froggiebunbun said:
thinking that someone did this to his tank is maybe a way for him to deal with the whole situation. he didnt point out any names in public (not in the thread at least)...so let the man live. Let him speculate, its his way to deal with the situation. but his tank is gone, his passion is on the fringes...sad.
I also read every post in Eric's thread. A very sad situation there. Both the loss of life and his thought process.
He has a 50 gpd RO/DI unit. So in 12 hrs it would only make 25 gallons of RO/DI for topoff. He never did water changes, so there was no need for a reservior of fresh topoff water. Everything was automated.
He apparently kept his fuge and sump in a shed outside his house (behind the tank). It had a lock on it, that day it was not locked.
For the salinity in his tank to drop that drastically, from 35 - 36 ppt to ~ 15 ppt is, according to Eric, impossible due to his 50 gpd RO/DI limitations.
His accusations of sabotage sound legitimate in light of the above facts.
However, now you have to take into consideration the method used to 'sabotage' his tank. A freakin massive water change!! In order to transport 300 gallons you'd need a MINIMUM of a 1 ton pickup (300 gallons x 7 lbs/gallon = 2100 lbs.) and that would be for water weight only. That's not such an unrealistic scenario, having a 1 ton pickup. So the only other way I can see transporting 300 gallons is in a tanker truck.
Eric mentioned he lives on the perimeter of a golf course. I would guess there's got to be neighbors around. SOMEONE should see all this strange activity in the middle of the day (sometime between 12 noon and 5 pm), or so you'd think.
Using a hose from his own house the perps would have to spend quite some time (well over an hour) to do the water change. Who in there right mind (not that a saboteur is in their 'right' mind) would spend that much time at someone else's house, vandalizing their tank like this, and no neighbors seeing 300 gallons of water being pumped into the street?
Gotta say, I'm unbelievably skeptical of the sabotage theory, as well as his own error. So I don't know the answer, but it's an extremely perplexing case IMO.
It sounds like an awful lot of trouble for vandals to who are obviously familiar with reefing (knowing to replace fresh for salt water) to go through. The couple of gallons of bleach would have been a whole lot simpler.
I think the police should ask Eric to do two things, take a lie detector test and submit himself for hypno therapy to get to the bottom of this. Otherwise, I don't think we'll ever know what really happened.
Such a shame, he was very highly regarded in the 'undersea world'.
swimmer
BTW - the reason for me to quote froggie, was to say that maybe this is his way of coping with his loss. However, getting a police report knowing it wasn't vandalism is a crime. If, that's what he did.
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