Trying to see how many things can break at the same time

[paul b]

It started out as a great day.  Last night we went out to dinner on the boat with friends and today I was going to start bringing stuff home from the boat and get ready for winter.
I go past my reef tank and notice that it is very quiet.  I don't hear the pumps but the lights are on.   The GFI is tripped for the pumps.  No big deal I go to put on the GFI (or GFCI as you guys call them) and it doesn't go on.   Alright, I will fix that later and I plug the pump into another outlet.  One pump still doesn't work so I remove it figuring that is what tripped the GFI and I go to install another powerhead.  These are Korilia's with that magnet that you put on the outside of the glass.   The magnet falls behind the tank and the tank is built into a closet under a staircase.   Of course the thing falls to the most in accessable part of the closet, all the way under the stairs in Never Never land.  I don't want to pull everything out of the closet so I get on my hands and knees and start crawling under the tank between old 8 MM projectors and forgotten wedding slides.  I see the magnet and reach for it.  While I am reaching, I also find some old forgotten fish mummies that could be from the Nixon administration.  I stretch for the magnet and WHOOOOSH.   Niagara Falls starts pouring onto my back.  Where is it coming from?  I thought I broke the tank.  OMG it is pouring all over me like those wierdios fall all over Lady GaGa.  I am instantly soaked but I am still on my belly in this closet stuck between my wedding movies and 200 LP records from the 60s.   Probably a bunch of Four Seasons, Elvis and Spiral Staircase records.   Now as that is not enough, I am getting shocked.  The water is pouring over my wiring and then on me.  I pull myself back as fast as I could, which isn't very fast and I see the source of the water.   The 3/4" valve that I have on the bottom of my home made 5' skimmer broke off clean.  I must have hit it with my back as I was inch worming into the closet.   I open that valve to do water changes.  I stick my finger into the hole and stop the water.  But the pumps are still pumping water into the skimmer, I am getting shocked as my socks are soaked and my wife is out.  OMG now what am I going to do?  I pull out the plugs on the pumps so no more water goes into the skimmer but there is still 5 gallons of water in the skimmer and maybe 7 gallons on me.  I hear these splashing sounds as now the tank is about 3" low (I don't have a sump)  I lay on the floor in the flood and with my toes I am just able to reach a bucket that I removed to get into the closet.  I slide it over to the skimmer and let out the remaining water.  Now, for the moment no water is leaking so I go and change my clothes and get some towels.  I unplug the rest of the wires so I stopped getting shocked.  Not everything in that closet is on a GFI.  I want the water flowing into the skimmer because it feeds my algae trough that is filled with tiny tube worms and it took years for that to happen.  I can just about hear them screaming.   I look for a valve in my parts places (I can build a space shuttle with the stuff I have laying around.  A small space shuttle but a space shuttle none the less.
But no valve the right size.  Al I have that will fit in the hole is a barb fitting.  So I remove the part of the broken valve and put in the barb fitting.  Then I get a hose and put it on the barb fitting hoping that the hose is long enough to reach the top of the skimmer and I will be able to temporarilly turn on the skimmer water.  The hose isn't long enough so I search around and find another hose that fits tightly into it.  I put it all together and turn on the pump.  Great, i could hear the sigh of relief from the tube worms and brittle stars as they took their first few breaths.   Then disaster struck again.  The two hoses  I put together came apart.  Water shooting everywhere, I grab the hose and again stick my finger in it.  I have a small flashlight on the tank edge and it fits snugly into the hose.  Fixed again.  But now the water in the tank is about 4" down.  I don't have any water mixed and the powerhead that is working is splashing water on the walls as it is almost out of the water.  I pull the plug and say a Novena to Saint Peter that my wife doesn't come back home.
Then I mix some ASW and throw it in the tank.  I didn't test the salinity or mix it very well but from experience I know it was close and the hermit crabs could mix it up if they want.   The fish will get over it.   Now  all seems to be well, I run to the hardware store and buy a valve.  I replace the valve and notice that half my LEDs are out.
OMG again.  Now what?   I have been meaning to re build that home made LED fixture but I wasn't planning to do it in the middle of Noah's flood.  So I remove the 5' LED fixture and test it.  Salt creep shorted 8 lights out.  But I am fairly smart and I have some LEDs.  I solder in new LEDs and while I am at it I re wired the thing into a plug so I can now un plug the fixture from the drivers and remove it on two pieces.  It was impossable for me to rmove this fixture myself as it is very long and is connected to a box of remote drivers.  Now everything seems to be working except I still can't get that GFI on.  My automatic DIY leak detector that shuts off the pumps in case of a skimmer overflow is soaked from the flood and I can't dry it.  I will have to build another one but it is no big deal.  Just something else to do in the midst of a flood when I could be working on my boat.
Now I can't find one bananafish or the very pregnant mandarin and figure they may be those dusty fish I found under the tank but they can be replaced and i didn't soak the carpet to much as the last time this happened I installed a barrier in the closet to keep the water from traveling out of the closet.  The animals don't seem to care that they had to mix their own water and almost everything is back to normal.  To fix my DIY leak detector and get that GFCI back on I will have to wait for everything to dry as I have to take the outlet apart and build a new leak detector.
My Ozonizer croaked yesterday and I have it completely pulled apart on my workbench but the reaction chamber is rotted out and I am not sure if I can build another one.  I have parts from two units but only one reaction chamber.
I can't wait to lay on my new Sleep Number bed tonight to see if it explodes.
:wavehand:

