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

[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.

[WarDog]

Sorry to hear Gary. Oh man.

[Myka]

Gary, so sorry to hear about your losses. I assume you mean the SG was 1.015? That's roughly what the math works out to.

This is exactly why I "preach" redundancy all the time, and so many people ignore it, or plan a future resolve. Most of the time they sneak by without any problems (which encourages others to walk the line), but the unlucky ones like you get dragged through the flames.

Your RO/DI reservoir was 37.5% of the system volume. One of my "redundancy rules" is that an ATO reservoir is never more than 10% of the system volume (and never, ever, EVER attached to an RO/DI system which provides an unlimited supply of RO/DI). A full 10% addition of RO will reduce salinity from 1.026 to 1.024 which isn't enough of a change to affect most corals - even SPS. Something to consider for your future tank, so even if the reactor (or something else) failed and dumped system water out, the salinity wouldn't drop too far.

I have one of your SPS, I'd happily send you a big frag when you're ready.

[Cujo#31]

Originally Posted by Myka

Gary, so sorry to hear about your losses. I assume you mean the SG was 1.015? That's roughly what the math works out to.

This is exactly why I "preach" redundancy all the time, and so many people ignore it, or plan a future resolve. Most of the time they sneak by without any problems (which encourages others to walk the line), but the unlucky ones like you get dragged through the flames.

Your RO/DI reservoir was 37.5% of the system volume. One of my "redundancy rules" is that an ATO reservoir is never more than 10% of the system volume (and never, ever, EVER attached to an RO/DI system which provides an unlimited supply of RO/DI). A full 10% addition of RO will reduce salinity from 1.026 to 1.024 which isn't enough of a change to affect most corals - even SPS. Something to consider for your future tank, so even if the reactor (or something else) failed and dumped system water out, the salinity wouldn't drop too far.

I have one of your SPS, I'd happily send you a big frag when you're ready.

Any yes Mindy, don't I know the reservoir was too big. I was lazy and complacent. This was a temporary arrangement, so I didn't practice my due diligence. My SG was definately lower than 1.015 which means my system volume calculation was off, but in a small system like that miscalculations are definately magnified.

[takeastabatit22]

That sucks ks Gary. Thanks for scaring. ME. I already come home every day wounding what gone wrong today?
I was just staring to feel comfortable it's been a mounth of goodness. Why coral gods why?

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[Dearth]

I had an ato failure a few years ago no where near as catastrophic as yours but I pumped 20 gallons of ato water into my sump which filled up fast and dumped about 15 gallons onto the floor hours of steam cleaning carpet and doing a water change and making fresh water killed a good portion of my day.

I lived alone for years and I was gone like you for 12 hrs a day and nights (shift worker) so never knew what I would be coming home too every night or morning

Still sucks though

[Cujo#31]

Ah crap...edit and spell check. I DID know the reservoir was too big. I was complacent and lazy. In the haze and stress of recent events, it also just occurred to me that while I normally ran a 33 reservoir I had switched to a 55 reservoir when we went on vacation for a week the last week of August. My old display was a 125 with a 45g of water in a 90g sump. Either way...hopefully everyone else learns from my errors and strive to be more diligent in their reef keeping practices. Bad things don't just happen to "other people". We are all susceptible to disaster, and I should have known better. Nobody to blame but myself.

[Piscez]

Gary so sorry to hear, and yes it should help as a reminder to us all, as these type of things happen more and more often we owe it to our little creatures to be diligent and responsible for their lives, I've certainly messed up a couple of times and I totally agree redundancy is a major preventative. Good luck in your rebuild.

[Potatohead]

I don't mean to pile on, but most ATO's also have a maximum run time so this type of thing doesn't happen. If set up correctly the most water a system will lose is whatever amount is in the return chamber + maximum ATO run time. You'll burn up your return pump, but who cares. I guess if the leak is slow enough that the ATO can refill completely and resets every time, there's nothing you can do about that. In hindsight this stuff if always easily solved of course.

Really a crummy situation for you . I hope some stuff pulls through.

[jhj0112]

I'm sorry for your loss.. man! that's tough..

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