Reef Tank Disasters!

[Ninja1]

The title says it all- lets hear about some disasters or projects gone wrong that negatively impacted your reef/fish tank. This can be a amusing as well as a educational thread for everyone. As I begin working on my new reef, I'm curious about what other reefers have experienced. I've heard that some issues have caused a few reefers to abandon the hobby and then return later on.

Dont be shy- share!

 

[ReefDoberman]

How about last night a bulkhead came loose in the bottom of my 60 cube in-wall and it drained empty shorting out my outlets under the tank, going through my hardwood floors, subfloors and then into the basement. Yea....

 

[gjk]

ReefDoberman, We all hate this for you!
Could you tell if the bulkhead had "jumped" a thread possibly due to overtightening? Was this a SCH 80 bulkhead? Just trying to get anybody interested some good advice as this is on my mind from time to time because as you have detailed, it drains a great deal of water to where you do not want it.

 

[Ninja1]

Oh crap- how can a bulkhead do that. That sounds horrible. Is there anything you could have done to prevent this. I mean if a bulkhead comes out- you are pretty much screwed (right?).

 

[pmrossetti]

Why is there a bulkhead in the bottom? never without an overflow around it.

 

[crichard6069]

you are pretty much screwed (right?).

Or in this case, unscrewed.

 

[Paul B]

My town added zinc orthophosphate to the water supply just when I was making water for a water change. Killed all of my corals in a couple of minutes. This happened twice about ten years apart.

 

[HCruzer]

I remember a long time ago i went to clean out a Fluval 404 Canister and took the top off it and forgot to take the intake out of the water and it started back siphoning all the water out. When water is rushing out like that it gives you little time to react. To say the least. after the water got all over my electrical and shocked me a few times the jolt made my brain work and i pulled out the intake and return out of the tank..

 

[el aguila]

This last weekend my oldest son got married - beautiful wedding and day - Great times.

My wife did the reception dinner, food for the wedding, and wedding cake with the help of her family the has been in the catering business for years.

With everyone visiting on Friday we had about 16 people in the house preparing meals, taking showers, dishwasher was running non-stop. I came into the room where my 190 G tank was and to my horror it looked like a gray snowstorm with different color large particles floating in the water.

My tank room is on the other side of a bathroom in the basement, and to my horror I could not get in because someone was taking a leisurely shower. When I finally got in, there was a brown frothy foam and all kinds of junk floating on the water - 3-4 corn kernals, a dozen black beans, chewing gum. My first impression was someone took a crap in my sump plus poured a bunch of something in the tank (there was an extra 10-15 Gallons in the tank!!

I could write a book on what happened next, being a little hot under the collar trying to figure out who sabotaged my tank. Emergency water changes, etc.

It took me a day to figure it out, but I have an automatic overflow in the lowest downstream sump that I use to automatically drain water for water changes. The sewage backed up and overflowed into my tank. As much height as my house has above my septic system, I never dreamed of this being a problem.

Hard lesson learned - when installing plumbing for auto water changes - PUT SOME SORT OF A SAFETY FACTOR IN!!! It won't happen again.

 

[Immers1]

My town added zinc orthophosphate to the water supply just when I was making water for a water change. Killed all of my corals in a couple of minutes. This happened twice about ten years apart.

Damn! Is there any way to remove the zinc from the water? I'm assuming a simple RO system won't suffice?

 

[Immers1]

It took me a day to figure it out, but I have an automatic overflow in the lowest downstream sump that I use to automatically drain water for water changes. The sewage backed up and overflowed into my tank. As much height as my house has above my septic system, I never dreamed of this being a problem.

Hard lesson learned - when installing plumbing for auto water changes - PUT SOME SORT OF A SAFETY FACTOR IN!!! It won't happen again.

:mad2:

What do you use now to prevent this? I suppose a non return valve of some sort would rectify this problem?

 

[el aguila]

:mad2:

What do you use now to prevent this? I suppose a non return valve of some sort would rectify this problem?

The sump (100G Rubbermaid) where the water drains out is against a wall and I really can't get a vlave in that is accessable. It would be best to have some sort of valve, but I can't get one in.

My tank room and drain plumbing is actually in a 4-5' crawlspace.

This drain line for the tank is one of the lowest lines in the plumbing. I have a sump pump underneath it. Right where it T's into the main veritcal drain I placed a trap made of 2" elbows then above this I have 2 Tees with the outlets faced up.

If there is another sewage backup, the water will flow out onto the sump pump tank which drains out into our woods. I do need to redo my sewage system, just trying to come up with the cash to do it myself.

