Lessons learned

[Emerald525]

Why does it always seem things go wrong with the tank when you are away out of town? I went to Texas for a long weekend (Friday through Monday) and came back and the fish in the aggressive tank were not doing well. Powder brown decided to jump and was a crispy critter. Puffer was not swimming well and looking ill and now is in hospital tank.

Then our beloved Blenny has died but it gets worse....:hmm2:

he has clogged the external overflow box and the tank is about to flood the basement!:eek1:

Once again we were lucky that we were home and we were able to bail the tank before there was any serious flooding going on. Unfortunately our aqualifter broke but fortunately a fellow local reefer happened to have a brand new one she lent us in the late evening!

So lessons learned:

1.If you go out of town expect that's when something will go wrong and make sure you have a list of contacts to help.
2.There are some awesome people in my local forum (PNWMAS) ready to lend a hand at short notice!
3. If I had to do it all over again I would have drilled the glass tank instead of using an external overflow.

This is the second time the overflow has been clogged and the threat of early flooding was near.

I'm seriously contemplating breaking down the tank and drilling it!
__________________

 

[jasonrp104]

Just cut some eggcrate and fit it in the top of the overflow box.

 

[James404]

What type of overflow is this you are using? sorry to hear about all that. At least you were able to avoid major catastrophe.

 

[Emerald525]

Just cut some eggcrate and fit it in the top of the overflow box.

Not following you what do you mean? I have to keep mesh in the overflow area because I have a snowflake eel and the first one I had went right through the overflow all the way through the protein skimmer and was shredded.

 

[reefWW96]

the best piece of advice you could get for when your away is to expect everything will crash and die. then, when you get back and one little thing happend, you just take a deep breath

 

[Emerald525]

What type of overflow is this you are using? sorry to hear about all that. At least you were able to avoid major catastrophe.

It's a cpr and we use an aqualifter.

the best piece of advice you could get for when your away is to expect everything will crash and die. then, when you get back and one little thing happend, you just take a deep breath

LOL! So true!:strange: I'm kinda bummed about the 2 dead fish but overall I'm just thrilled that a major disaster was avoided!