggest thing most of us fear.

 

[andyjd]

Bugger ...anything either of us can do, contact Christine...I have a spare mag 5 & skimmer if needed, just gimme a shout.

 

[Whitten]

So far the reports from my roomies is that all of the softies that I thought ok are still doing fine. My monti's are looking a bit rough but he said that the polyps are comming out. I am going to be back next week to check on them so I will have a better idea of what is going to pull through and what isn't. With any luck my RBTA might make it as well. He is now in my roomies tank with a maroon clown to host in him.

Thanks again for all of the offers. It looks like after things are stable again I am going to get a better surge protector and possibly have insurance pick up the bill on some of my animals as well as other equipment that might need replacing. On a good note the surge protector did save almost all of my equipment except for my heater....which I have no clue how it went bonkers since it was hooked up to the aqua controller.

Oh by the way, my current overflow is a PVC elbow...I am going to be looking for some black acrylic so that I can make a true overflow so and then an eggcrate snail guard to keep anything else from going wrong.

 

[Rollin]

You know I keep my eye on the acrylic auction on eBay and right now there's an auction for some black acrylic. I'm thinking of getting some for my own projects so if you like I'll get an extra sheet or two to build you an overflow like the boxes I did for the anemone study.

Let me know.

 

[Whitten]

Welp, it looks my parents insurance is going to cover the equipment lost. I definately didn't expect them to cover the animals but they were more than gracious in offering to cover any and all of my damaged equipment.

Things are looking up everyone, I was devestated about what happend but honestly this will give me a chance now to get things the exact way I want them...especially since I no longer have that RBTA pestering my coral.

Chris definately keep your eye out for some acrylic I will be able to buy some off of you if you find any.