Massive tank death

[PoonTang]

Well we went away camping for 2 days and sometime during that period one of my powerbars in my stand decided to short out internally and it tripped my GFI. Everything in the tank is run off that 1 circuit except for my lights , ATO ( which of course kept pumping Kalk into my sump until that overflowed onto the Hardwood floors) and 1 heater. Needless to say as soon as i walked through the front door I knew there was a problem. The house just reeks of death. Everything is dead, Livestock, corals, crabs, starfish, snails, even all my bristle worms. Wow I never knew I had that many! Well Its time to begin a total teardown and cleanup, going to be a busy night. This hobby is so depressing sometimes.

[Chin_Lee]

Yikes - always seems to be that time of the year. Sorry to hear.

[bignose]

Ouch sorry to hear. I always worry about my tanks when I leave for a couple days.

[Jason McK]

OH Crap Sorry to hear, Good luck with the rebuild

[MikeP]

That totally sucks, sorry to hear about it :(

[Chowder]

Sorry to here, atleast you can change the things you didn't like about your tank.

Chris

[Piscez]

condolences... Last time I was away I lost almost all my fish, and I'm currently out of town at the tail end of a two week trip..... crossing my fingers, my 12 yr old son is looking after things

[Doug]

That sucks is for sure the right words. Sorry for your losses. Unbelievable how crap breaks down when ones away. Seems to be like some kind of unwritten rule.

Wonder how we get ourselves into things that we cant even go away for a couple days.

[marie]

Anytime your ready to restock sps corals come up and visit...just make sure you have some interceptor on hand :biggrin:

[PoonTang]

Will be there some day for sure Marie. Thanks kindly for the offer, you are a Saint. Some of the frags I got from you before truely were becoming very large colonies. Heart breaking to lose them.

[Chaloupa]

OH NO...soooo sorry to hear that Darren...I feel for you.:cry:

[Navarchus]

What a shame…. sorry for your loss, this is so frustrating.:drinking:
Hope you find the strength to put it back together.

[christyf5]

Aww jeez, sorry to hear this :sad:

[Myka]

Oi! This is so sad! This is my biggest nightmare (closely followed by cracked display tank). I would be devasted. I wish you all the best in your rebuild.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Good luck. I think Irene would make me tear down the tank permanently if that happened here. Ouch.

Anthony

[PoonTang]

My wife was quite saddened by the whole ordeal and wants to rebuild, but I did get "The Look" when I mentioned an upgrade. I think I will just take it slow and make a few chenges along the way that I had been thinking of. Going to cook my rock and try to wipe out my Valonia infestation. Then try to get the aquascaping just right for a SPS dominated tank.

[kien]

wow.. another one of these depressing threads. I feel for ya! Every time I read one of these threads I inch closer to getting that Profilux controller to help monitor things remotely. Will definitely get one now and write myself an iPhone app for it so that I can be notified of when things go amiss..

Again, sorry to hear of your loss. :sad:

[Hairytank]

Sorry to hear about your loss and any damage to the floors, a double whammy.

The smell has not completly left my house from my crash that occured earlier this week, but it is getting a lot better. So hopefully the smell will not linger too long in your house either.

Good luck with the rebuild.

[Ya Dude]

GFI 's were always my source of problems.

[mike31154]

Yow, that's unfortunate. Hope your rebuild goes well and cheers you up. I'm away in the winter usually for a couple of 7 day stretches and often worry even though I have folks looking after things. You definitely will want to add some redundancy to the electrical set up. I run GFCI as well, but more than one so there's some level of safety there, although nothing is entirely foolproof, especially when things are more complex with dosing et al... Anyhow, best of luck with the rebuild.

[Lance]

Will be there some day for sure Marie. Thanks kindly for the offer, you are a Saint. Some of the frags I got from you before truely were becoming very large colonies. Heart breaking to lose them.


So sorry to hear this Darren! Really sucks!
Make sure you stop in to see me as well. I'm sure you can find some pieces you like.

[Navarchus]

GFI 's were always my source of problems.

What is GFI? :redface:

[kien]

Ground Fault (circuit) Interrupter. More than you'll ever want to know about it here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device) :-D

[lastlight]

Try and focus on the better and badder rebuild. I feel for ya. If you need anything at all...especially cycled air...i have about 225 gallons of it on hand to share.

