Near Disaster While On Vacation

Hi Guys,

We just got back from vacation yesterday and I almost had a heart attack when I got home. I had someone looking after the fish and had asked them to feed the fish and make sure the top off bucket stayed full. I walked into the office and heard a hissing noise and saw that the tank had about five gallons missing. I looked at the sump and the center section was dry. The mag drive had run dry and seized up, so no flow. Luckily the vortech was still under water and was creating movement. The heater was also in the center section and was steaming. I immediately dumped a gallon of RO/DI water into the center section to cool the heater. I checked the salinity and it was around 1.028-1.029. I usually keep it at 1.025. I didn't check the temp of the tank, but had a back-up heater in the overflow corner. I called a few fish stores for a new pump but none had one. I took a closer look at the pump and it started to move. I took it apart and found that the rubber bushings in the propeller were gone. I luckily had an extra and dropped it in after cooling and cleaning the pump. I ran it for about 15 minutes in cold water just to make sure it was going to work. I also cleaned off the salt that had fused to the heater (which I wasn't sure that it was still working). I hooked the pump back up and slowly added some top off water to cover the pump. None of the fish or shrimp seemed to be affected. The coral looked a little rough, but I wasn't worried. I just didn't want to shock everything even more with a drastic drop in salinity. Over about 2 hours, I slowly added enough water until it was covering the mag drive. I needed about 3 gallons of salt water to add to the fill in the rest with the correct salinity. I mixed some up and let it sit. After about 5 hours, I had everything looking normal again. I think that the gfci on the top off was tripped somehow and none of the top off water was being added all week. The only thing that looks a little peeved is my xenia, which I am not worried about. I am going to add another mag drive and titanium heater to my back up system just in case and am looking into the Tunze osmolator instead of the one I am using now. Sorry for the long post. Just had to share my panic. Thanks!!!!

Regards,
Ivy

 

thats scary ivy. not pleasant to come home to after vacation. hoping everything works out for the best. and i think you need to find someone a little better to look after your tank, or just never take a vacation again.

 

+1 I agree. Sounds like you asked someone that was very undependable. Sorry for your near death experience. I would have had one of those too. I Hope it all works out.

 

I was just trying to keep an even head and not make things worse by panicking. Figuring out what happened still has me going. I don't plan on going on vacation anytime soon and will make sure I go over every single detail the next time around. Thanks!!!

 

IVY, I completely understand your situation. Vacations are different when you have a Water Bomb that could potentially go off at any time. I went on a cruize on the week before Christmas and I constantly thought about my tank and the wrong things that could happen. Luckily for me my next door neighbor took good care of my tank. Always tip the person that watches over your "Precious Golden Tank" so the next time you can feel a little more relaxed, IMO!!!!!!

 

The person was dependable but just didn't know that the water in the top off bucket wasn't being used. I have a few ideas for next time.

 

I went away on a cruise for a week a while ago... I had over-filled the wet/dry sump with a 2 extra gallons of water before leaving. so when I got back still had enough water in the sump to keep mag drive sumerged. only thing my fish got hungry and at about 20% of my toadstool leather coral...

maybe use a non-gcfi outlet for your auto-topoff when your away on your next vacation.

 

How could the person not notice that the tank was missing water, the sump was nearly dry and the auto top off water wasn't going down? That's kind of common sense if you ask me. Sorry for your troubles.

 

Oh no, that's horrible!! I'm glad you were able to take care of the problem before anything tragic happened. But I hope you had a wonderful vacation!

 

I'm glad you have a happy ending. Whenever I left, the boys that took care of all my tanks always did an excellent job. I made it easy for them though. All food was already comparmentalized in pill organizers that I got at the drugstore for each day of the week. I had a checklist for each tank. When on vacation, I'm usually in the middle of nowhere with a horse under my butt and cell phones don't even work. As a result, I left a phone list of several people from my reef club to call if there's a problem and they don't know how to fix it. There's a lot of ways you can help others take care of your tanks. For instance, one item on my checklist was make sure the water level in the sump is between the two pieces of tape I put on it. There was a Maximum Level and a Minimum level. On my big tanks I had pinpoint pH and salinity monitors and the checklist told them what the levels should be.