15 gallons dumped on my electronics cabinet

[Chad]

On Thursday night, I awoke at 1 AM to the smell of burning electronics - never, never, never a good sign. I went downstairs to find 15 gallons of water on the floor that had overflowed from the tank sitting atop my electronics cabinet. I have spent most of the last day and a half recovering from this problem - at this point I am back and running sans fuge.

 

Any time something in my control fails, after I get things back under control, I always take a step away and evaluate what happened to find out what I did right and what I could have done better. I have a couple of takeaways at the end that I encourage everyone to look at and then take a close look at your setup.

 

The Setup:

 

This is an older picture of my setup (circa 2010), but it clearly shows my "flow-through" setup. The return pump sends water to the refugium on left which then flows through a 2" siphon from the fuge to the display. I periodically (1-2x per year) clean out the siphon, it was last done early summer 2011.

 

Since I have two cabinets, I keep all of my tank electronics, plugs, etc. in the fuge cabinet.

 

The Problem:

 

At 1 AM in the morning this blockage caused 15 gallons of salt water to infiltrate the electronics cabinet.

 

The Targets:

3 MH ballasts

Apex controller and display

2 EB8s for the Apex

Internet adapter for the Apex

LED power supply

Liter Meter dosing pump with 2 pump modules

MP40 controller

Four DC power supplies for ecotech and tunze products

MP40 dry side

 

The Casualties:

Internet adapter for the Apex

Liter Meter dosing pump

Three DC power supplies

MP40 dry side

 

The Evaluation:

My overflow setup from the fuge to the display way failure prone. I made a recent system change to add some finicky fish, so a few months back I started feeding the system 4-6x per day, which has resulted in a micro-fauna explosion of growth. I was aware of the failure-prone nature of my siphon and performed maintenance on it a couple times a year to keep it going. We make changes all the time without fully understanding all of the consequences.

 

Lesson Learned: That being said, any overflow could be prone to this type of blockage as the pineapple sponges that formed the bulk of the blockage prefer high flow and low light areas - exactly the conditions in just about any overflow. This system should have been set up with a less failure-prone overflow. I will drill it and put a dry safety overflow in place.

 

My electronics cabinet largely escaped damage. The things that were damaged were on the outside of the cabinet (gaming adapter, liter meter, MP40 dry side) or were "low hanging fruit." All of the power supplies were of the standard lap-top dc power adapter variety, like this:

 

 

We all learn in reef keeping 101 about drip loops. I had them installed on all of my equipment and all plugs were installed high on the inside of the cabinet. However, on the power supplies, I bundled the whole string of wires together with the ac/dc converter (the box part) and hanging at essentially the low point. So when the water dripped into the cabinet, these were at the bottom of the drip loop, which caused most of them to be severely damaged (two were in lucky locations and were salvageable).

 

Lesson Learned: AC/DC power supplies should be protected along with plugs and equipment, place the wrapped up cords high and out of the way from potential water sources. Equipment that doesn't need to be attached to the outside of an aquarium cabinet shouldn't be. Not sure what to say about the vortech dry side, buy tunze maybe?

 

Final Thought: This could have been really bad. Saltwater and electricity do not mix, 15 gallons of water could have easily caused a fire that may have destroyed my home and potentially killed me and my family. I did some things right here that saved it from being really bad, but there was some water damage and also at least $500 in equipment damage.

 

I strongly encourage you all to check your overflows regularly and inspect your drip loops for vulnerabilities.

 

Happy reefing all!

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Wow nice pic of the inside of the pvc!

[FishLuver]

Thanks for sharing... I having been following your other string, and am glad that no serious damage occurred to your family and home. You have brought up some valuable points that I will incorporate in my system. Thanks... Tom

[Max Ivers]

Sorry to hear this happened Chad. But I guess it's a good lesson to everyone about safety in our hobby. The other day I dropped a light in my tank while my hands were in it...got a decent shock but my GFCI saved my life.

 

Hope everything goes smoothly for you from now on, good luck!

[Jim]

Chad, is anything salvageable from the MP40 dry side? I need a couple of internal parts if you're willing to let them go.

[Chad]

Jim, I'm not sure. I am debating sending it back to ecotech to see if there is anything they can do with it (they gave me an RMA number and all that), although it almost seemed like they were discouraging it when I talked to them.

 

If I hang onto it, you are more than welcome to tear it apart and see what you can salvage... Now that it has dried out, it looks really bad with lots of black salt crystals inside.

[mogurnda]

Thanks for transforming a mess into a lesson for all of us. We try to think of all the possible sources of failure, but there always seems to be one more lurking somewhere.

[BowieReefer84]

How long did it take the PVC to clog that much? Years?

[Jim]

Jim, I'm not sure. I am debating sending it back to ecotech to see if there is anything they can do with it (they gave me an RMA number and all that), although it almost seemed like they were discouraging it when I talked to them.

 

If I hang onto it, you are more than welcome to tear it apart and see what you can salvage... Now that it has dried out, it looks really bad with lots of black salt crystals inside.

 

Thanks, Chad. I'm just looking for the wave lock washer that I lost when I replaced the bearings in my MP40. Unfortunately, they don't offer any internal components on their website. I have heard that Ecotech is pretty generous when you send damaged stuff back to them.

[Steve175]

I would send the MP40 to Echotech. They will fix it at a reasonable cost (it will be near new for much much less than a new pump would cost; usually $100 for the mother board replacement). I have sent them MP40s 4 separate times [and you're right, although I still use the MP40s, I have since bought Tunzes] I agree also with drilling your refugium for a bulkhead; will be relatively easily done and much more reliable long-term. Thanks for sharing so that we can all learn from your experience.

[Chad]

How long did it take the PVC to clog that much? Years?

 

You would think, right? No, I cleaned it out sometime over the summer - this was a bit over 6 months worth of growth. Oddly, when I cleaned it out it was no where near this bad. Between then and now I have started feeding more frequently and raised the water temperature... That's it!

 

Go check your overflow drains!!

 

Ecotech was good to me already. I called them to talk about it, they gave me a pretty big discount on a new dry side and threw in an upgrade to the ES model for free.

 

I was on the fence about returning it, but I think you convinced me, Steve. Who knows, maybe I'll end up with a relatively low-cost spare.