What was your biggest almost , reef disaster!?

[saltwaterinbrooklyn]

I recently went to dose iodide into my sump and instead of paying attention I started talking to my daughter and somehow banged the bottle of Lugols against my cabinet door and into the sump it went ......... Brand new bottle that was totally full !!!! After a super instant pump and sump shutdown , I drained the entire sump and did a full water swap and after cleaning out everything from skimmer to reactors I made a smooth recovery.

With my almost disaster posted , let's hear some of your near reef tank death experiences .

 

[Jakef150]

Mines almost crash twice due to my error - not pay attention how mucb to dose, and trying to remove zoa from rocks- bad idea!!!

 

[MIKE NY]

over/under dosing or equipment failures etc.. can be corrected before any significant damage is done if found in time, but Sandy is another story without power or being flooded for a week or longer are tanks are dead no matter what we do...luckily my generator flawlessly ran non-stop for the week and I wasn't flooded out.

 

[saltwaterinbrooklyn]

Mines almost crash twice due to my error - not pay attention how mucb to dose, and trying to remove zoa from rocks- bad idea!!!

Oh man removing zoos , never a good idea lol

 

[duke62]

Ummmm of course this thread pops up today. Woke up to a flood in the basement. My reactors hose popped off in the middle of the night and let a couple gallons on the floor. In the process of making water now and thank goodness my external pump didnt over heat and break. Great morning oh also woke up to a pile of dog puke in the den. YAYYYYYYYYYY

 

[Yonkers28]

Calcium dosing pump failed
My level dropped down to 300
Didn't lose anything thou thank god

 

[Rob&Gab]

well too start i dosed my self with skimmer collection. so it made my stomach a disaster. if that counts no real tank disaster thank god.

 

[duke62]

Ok how long you going to ride that train. Moving on

 

[saltwaterinbrooklyn]

Ummmm of course this thread pops up today. Woke up to a flood in the basement. My reactors hose popped off in the middle of the night and let a couple gallons on the floor. In the process of making water now and thank goodness my external pump didnt over heat and break. Great morning oh also woke up to a pile of dog puke in the den. YAYYYYYYYYYY

Well the only reason I posted this thread duke is because I undid the hose on your reactor lol sorry lol sorry bout the puke too , baaaaaad burrito lol happy Sunday brotha

 

[Tonyscoots84]

Hairspray.... a very long time ago :lol2:

 

[saltwaterinbrooklyn]

Hairspray.... a very long time ago :lol2:

Sorry tony I am going to have to ask you to elaborate a bit more on this reply or I will make a false assumption and run with it!!! Lol

 

[Waleedwale1]

Woke up to the nano 1/3rd empty. Checked for leaks, and then checked the equipment. Everything seemed fine. So I filled it up and watched it closely the whole day. Not a drop of water there. Went to sleep and woke up to the tank more then 1/2 empty, then realized that my aquaclear a water level gets high at a certain point and starts spilling out water. Lost a few corals due to the exposure, lost the filter and just have a powerhead and LR as filteration.

 

[Tonyscoots84]

Sorry tony I am going to have to ask you to elaborate a bit more on this reply or I will make a false assumption and run with it!!! Lol

here is the help thread
http://www.manhattanreefs.com/forum/general-discussion/14014-help.html

i still remember that day as if it was yesterday :arg:

 

[lnevo]

I was troubleshooting a clogged reactor. I had my carbon reactor open and the hose was hanging in the sump (gfo and gac are plumbed together). At some point I said, let me turn on the reactor pump and see if it's clogged there...

Well, sump was now full of GFO... Luckily it all mostly ended up in the return chamber where I was able to remove most of it... to this day, there's still more GFO in there than I'd like. I bought a bucket head, but have yet to get around to cleaning it up completely.

The rest of my mishaps involve the same, but now the mess ends up on the carpet... oops Sorry hunny, you can just vacuum up that carbon. It wont' mess anything up, I promise..

 

[saltwaterinbrooklyn]

Hey tony sorry I asked lol .............. Just remembered another close call last month when I forgot to turn my reactors on after using the pump to do a water change and they sat there with stagnant water for about 2 weeks and when I noticed it , I just plugged them in and this rush of brown tuna fish smelling sludge came out and you know the rest............turn off the return pump drain the sump clean skimmer and yada yada yada

 

[ReefnQueens]

Most of my almost disasters are usually just disasters.....old apartment had a 125 leak half the tank into the deli downstairs and the guy in the deli threw a rock at my window to wake me up and broke my window.....now living in Howard beach on second floor ,I had to repair ceiling downstairs twice, well first time was a repair and second time after feeling sorry I demoed whole ceiling added homosote for my sake as sound proofing , than 5/8 rock, wiring for surround ,high hats and crown moulding ........they asked me to make a leak in the other rooms after that lol........but back to the subject,"almost" disaster.....ato float valve got stuck on tubing and filled up while I went to sleep but luckily had a water sensor and crazy loud alarm that woke me up and made me do a ninja flip off the bed out of a dead sleep..... Salinity dropped and did a big water change with salinity slightly higher in new batch....didn't lose anything

 

[SteveZ15]

I dosed alk twice but instead of a disaster it helped,I guess I was keeping alk too low for the corals liking because they colored up soomewhat now I keep it at 10instead 7.6..

 

[vio]

I dose 800 ml of Vinegar , bed timer, i have to do water change , every day 50 gal. ( 150 gal tank ) thanks to Vortech pumps and two extra air pumps, PH drop to 7.5 from 8.2 i lost few corals.:scratchch