 

[Ninja1]

Zinc in your water is PITA. How can you even fix this once you notice it.

As far as the ATO goes- it's hard to make it fairly safe. I mean you cand add floats but I always hear something that craps out.

 

[slief]

This last weekend my oldest son got married - beautiful wedding and day - Great times.

My wife did the reception dinner, food for the wedding, and wedding cake with the help of her family the has been in the catering business for years.

With everyone visiting on Friday we had about 16 people in the house preparing meals, taking showers, dishwasher was running non-stop. I came into the room where my 190 G tank was and to my horror it looked like a gray snowstorm with different color large particles floating in the water.

My tank room is on the other side of a bathroom in the basement, and to my horror I could not get in because someone was taking a leisurely shower. When I finally got in, there was a brown frothy foam and all kinds of junk floating on the water - 3-4 corn kernals, a dozen black beans, chewing gum. My first impression was someone took a crap in my sump plus poured a bunch of something in the tank (there was an extra 10-15 Gallons in the tank!!

I could write a book on what happened next, being a little hot under the collar trying to figure out who sabotaged my tank. Emergency water changes, etc.

It took me a day to figure it out, but I have an automatic overflow in the lowest downstream sump that I use to automatically drain water for water changes. The sewage backed up and overflowed into my tank. As much height as my house has above my septic system, I never dreamed of this being a problem.

Hard lesson learned - when installing plumbing for auto water changes - PUT SOME SORT OF A SAFETY FACTOR IN!!! It won't happen again.

Now that is a story!


Not a reef disaster but back when we had the Northridge earthquake in 1995, I had a 240G system with White tip reef sharks, a leapord shark and a very large 5' green morray eel.

The quake was a rolling one that cause the walls of the house to sway enough that they hit the pvc plumbing lines on the back on the tank. Those lines were about 4" away from the wall. The wall hit them so hard that they embedded themselves into the drywall breaking them and leaving a cut through the wall all the way up the wall where the pipes were behind the tank.

When the quake hit, my wall unit around my bed came tumbling down on me. I raced out of the room and ran or stumbled (in my birthday suit) down the stairs to the tank to find the water pouring out of it. As I reached under the tank to try to figure out where the water was coming from I got the shocks of my life as the water was pouring all over the power outlets and I standing on wet carpet.

In a panic but also a moment of clarity, I ran to the garage for a couple trash cans that I used to mix up water and siphoned enough water out of the tank to save the fish. I reached in and grabbed the sharks and the eel (by hand) and put them into the trash cans. My eel was used to being handled so that part wasn't a big deal and I was in such as state of shock that the thought of getting bit didn't even register. Fortunately the sharks and eel cooperated.

The end result was no fish lost. 200+ gallons of water on the floor to go along with an empty tank. The fix was easy enough once I pinpointed what broke and I had it back up and running a day or 2 later.

I will never forget that as long as I live.

 

[jlylec]

This last weekend my oldest son got married - beautiful wedding and day - Great times.

My wife did the reception dinner, food for the wedding, and wedding cake with the help of her family the has been in the catering business for years.

With everyone visiting on Friday we had about 16 people in the house preparing meals, taking showers, dishwasher was running non-stop. I came into the room where my 190 G tank was and to my horror it looked like a gray snowstorm with different color large particles floating in the water.

My tank room is on the other side of a bathroom in the basement, and to my horror I could not get in because someone was taking a leisurely shower. When I finally got in, there was a brown frothy foam and all kinds of junk floating on the water - 3-4 corn kernals, a dozen black beans, chewing gum. My first impression was someone took a crap in my sump plus poured a bunch of something in the tank (there was an extra 10-15 Gallons in the tank!!

I could write a book on what happened next, being a little hot under the collar trying to figure out who sabotaged my tank. Emergency water changes, etc.

It took me a day to figure it out, but I have an automatic overflow in the lowest downstream sump that I use to automatically drain water for water changes. The sewage backed up and overflowed into my tank. As much height as my house has above my septic system, I never dreamed of this being a problem.

Hard lesson learned - when installing plumbing for auto water changes - PUT SOME SORT OF A SAFETY FACTOR IN!!! It won't happen again.

I think this wins.

 

[Ninja1]

Darn, I wouldn't have thought twice about reaching in for the shark by hand either. Did the tank end up in the same location?