[fishoholic]

So sorry to hear, that really sucks! :sad:

[aquatechy]

Ouch man.... my heart felt feelings go out to you. Dont worry though; like said before in this thread, work on making your new tank even better. Were the things you didnt like in the tank? Well, now's the time to fix'em. :smile:

Btw, i'd like to offer you some advice. I think you should run atleast a powerhead or your circulation pump off the wall socket. That way, if the power bars die, your tanks lifeline is still going.

Thats probably why your power bars shorted. You know how "they" tell you never to plug a series of extension cords together? Same principle. As the bars ran everything, they would have heated up. What do you mean by "everything"? Heat raises resistance through the wiring, which in turn draws more ampereage, telling your GFCI to shut it all down. But you said you runs the lights separately? Thats weird. :sad:

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

After one afternoon having everything shut down due to blown breaker, I now have my return pump on a different outlet/dif. breaker so if one breaker goes, there is at least some circulation (either the powerheads or the return pump).

Anthony

[amoreira]

I went on a vacation recently with the whole family. The aquarium was left in the hands of one of my trusted buddies (who knows squat about marine animal husbandry). Anyways, sure enough, the unthinkable happened while I was away. The GFI tripped that supplied power to the recirc. pump and all the equipment (skimmer, ATOF, Ca reactor) in the basement sump. For nearly 2 years this system had been operating without a GFI trip and it had to happen when I was on vacation.

Here's the thing, fortunately the powerheads in the display tank (DT) were on a separate circuit. That alone wouldn't be enough. Because the recirc. pump stopped the water in the DT drained back into the sump and it became low enough that air was being sucked into the suction of the powerheads (essentially aerating the aquarium). If the water was just recirculating in the tank, then I don't think there'd be any oxygenation and removal of CO2 that would quickly accumulate in the main tank and kill the fish. Normally if the recirc. pump goes, the tank dies in a few hours as the fish asphyxiate.

On the phone, I told my friend to switch the power source to the regular circuit. The recirc. restarted and all is fine. Except, he didn't switch the ATOF over and I came home to a find a big sucking noise from the basement as the sump level fell (as the ATOF wasn't making up any evaporated water) and the recirc. pump was being starved of water. The timer on the main display tank lights had also shorted and god knows how long those were off (I had noticed a lot of coraline algae die-off). It seemed that any failure that could happen did when I was away :-(. I measured the water parameters and the nitrates were high. Luckily I didn't lose much - just a horseshoe crab.

I had left lots of instructions, but next time I'll have to consider getting a more bullet-proof system. Nothing protects you from a power failure, though, except an expensive back-up system (large UPS or diesel powered generator).

[Navarchus]

Ground Fault (circuit) Interrupter. More than you'll ever want to know about it here (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Residual-current_device) :-D

thanks!

[PoonTang]

Ouch man.... my heart felt feelings go out to you. Dont worry though; like said before in this thread, work on making your new tank even better. Were the things you didnt like in the tank? Well, now's the time to fix'em. :smile:

Btw, i'd like to offer you some advice. I think you should run atleast a powerhead or your circulation pump off the wall socket. That way, if the power bars die, your tanks lifeline is still going.

Thats probably why your power bars shorted. You know how "they" tell you never to plug a series of extension cords together? Same principle. As the bars ran everything, they would have heated up. What do you mean by "everything"? Heat raises resistance through the wiring, which in turn draws more ampereage, telling your GFCI to shut it all down. But you said you runs the lights separately? Thats weird. :sad:

Ya I had 1 powerbar out of 3 fail internally and that tripped out the GFI. I can plug it in when it is empty and it will trip out. Most likely corroded out from being mounted inside the stand and near the skimmer. I need to find a better system for power distribution.

[banditpowdercoat]

And THATS why I don;t do a GFCI. Just allways keep an eye (meter) on my components.

[PoonTang]

I dunno, although its a sad thing to happen I think its better to have dead fish then dead fish keeper. Think when I rebuild I will just go with more of them so that only a portion of the system goes down if something happens.

[aquatechy]

Good idea. That way, you'll be protected, and you'll prevent this from happening again. May I suggest also not daisy-chaining the GFCI's, and getting maybe two of them going? That way, if something dies, it trips one, And the rest of your tank keeps going. I would put the Circ pump, co2 solenoid, and ca reactor on one seperate one in that case, so if the ciruit is shut off, you dont have leaking co2, and your powerheads on another circuit will keep your tank going.

The skimmer and inside cabinet may be the cause (90% sure if it was exposed to salt spray).

Yo Banditpowdercoat!! Thats a pretty badass orange Hayabusa. Kudos. :biggrin: