The story of my system crash

[dabandit]

Trying to be more social,so here's a story for you. Had a beautiful softie tank stuffed from end to end cost me...god I dont want to know lol. Went away for 2 weeks leaving my tank in the care of my brother,I instructed him on how to top off my sump and shut it down in an emergency situation.
Well...a snail crawls his way down the overflow pipe blocking supply to my sump,he panics and starts topping off my sump until of course my display overflows,he then panics and shuts down the sump power but doesnt close my valves Ok...he leaves ,the snail lets loose (dont forget my display is now overfilled and he must have topped off my empty sump) down the snail goes into the sump along with about 12ish gallons of water. Ok he returns next day to find this mess on my LAMINATE floors,he panics and drains water from my display thinking its leaking ,got it down just bellow my koralias before he realised this wasnt the issue. At this point he shut down the valves unplugged my koralia and walked away. With no flow ,filtration and I suspect overfeeding........I came home to 100% die off half empty tank and buckling laminate floors. My poor brother was near tears trying to explain to me what exactlly had happend. Well there you have it thats my crash story,feel free to share.
P.S I know it was a snail because he was caught in my filter sock,only 1 way in there lol

[xtreme]

Just wondering why you have to close a valve when you shut your sump down? Because of back siphoning?

[Trigger Man]

I think I would have had to kill my brother. I always leave the number to a couple of my trusted fish stores with the person watching my tank and tell them to call the store if anything looks off. I hope this takes care of any issues, as then someone could come down from the shop to take a look. On a note this did not work well for me this spring, as I went away for a month, and when I got back I had lost 12 fish and some coral. What happened is that I had put some buckets of water by the sump to be added as needed, and then I had buckets located elsewhere for water changes. In the end the fresh water was used in the first water change (hence lowering salinity) and then the rest of the salt water was used for topups and additional water changes (I had figured 3 water changes while I was gone needed to be done). Needless to say by the time I got back into Calgary the salinity level was very high and this did in a bunch of my fish and coral.
I was mad, but kept telling myself atleast I had room to buy more stuff.

[dabandit]

Normally you dont,the overflow level will stop it,but the overflow was plugged and the sump continued to pump water into display which was being fed by my brother topping it off. It was filled to maximum which is about 2'' over my overflow,I approximate 12g. Also he must have topped off sump yet again because it should have been able to handle even the extra capacity. It was a fool proof system...or so I thought lol

It was for the best though,gave me a chance to try sps again and a blank canvas lol

[dabandit]

That sucks about the salt,my wife does that all the time with my top up but lucky for me its only about 1/2 gal a day lol,now I have a bucket that says salt on it,when in doubt give er a taste lol

[fdiddy]

That sucks about the salt,my wife does that all the time with my top up but lucky for me its only about 1/2 gal a day lol,now I have a bucket that says salt on it,when in doubt give er a taste lol

lol nice. I had a problem one time when I added powerheads to my 40. Lost 3 out of 4 fish, luckily the system had no coral yet. To this day i have no idea what did it, i tested the water for stray voltage, every test kit i had... who knows. stress maybe. Losing livestock always sucks.

[fishoholic]

That sucks! Glad to see you still have a positive outlook though.