2/3 of my tank drained

Hello Everyone,

I came in late last night from a hard day of doing yard work, go downstaris to relax and enjoy my fish tank and here a loud noise coming from my fish tank. I turn on the light to find my Fluval canister filters output was laying on the floor and 2/3 if not more of my water has been drained from my 180 gallon Fowlr with a 75 gallon sump.

I only had about 70 gallons of RO Water, so after using that I just mixed tap water with salt and water conditioner to fill up the rest of my tank and my sump (probably around 40 - 50 gallons of tap water)

Here are my questions.

Should I do daily partial changes since I did not use all RO Water?

Will my live rock be OK, since most of it was out of the water (probably no longer than an hour or two)

I will no longer be using my Fluval FX5 to avoid anymore disasters. I am runing a filter sock and I do have as sponge, carbon, and biomax bags in my sump between the baffle.
I do not have a protein skimmer. Will I be OK until I get one since it is only a fowler?

Thanks for the help and any suggestions you can give me.

 

My thoughts were that: Having a sump really gives you no good reason to use the canniaster filter as well.

You can get flow with another PH, and the rest with sa sump.

Careful about the sponge, change it often and the sock to keep nitrates from forming too much.

Sorry about your mess. Fish OK? time to get some coral!

 

I think at this point it would be most important to watch your ammonia level as your liverock could have some die off.It would be wise to prep some water change water and also have something such as seachem's prime on hand should the ammonia level rise.A rise in phosphates and nitrates could happen from the use of tap(and possible die off)but this problem is secondary.It might be good to step up your w/c schedule to combat all of this but daily is probably not necessary.You should be fine for a while without a skimmer but if I were running a system that size I would be thinking of selling the fluval and using a good skimmer and possibly have reactors for biopellets and gfo.You already have a nice size sump so it would be no problem add.

 

Thanks for the replies.
As of this morning, my fish seemed to be OK. I guess only time will tell.
When I get home from work today, I should have about 65 - 70 gallons of RO water ready, so I will get it mixed up and ready to go.

Yeah, I will probably sell the fluval, to help pay for the protein skimmer that I want to get. Reef Octopus Diablo XS 200, but it is around $360.00.
I have two magdrive 7 return pumps and a hydor 4 PH, so hopefully I will be OK with flow. I might eventually get another PH down the road.

I will run by the pet store today to see if they have any of the seachem prime just in case I need it.

I will definitely step up my water changes. I will probably do a partial change this weekend then.

You do not realize how much water is in a tank until you have to clean it up. What a mess. I am just happy my tank is in my basement and really thankful my wife did not find out yet

 

Are you using RO or RODI???

 

Might be a good time to consider a controller with tank overflow sensor & water on floor sensor. I'm guessing your hose came off of filter?

 

RO/DI, sorry.
I was not aware of controllers with overflow sensors and water on the floor sensors. Where do you get these at? What is the average cost?
Sounds like it would be a wise investment.

 

There is a few controllers on the market. The cheaper popular one is reef keepers & lil more pricey but better is an Apex controller. The price depends on options you want with them. They can also have probes that have a digital readout for ph, salinity, temp. They control power heads & return pumps & a ton of things. I recently got an Apex used. But they can go from roughly $150- $350 starting with base packages.

 

There's also cheaper ways to keep tank or sump from over flowing with a cheap switch. Todd Sails can chime in on that one. He has threads for his set ups.

 

Thanks for your suggestions! I will definitely look into these for sure.
I do not think that I will have anymore flooding issues for awhile, as long as I am not using the canister filter.
If anyone is using a canister filter, take my advise and put your inlet near the top of your tank, so if you ever have an issue like I did it will not drain your whole tank.

I am just having a string of bad luck. After my fun aquatic adventure last night a rock hit my windshield on my way to work, so now I will have to pay to get that fixed too.

Hopefuly my luck will turn around soon.