[lnevo]

Ouch! When it rains it pours!!!

[YHSublime]

Ouch! When it rains it pours!!!

 

Literally! Glad you didn't panic, and have the knowledge, and parts on hand to build a small space shuttle. It's events like this that are enough to make people leave the hobby forever. I have said a few Novenas to Saint Peter that my wife doesn't come back home.

[AlanM]

Before you head to the hardware store, I suggest bumping some more things preemptively just to see what will break.  

 

I never knew you didn't have a sump.  How do you move water out of the tank and through things like the skimmer, empty biopellet reactor, and stuff and back in to that algae trough on the way back into the tank?

[DuffyGeos]

Sorry to hear that you have had a bad day. Glad you didn't get fried as you wiggled around in the electrified saltwater.

[paul b]

 

I never knew you didn't have a sump.  How do you move water out of the tank and through things like the skimmer, empty biopellet reactor, and stuff and back in to that algae trough on the way back into the tank?

You are not supposed to know a lot of things about me, I want to be an Enigma.  Besides sumps were not invented when I started the tank in 71.

I empty water from the tank with that valve that broke.  You can see it on the bottom of the skimmer in that picture, and, no, it is not brass, but plastic.  Water enters the surface skimmer which has two floats on it so it just skims the top surface, I don't like those cut out things that look like the top of a castle because they don't just skim the surface.  Water also enters my surface skimmer from below.  From there it gets pumped through the empty bio pellet reator which is just there to house brittle stars.  It's like a 5 star hotel.  From there it enters the HOB, 5' tall skimmer and then to the algae trough which is actually totally filled with tube worms, then it gravity feeds the 5' trough and gently cascades over a screen to the tank.  Why would I need a sump?

 

Surface skimmer with pump.

 

 

 

Those overflows and sumps with socks all you guys use is very new.

[YHSublime]

Paul, if you ever started a new tank, which doesn't make sense because you have had this one setup since the Civil War, you might find that you would enjoy the benefits of a sump! To better help you understand: A sump is like a 5 star hotel for all of your equipment, like that skimmer and heater, and it could even hold that brittle star hostel of yours! I personally don't use socks, as my place never gets too cold, but I think I will try it, because I hear they are pretty efficient!.

[Squishie89]

Before you head to the hardware store, I suggest bumping some more things preemptively just to see what will break.  

This really cracked me up

[dave w]

Wow, Paul.  I've had a lot of crazy things happen to me but never so many at the same time.  Only a very experienced electrician could have so many 110v appliances below so much water without being plugged into GFIs!  

 

I hope your system recovers and you can vacuum that water out of the carpet.  It was mistakes like these that made my wife so adamant against indoor tanks that she allowed me to put it in an outdoor greenhouse.  Maybe you could get so lucky.

[zygote2k]

I'm reading the story and hearing the theme from "Sanford and Son" in my head.

[YHSublime]

I'm reading the story and hearing the theme from "Sanford and Son" in my head.

Awesome

[iceet]

Paul b thank you for sharing your story so openly and frankly. I respect the fact that you didn't take these little series of accidents too seriously and let them get to your head. Many a hole has been punched into drywall over reef tank accidents and catastrophes. I have been reading your posts for a while and your wisdom really shows. I was impressed with the speed and instinct in which you reacted to the crisis at hand.

