[Cujo#31]

This hobby. Certainly keeps one on their toes. First of all never, ever, ever assume everything is going well. I have a firm believer that the coral gods will take every opportunity to remind us who exactly is in control.
I came home from work yesterday and my first item of business after I take my work boots off is to give my tank(s) a quick eyeball.
Things didn't appear "normal" immediately, so I went into my tank room to start running some tests. I walk in to a room with water all over the floor (thank god this is all in my garage).
The next thing I notice is my 30g ATO reservoir is empty and the pump is dry churning away. Not good. This system is only 80 gallons with sump.
My frag tank sump is near dry in the return pump chamber. My overflow chambers are near dry, even worse. I shut everything down except circ and tank heat and start searching for the source of the problem.
It did not take me long to discover the problem. The cap seal on my CO2 reactor failed, pumping system water all over the floor. I went into immediate panic because I instantly knew what the chain reaction was. As my system levels dropped, my ATO continued to top up.
I ran a salinity check and started to almost cry. 1.05. Odds are it had been like that for a very long time. I'm away from the house for work at least 12-13 hours a day.
All of my coral are in my 50g frag tank as I am waiting on total stability before I introduce my Corals to the new display that is fully cycled and showing signs it is ready for my corals. I was going to transfer on Saturday.
I immediately knew my livestock was in deep trouble due to osmotic shock. SPS can't tolerate any levels of FW well.
I always keep spare tanks at hand and always have a full WC readyand churning away. I have restored "stability" but I'm thinking too little too late. I gave a couple Corals a quick shot with a baster to clear out the slime.....and was left with bare, white skeleton. I almost puked as I instantly knew pretty much every other piece of SPS is equally affected.
There is some irony to all of this. I have always known that a reactor failure could cause such an event, but my current sump had no space for the reactor. So I religiously burped the reactor every 2 days and checked every possible leak point as well. My new sump, set to go in this Saturday has a spot dedicated to the reactor.....too late.
I am expecting to come home tonight to 95 bleached white skeletons, I am sick to my stomach and I just want to crawl under a rock and die right now. Lesson learned.
If you have ANY reason to believe some part of your system has the potential to fail, remedy the issue immediately. Assume the worst will happen.... it just happened to me. Cost some animals their lives, and cost me thousands.