Walked into a disaster (almost)!!

First off a little history:

Moved a few months ago to a new house and tank move went fairly easy BUT...

Was having a bit of a GHA prob due to my tap water having LOTS of TDS compared to where I used to live so decided to run my old canister filter with chemi-pure elite and purigen and on the output, hooked up my old UV sterilizer along with now exclusively using RO/DI. So the GHA has almost become non existant but still been running the canister just in case but plan was to disconnect it this past weekend and run my fuge/sump exclusively from now on.

SO, got home from work on Friday evening and heard a buzzing sound coming from the basement...

I opened the door to the stairs and heard what sounded like a dry pump!!!! I quickly jumped downstairs to find my 65 was apx 4" below the fill line!!!!

I killed the power to the tank and quickly ran over to see what happened - turns out the output fitting from the UV somehow cracked and was spraying water directly behind the tank!
I disconnected everything and of course had to clean the floor (lost apx. 15 gal total I would say including what came from the sump) which took a while and actually didn't do much damage except for a few water stains where it pooled a little.

After the clean up, went and purchased a dehumidifier just to get any remaining moisture out and then disconnected all the canister and related from the tank and refilled with new water I had waiting for my water change (good thing I had a decent amount stored!).

SOOOO... Was an exciting Friday night I must say - could have been a lot worse though! I am only guessing but I think the leak started sometime in the late afternoon because if it was something that would have started earlier I would have been cleaning more like 30-40 gallons!!

As of now tank is doing fine and no issues, basement is pretty much back to normal and UV is in the trash!

Still have no idea why the fitting cracked and at this point don't really care - Just thought I'd share my experience with the wonderful world of reefing!

 

Bad news. Glad to hear you came out OK in the end.

 

The good news was that it was in the basement. I just had this happen to me too. I still don't know 100% what happened, but I came down in the morning to a terrible sound. Luckily I only lost a few gallons the return pump ended up being fine.

 

Oh man sorry to hear that!

I gotta say it's one of the worst sounds to hear IMO - dry pump=panic!

 

Thanks! Could have been worse and still don't know how the fitting cracked like that?!?!

 

This is so so true.

I came downstairs one morning to hear that sound. The rest of the family was up and didn't say anything. My wife said she didn't notice!!

I only lost a few gallons behind the tank due to a filter sock being above he rim of my sump.