 

Since this is my first post on these forums, I have had my own mea culpa Homer Simpson moment recently that I would like to share with you guys.

 

I was beginning my routine weekly water change in which I use a 16 gallon shop-vac to vacuum water from my sump before replacing it with mixed saltwater. I prefer using the shop-vac to siphoning water into 5 gallon buckets because it is much faster due to the larger capacity of the vac itself and the speed at which it sucks up water. So I begin sucking the water out, making sure not to accidentally suck up any inverts as the suction of the shop-vac is quite powerful and my sump is kind of an invert-only tank with 5 different shrimp. All of a sudden my socks get wet. I'm like what the hel. Water begins pooling up under the shop vac. I immediately turn it off but by then it has already sucked up at least 5 gallons. I then realize what is going on. To empty the shop vac, there is a cap underneath that you unscrew so the water drains out. You do this outside of course. Well the last time I took off the cap to drain it outside I forgot to put it back on. I immediately put my hand over the hole but by then I am too late, it has already emptied most of its contents. Thankfully the cap was nearby, on top of the shop vac on a groove it fits into. Murphy's law didn't get me that time. I screw the cap back onto the bottom of the shop vac so the remaining water doesn't spill out. 4 gallons of filfy reef tank saltwater are on the floor of my basement. Luckily however I was proactive and laid out several plastic office mats underneath the aquarium and surrounding it when I first set it up. These are the kinds of mats you can get from Staples or Office Depot. However it is not enough, water flowed all the way to the edge of the office mat island I made and onto my thick basement carpet. I grabbed some towels and immediately put them over the spot where the water spilled onto the carpet. At this point my pumps, protein skimmer, and canister filter with only carbon are all off. I decide to finish the water change first to get the tank operational again. Then begins the real work. After mopping up as much of the water as I could with towels I grabbed the regular vacuum and vacuumed the wet spot for a while. I mean a while. I got it as dry as I possibly could. Next I got my space heater and put it over the wet spot.

 

It dried up in a few days. The basement still smells a little fishy but it is dissipating slowly (I think). Looks like there is no permanent damage, I got lucky this time. But it goes to show you we there's a little Homer Simpson in all of us. Never underestimate the power we have to screw ourselves over.

Edited September 14, 2014 by iceet

[paul b]

YH, I never needed a sump as those are for Sissies and Girly Men.  It is just another thing to break or crawl behind to look for mummified fish. Besides they were not invented when me and Lincoln set up the tank and built the house around it.

All is fixed and I don't get stressed.  That is also for Girly Men.

I just need to fix the ozonizer as I know my hermit crabs won't do it for me but that, and the leak detector on the GFCI is not important now as I am very busy this week and won't get to it.  Maybe not until the winter.  The tank is doing very well and none of the fish got excited.

When I was getting shocked I thought that if I died there, under my fish tank, I hoped my wife loved me enough to have my ashes scattered over a bunch of Supermodels.    

 

Iceet, nice to meet you.  Nice flood you had there also.  It is fine as real Men have a flood occasionally, that proves you are doing it correctly.  If you never spill any water, and I hate to use this phraise 3 times in the same post, but that would mean you are a Girly Man and to cautious. (I could have used the phraise Sissified Mary) People who never experience floods are the same people with sterile tanks who quarantine even the air they put into the tank and they make anyone who comes over to see the tank wear surgical masks.   

[Rob A]

Sounds like fun! We had some fun here last night. I couldn't track down a burning smell in the basement (smelled like a ballast in the shop area) the wife thought it best to call the fire dept and see if they could check it out. I called the non-emergency number and told them what I thought was going on and several minutes later 2 fire trucks show up. They hooked up hoses (hydrant is like 1/4 mile away) and dragged them into the basement. About 6 or 7 guys in full gear came in with a couple thermal imaging cameras and after a bit of searching declared it was a ballast. PHEW!!!

On a side note, it's amazing to see how many of your neighbors, who you never see, come outside when there are fire trucks there.

