Murphy's law...

[asylumdown]

So my fiance and I went on vacation to the states for 10 days on Sunday. I spent literally 4 hours with my tank trying to make sure that every single thing that could run out, go wrong, cause problems, or otherwise lead to disaster while I'm away was taken care of. All my fish are in QT getting treated for ich still, and I thankfully have a friend who is amazing and brilliant, and patient and learned the entire medication process and testing protocols for copper levels and is staying in our guest-room and taking care of it for me. I thought nothing could possibly go wrong.

6 hours after getting to California, I get a panicked phone call from my room mate (who is not the tank sitter) "there's water every where! We don't know how to stop it! We're running out of buckets! What do I do?!"

F*&K.

Looks like while I was filling up my calcium and alk dosing reservoirs the night before we left, I knocked the switched outlet that I'm using to control the pump that brings R/O water up from the basement for water changes. It was never really a good solution to use that particular switch, as it's not really an 'on/off' switch, it's a switch that let's you either use a timer, or turn the outlet on. I was having trouble finding switched, 3 prong outlets locally, and I was tired of having to unplug the pump to get it to turn off when I had all the water I needed, so I got the timer version and set it so that the timer was never engaged, functionally meaning that when I flipped it to 'timer' mode, the pump would turn off. When I knocked it, I accidentally engaged the timer and didn't realize. So at the designated hour (4:30pm to be exact), the pump in the basement kicked on and started pumping water up, directly on to my office floor.

I'm so lucky my roommate was there, as she was just about to walk out the front door. The R/O reservoir it was drawing from is 55 gallons, and thank god she caught it after only 5-10 gallons had been spilled on the floor and under the cabinet. Quick thinking on her part got the rest in to buckets until I could walk he through what was happening (she doesn't know much about how the tank works and I was trying to sort it out over the phone) and get the pump turned off. If the pump had kicked on 15 minutes later, my entire office, tank enclosure, and a frightening amount of computer equipment would have been destroyed.

Moral of the story - don't ever, ever, ever think you can get away with an "aaaaah, this will do" hack job solution for something with your tank. It will get you. At the worst possible moment. When you're thousands of km away.

Moral of the story 2 - There are times when I feel like my tank is giant marine time bomb sitting in the middle of my house. Whether it's my own stupidity or an equipment failure, I feel like one day I'm really going to be screwed. I wish I didn't love it so much.

I have proper, 3 pronged switched outlets on their way from amazon right now.

[HaZRaTTy]

It sounds like with the bad luck that came your way so did some good luck! One thing I always tell people that ask me about starting a Reef tank at my real job(Yes other then the hobby)

1: Don't cheap out.
2: Don't Take shortcuts, do it right the first time!

Haha, but I'm glad that all was not lost and it could be worse!! Good luck on the upgrade when you come back and have fun on your holiday and don't worry about your tank now, what's the worse that could happen

[fishoholic]

Yikes! Glad your roommate was there!

[reefgirl189]

What a nightmare. Thank goodness you have good people around to help you.