 

[ken123]

On a Sunday night I was cleaning the circulation pumps, glass, was giving the tank a good going over\cleaning. On Monday came home from work, walked in the house, smelled something different and knew right away something was wrong. Went to the tank and it was all foggy. I found that the heater sensor flipped out of the tank. Don't know what the temp was since the thermometer fell behind some rock but it felt like a hot tub. I added sealed bags of ice to bring the temp down. In the end lost my head of Frogspawn that was about 10 inches across and a Candy Cane coral. Fish & snails where fine.

Today maybe 2 months later, still have tons of micro-life, spaghetti worms, baby bristle stars. The Candy Coral is starting to grow again. The Frogspawn looks pitiful and does not look like it will be coming back to life. The foggy water was probably due to the Frogspawn flesh dissolving in the water. There is now a tie-wrap holding the sensor in place.

 

[travis32]

Well here goes mine... I had a 55g tank and 14g sump. My tank had been operational for about 4-5 months, things were doing o.k. However, I had cyano everwhere. and I couldn't get my chemistry right. Alk and CA were constantly out of whack.. Even with dosing Kalkwater.

So, I had heard about the concept of kalk stirrirs.. Well, the idiot in me, decided that if others do it I can. (not knowing what others were doing...) I decided to put a powerhead in my top off to mix the kalk into ther water.

Well, day 1 using this method, I noticed that the cyano started backing off and the water looked clearer than ever..... I was impressed. So, Day 2, cyano was almost completely irradicated, things looked fine. Look at tank morning of day 3 and tank is nothing but a white cloud....

Read that usually the cloud dissipates after a few hours and is harmless. I had shut off the powerhead and top off. Get home end of day 3 and the cloud is still there - 8-10 hours later... AAAAH! I decided to do an ammonia test. to verify the tank status..

It was the darkest green, off the charts, and the chart went to 8.0ppm. Thankfully I had only one fish in there as my blenny had jumped out before that. He liked to jump into the sump... That time he missed....

So, I had a marine betta, his head was pressed against the glass and breathing extremely heavy. I felt terrible for him. He was my first fish. How do you catch a fish in a white cloud though and a tank full of rock. I inserted the net hoping to get lucky, the fish swam off... I left the net in and came back 10 minutes later. The betta was again pressed against the glass. I put the net over him no issue this time. OUt of the water he squirmed a little, but for the most part was dieing or dead.

I placed him in my QT, no acclimation nothing, just threw him in. It was clean cycled water. The only chance he had. I had no idea if the SG was the same or not. PH, etc. He went in. Immediately swam for cover and didn't come out for 3 days not even for food. On the third -4 th day, I about cried overjoyed, he started coming out for flake food!

I lost every coral, and pretty much everything, rocked reeked like crazy smelling up the whole house. Had tons of mushrooms so I'm sure it was them that reeked!

I scrubbed the rock down and the waste water from scrubbing turned black after only scrubbing around half the rock. Then I rinsed it with cleaner water, and then placed in a new bin of fresh salt water to cycle. within 24 hours, the brand new fresh saltwater was up to 2.0ammonia, and the phosphates were well over 1.0ppm.

I cycled the rock for 4 -5 weeks and said screw this, I used it as an excuse to upgrade to a 125g. The 125g has been operational with the dead rock for 5 months now and has ressurrected completely. Some algae issues due to reusing the rock, but, it's massively come back to life fan worms, coraline, everything.

It's quite amazing.

Lesson: Be careful when using kalkwater. It's a great supplement, but be careful! Oh and 'Frac' the indestructable Marine betta now is the proud owner of some prime reef real estate in my 125g. He's doing awesome and wouldn't trade him for the world.

 

[thelizardkin]

I have a 400 gallon reef and a few years back i went in to check on the tank and all the fish were on the ground dead or dying and the corals were retracted we did all we could but over the corse of that day we lost every fish but not one invert or coral we still don't know what happened

 

[AfricaOffroad]

My last brain fade was about 2 weeks ago.
Set up a 60G QT tank in the garage. Actually 2 tanks joined via a gravity overflow. Put in a small 250G per H pump to circulate water between then. About 2 days later I walk into the garage to hear water. The small lower tank water level had dropped to about 50%


????
How is that possible? One of the tanks must have sprung a leak?
No! The idiot who did the pipework, that's me, forgot the basics and that is to drill an anti siphon hole in the transfer piping. I've done a lot of systems, this is elementry stuff, but for whatever reason, on this mickey mouse set up, I forgot to do it.

Best part is the system sits on a big wooden chest of drawers. Every drawer was full of water, I had a pile of equipment and kit in there, it was all floating in sea water!

Lets just say, I wasnt impressed with myself.
Lots of muttering and cursing as I did the unplanned cleanup in my pyjamas