[paul b]

I also had almost that same experience here when we were having a lightning storm.  I was standing in my garage watching the rain when a bolt of lightning hit my house about 30' from me.  It hit the drier vent.  Flames started coming out of the vent and I yelled for my wife to shut off the drier.  She said it was off, so I ran inside and the metal vent pipe looked like a light filament, it was glowing red hot and the stuff on the shelve next to it was smouldering and filling the house with smoke.  I put out the fire and like you, I stupidly called the fire dept.  They came with 3 hook and ladders and about 30 firemen in full riot gear just waiting to demolish my house.  About 6 of them wanted to come in, soaking wet with axes, hoses, the Jaws of Life, dynamite, cro bars and anything else they could carry.  I yelled WAIT a minute.  I put the little fire out and I just want "one" of you to go in and inspect with your little meter to see if anything was burning.  So I let one soaking wet guy in and the rest of them were impatiently waiting to demolish something.  When he was done, I went outside and one Jiboni had the hose in the drier vent on the outside wall and he was just about to flood my house.  I almost tackled him and yanked the hose out.  Like, are you kidding me!  The little fire is out and I don't need a flood.  If the house burns or gets flooded what is the difference?  Isn't it a little better to save the house from the fire "and" a not needed flood.  Like Really. 

[YHSublime]

We had a similar situation at my place of work. Small fire was put out with a fire extinguisher, but the fire department did $30,000 worth of damage. The actual fire damage was only about $400.

 

$15,000 of it was water damage, after the let try hoses loose after the fire had already been extinguished.

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Well at least we didn't see you in the newspaper under the title "Man killed by home made 40 year old fish tank". Or better yet "Stubborn aquarist murdered by his ghetto rigged 40 year old reef tank."

 

Its amazing how you can turn a post about braking a valve off into a short story. When (or if rather) the tank crashes or breaks we will have a novel to read.

[paul b]

It will definitely be a saga.  

[smallreef]

I need Paul to help me write my papers about Shakespeare's tragedies,lol I get like 3 pages and go blank and stop...I'm sure he could make a great 10 pager about Macbeth or Hamlet!

[paul b]

Do you want to fail?  I have not read Macbeth or Hamlet in 50 years and I wasn't crazy about it then.  They didn't even have fish tanks, but if they did, you would run out of ink before you listed all the tragedies they could have.  You would have been able to write about their black ich, white ich, velvet, dropsy, fin rot, cyano, bryopsis, diatoms, pop eye, etc, that alone would encompass 9 chapters, then you could dwell a few pages on their love life even though there were no Supermodels.  But then you could add a chapter on how they wish there was one or two Supermodels just to lessen the impact of some of their tragedies such as black ich or cyano.  Then if you really wanted a passing grade you could mention how Macbeth would day dream of having a Supermodel take care of his make believe reef tank.  Then he would dream about a day when electricity would be invented so he could heat and light it without having to go all the way down to Ye Olde whale oil store around the corner to buy whale oil, then you could digress into the woes and horrors the whales went through just to supply Europeans with oil to light their reef tanks.  Then maybe Hamlet would meet Maid Paris Hilton and he would hire her to tank sit his reef tank while he went to Euro Disney for a week and how she doesn't know an amphipod from a manta ray and she crashes the tank but doesn't know how to contact you so she hires Robin Hood to bring you a message.  And how Robin Hood was busy texting so he sends Frier Tuck who is to fat to make the long journey and the message gets lost.  But Maid Marrian finds it and runs to Hamlet's house which is situated in a hamlet right near her castle and saves your tank by installing a calcium reactor and bio pellets.

So see how easy it is to write about Hamlet and Macbeth.

[ErikS]

I don't understand all the excitement, sounds like a normal "reef tank fix" to me...............it never seems to stop at one thing

[paul b]

