I am looking at a total loss...Learn from my mistake

[kaboom]

100% loss is very painful, the worst I've experience is 50% and it hurts. Tank and plumbing design is utmost important to avoid such disaster. On my most recent tank I eliminated the sump and made a larger over flow to accommodate all gears, it's the best design change I've done in over 20 years of reefing. Without the extra plumbing, reduced noise and lower maintenance, it's given a me a huge piece of mind. The only thing that could possibly go wrong now is my Tunze osmolator but in my 15 yr experience with the product it's rock solid.
Consider sump-less system my friends.

[Animal-Chin]

Oh even sumpless has its issues, I had my 50 gallon partially empty into my living room because the return for my canister filter moved (somehow, maybe the cat, who knows) and was shooting water out of the tank. I got home and there was salt and water everywhere, ruined furniture, the floor, lost coral, heater was exposed, a couple of fish died, you know...

Lets face it, we have big boxes of water in our homes, things can go wrong, things will go wrong...

[kaboom]

I hear ya, the more equipment we can contain and housed with the water box the better off we'll be. Less peripheral and more internal setup to avoid as much water transport from one place to another is key. That's why I made an over-sized overflow to place everything in there, skimmer, reactor, heater, etc. Only down side to it is the extra space it occupies behind the tank.

[KPG007]

Sorry to hear about the losses, Gary. Let me know if there is anything I can do to help. I have lots of coral, as you know, and would be happy to give you a bunch to get your new tank filled out.

Kelly

[Scythanith]

For reference my ATO pail is 5g on a ~330g system lol. It fills twice a day, but only 5g at a time.

Sorry to hear about your catastrophe! Bigger and better, learn from your mistakes and all that jazz. Best of luck!

[Dearth]

I talked with an American friend of mine today he is in the Hobby as well and he told me of his personal nightmare 3 years ago (He is a lurker on Canreef). He has a 300 gallon DT and a 155 gallon sump due to were he lives (Savanah, Georgia) almost all his plumbing, wiring and additives are outside of his house in a little over hang shed.

He had his ATO hooked up to the house water and had several redundancies built in couple of floor wet sensors, overflow sensors on his sump and display and several solenoid driven actuators that were designed to fail closed in event of an outage or water sensors tripped. Being as he is a licensed and certified Electrician and pipe fitter he knew what he was doing. He had backups for his backups but what he never counted on was Mother Nature.

His house received an indirect lightning strike while he and the wife were at work and the wiring in the shed took a direct hit all fried and rendered it useless now the actuators on the ATO system wired into his house water should of failed closed but unfortunately all 3 actuators failed open due to the power surge and frying the electronics in the solenoids. His oldest daughter came home from school and he received a panicked called from his wife whom his daughter contacted saying the floor was covered in water.

Bruce came home to find about a 1/3 inch of water on the floor his tank water a lovely shade of milk and the smell of burnt wiring. Problem was quickly sourced but damage was done. End result was $37,000 in water damage, roughly $9,000 in dead coral and fish and about 900 gallons of water sucked up and one devastated family. They figure the water was pouring into the sump then floor for about 8 hrs. After serious talk with his wife they decided to keep the tank going and 5 months after the disaster and repairs completed they got the tank up and running again. Now he has the house water pumped into a 100 gallon container with a separate ATO that runs from there to the sump and everything is hooked up to separate power sources with GF indicators now. Today he has a healthy vibrant tank again.

[dino]

I use a 5 gallon bucket on a gravity feed for this reason. its so simple and if my float fails it wont overflow my sump because it can take a extra 5 gallons.
I will donate any extras to you garry when your running although you used to be into a lot nicer corals than me.