I'm on a farm with livestock. There is no end to what can go wrong. When my wife and I have to be gone I arrange for a friend that is farm savy to come stay at our place to do barn chores and keep an eye on the fences. I've trained him in basic aquarium maintenance and, most importantly, he always has a number to reach me so I can talk him through anything he isn't familiar with.
That said, I once had to go for a week long conference/workshop in Montana and was away from phones for a good portion of that week as most of the work shops were in a wilderness area. My wife was watching the aquarium. When I got back around phones again I called home. She was in a near panic because the pump on the skimmer wasn't running right.
I told her to look just above the sump where there are two power strip/surge protectors with all the electrical components plugged in. There is a well thought out order to the plugs so that I don't have to think about which one goes to what.
I talked her through unplugging the skimmer, assuming it would be fine for two more days until I got home to check it out. The choice language and banging I heard over the phone was funny, at the time.
When I got home two days later I discovered that she had not only unplugged the skimmer, but also the heater. She said she pulled that plug first, but nothing seemed to happen so she didn't plug it back in. (That's when a bit of training in Buddhist philosophy comes in handy...)
The main tank was at 70 degrees, which is about where the woodstoves were keeping the house during the daytime. I lost a Foxface, a Flame Angel, a Hammer Coral, an Open Brain, most of my snails and hermits and my Emerald Crab. Of course, the water was in terrible shape as she had not removed anything that died and she did manage to get the skimmer unplugged (it only needed to be adjusted!).
Is there a silver lining to every cloud? A hair algae outbreak I had been fighting for two months died off completely, and stayed gone. My False Percula, Lawnmower Blennie and my Psychedelic Mandorin made it just fine, as did the rest of my soft and LPS corals.
The moral: If you are desparate to get rid of hair algae, go away for a week or so. It works.
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