So this morning I figured I would fix the GFCI DIY leak detector while the cleaning girl is here.  I "carefully" crawled partially under the tank and installed a new Home made leak detector and pump shut off.  That only takes 10 minutes as it is made out of a film container and a couple of stainless steel screws.  (Film is like Scotch Tape but pictures stick to it) So that is working and I had to hurry up because I had a funeral to go to upstate about an hour away.  So I go to the funeral and it was a short ceremony at the gravesite, I say my good bye's and head home.  It was a beautiful day so I had my windows open and Frankie Valley of the Four Seasons was entertaining me on the radio.   A car passes me and I hear that he is getting a flat tire.  You know that thump, thump of the tire going flat.  I am thinking to myself, poor guy, lousy place to get a flat because we are just about on the Whitestone Bridge between Queens and the Bronx.   The guy pulls ahead, and I still hear the thump, thump and my car starts to swerve.  Oh Great.  It's me.  And all my tires are fairly new, like a year old.  I pull off onto the swampy weeds and put on my emergency blinkers.  I was a mechanic way before I was an electrician so I have changed plenty of tires.  But I am always prepared for emergencies and I have a can of that flat fix stuff that I bought about 20 years ago and never used.  I keep it for my wife. I screw it on to the tire and figure I will be back on the road in 5 minutes.  I push the button and this sticky white gunk squirts out all over the place.   Every where but in the tire.  The tube on the thing is broken and very little of the gunk is going in the tire which is flat as a Supermodels belly.  This foamy stuff is all over the can and the rest of it is on me.  Skanky stuff.  I also found out another fact today.  Wasps really like flat fixer stuff.  I am already covered in weeds, cars are whizzing by 6" from me at 70 miles an hour and every wasp in the Bronx smells this tire stuff and is heading for me.  But when they land on it, they stick to it.  I think they liked it better where it was on me than the tire, I guess I smell better.  I don't want to scrape this stuff off of me with my clean hand because it is nasty stuff and the dying wasps imbedded in with their stingers facing straight up didn't make it look any more appetizing.  I also didn't want them to sting my clean hand.  So I get some weeds and scrape it off on them.  I look in my car and find a rag.  I got it and try to clean my hands of wasps which keep flying over to investigate.  Now that the flat fixer didn't work, I need to find the jack.
The jack was never used, as a matter of fact I don't remember ever using the jack that comes with the car because I have a large mechanic jack in my garage and for some reason, every time I had to remove the tire, I am near my garage.  So I am thinking, this jack that came with the car is never going to work.  Jacks never work that come with cars.  So I stick it under the car and try to jack it up.  The jack works very well and is very easy to use but I am in dirt and the jack is just squishing into the ground.  I tromp through the weeds looking for a board to put under the jack and I must have found a dozen discarded tires so I don't feel to bad and I am not the only one that got a flat.  I find a board and stick it under the jack and raise the car.  I remove the tire and have to crawl under the car to get out the spare tire that is one of those silly donuts and is mounted under the car.  That tire is worn bald so the guy who had the car before me must have had a lot of flats.  But I put it on the car in the midst of all the wasps eyeing me for lunch and I lower the car. 
All done.  I get in the car turn up the radio,and wait for a clearing to get back on the highway.
I see an opening and I gun the engine.  I am in dirt so the car squeels as it tries to get back on the road.  I look in the mirror to see a car coming up on me very fast.  I can't get the car up to speed and it is squeeling and swirving.
Wasps hitting the window and Frankie Valley yelling "Big Girls Don't Cry".
I just about manage to get the car off the road again, just as the oncoming car veers off into the next lane.  I Think I have another flat.  Great, I again put the emergency flashers on and try to put on the emergency brake.  But to my surprise, it is already on.  That is why I couldn't get the car back on the road.  I left the emergency brake on, Stupid wasps.  Like Duh.   So I take off the emergency brake, wave good bye to the wasps, Fankie Valley is singing "My Eyes Adore you" and I get back on the road.   I take the car to a Firestone dealer because I have Firestone tires and I have the guarantee for roadside hazards.  So 3 hours later I got a free tire because of the guarantee that cost me $50.00.  Their definition of free is a little different than my definition.  But the good news is that the Firestone Dealer is right around the corner from my favorite LFS and I went in and got a new female mandarin because the other one jumped out.  She was very pregnant and my male is a wimp so she was pregnant to long and became egg bound.  If I could have caught her, I would have done a cesarean as I have performed a few times before and never lost a patient, I am just not sure if Obamacare covers the procedure.

[DuffyGeos]

Paul,

 

So sorry to hear you lost that beautiful fat female Mandarin, how long had you had her?

 

That fix a flat almost never works after two or three years, but when it is new works pretty well.

[YHSublime]

Sorry for your loss, on both accounts.

No screen top on the tank (are screen tops for sissy men?)

I think the important message to take away from all this is that "Big Girls Don't Cry." You'll have that lady ripe in no time, your reef is a natural aphrodisiac.

[paul b]

I am not worried about the mandarin, she lived a good life although I only had her for a couple of years, and yes, tank covers are for Sissies.  If the fish want to jump out, it's their life