Eric Borneman's 400 gal reef is no more?

[PeeJ]

That is a very tragic story.

 

[Anonymous]

Spotted owls like new growth forests, yet its old growth that are being protected to safe guard the owl........actually hurts the owls because they dont nest in old growth forests they like new growth areas like those associated with logging industry.
Spotted owls like the logging industry.

Actually, the truth is they like logged forests - all the flat surfaces of the exposed stumps make for good walking and wing-spreading surfaces for them. Similarly, they like pavement and large tracts of ground with the subterranean oil drained from them. These are all facts.

 

[Kalkbreath]

Spotted owls like new growth forests, yet its old growth that are being protected to safe guard the owl........actually hurts the owls because they dont nest in old growth forests they like new growth areas like those associated with logging industry.
Spotted owls like the logging industry.

Actually, the truth is they like logged forests - all the flat surfaces of the exposed stumps make for good walking and wing-spreading surfaces for them. Similarly, they like pavement and large tracts of ground with the subterranean oil drained from them. These are all facts.

Your correct...
If Hugo's auto top off only puts out 32 GPD then it was not the source of the fresh water exchange. Unless it occured over eight days?
where would the culprit have had access to the system to place 240 gallons of fresh water?
Was this sump 240 gallons?
If not then how did the culprit get his drain hose into the main tank?
By draining only the sump the tank would not have drained at all.
If the culprit just started filling the sump with fresh water , how long would it take to dilute the sytems salt level by fifty percent? This cant be done without the sump overflowing?
If the turn over rate was 500 gallons and the inflow of fresh tap water was five hundred........then the sump would have over flowed with 1000 gallons entering and only 500 returning to the tank, but hugo insited that the sump did not over flow?
Seems impossible?
Without draining the main tank from inside the house .

 

[PeeJ]

I am guessing that someone gained access to his sump shed, cranked on a hose, and started pumping water out of the sump.

 

[Anonymous]

Trying to read that thread now, it seems they are still having some server issues...

 

[Kalkbreath]

I am guessing that someone gained access to his sump shed, cranked on a hose, and started pumping water out of the sump.

But once the sump ran dry no additional water would have drained from the main tank. If someone placed a garden hose in the sump as soon as the return pump begain filling the indoor tank with fresh water , the returning water would be mostly salt and a little of the new fresh.
.... but this would soon end up in the sump over flowing quite quickly.
He seems sure that the sump didnt over flow. And one would need to add about 1500 gallons of fresh water to the sump in this manner for the main tank of 500 gallons to decrese in salinity by fifty percent. Thats a lot of over flow not to notice that the yard is flooded with 1500 gallons of mixed salt and fresh. It would also take quite a while to fill 1500 gallons and the culprit would return an hour or more later to rewindup the hose turn off the tap and dry up the yard?
I think not?

 

[PeeJ]

The sump would not overflow if the person was siphoning or pumping water right back out of the sump at the same time. That would also explain the salt in the street.

Who knows....crazy stuff, man.

 

[Nautilus1]

After all this speculation, it seems very hard for someone to go to all this trouble to replace the the SW with FW. Perhaps Eric did a water change and forgot the salt or the salt was not really salt. We all get into a routine and get lazy about checking things. Poor guy, he must hate the world right now. I hope he finds out what really happened cos for me that in itself would drive me crazy. Im sure his next tank will be even greater than the last.

 

[PeeJ]

He said he never did water changes.

Someone already said, and I agree, that if the fault tuns out to be his own, we will probably never know.

 

[Anonymous]

Spotted owls like new growth forests, yet its old growth that are being protected to safe guard the owl........actually hurts the owls because they dont nest in old growth forests they like new growth areas like those associated with logging industry.
Spotted owls like the logging industry.

Actually, the truth is they like logged forests - all the flat surfaces of the exposed stumps make for good walking and wing-spreading surfaces for them. Similarly, they like pavement and large tracts of ground with the subterranean oil drained from them. These are all facts.

Your correct...
If Hugo's auto top off only puts out 32 GPD then it was not the source of the fresh water exchange. Unless it occured over eight days?
where would the culprit have had access to the system to place 240 gallons of fresh water?
Was this sump 240 gallons?
If not then how did the culprit get his drain hose into the main tank?
By draining only the sump the tank would not have drained at all.
If the culprit just started filling the sump with fresh water , how long would it take to dilute the sytems salt level by fifty percent? This cant be done without the sump overflowing?
If the turn over rate was 500 gallons and the inflow of fresh tap water was five hundred........then the sump would have over flowed with 1000 gallons entering and only 500 returning to the tank, but hugo insited that the sump did not over flow?
Seems impossible?
Without draining the main tank from inside the house .

If you drained the sump and put a fresh water hose into it at the same time, it would work. But the sump is indoors, so that person would have to have gotten into the house too. So either way, as a case of sabotage, the culprit would have to have broken into his house.

 

[Anonymous]

No one had to break into his house...

There was no flooding around the sump, in the shed, or in the house. My sump, refugium and surge are outside the house in a "shed" of sorts, and though we try to lock the doors, sometimes we are neglectful as we live in the middle of a big suburban safe neighborhood.

 

[Anonymous]

No one had to break into his house...

There was no flooding around the sump, in the shed, or in the house. My sump, refugium and surge are outside the house in a "shed" of sorts, and though we try to lock the doors, sometimes we are neglectful as we live in the middle of a big suburban safe neighborhood.

Well then it's simple.

The culprit started a syphon, ran a hose down to the drain at the street, and stuck a garden hose in the sump. An hour or two later, the culprit removed the garden hose, coiled up the syphon hose, and left. The End.


I don't buy that he made a mistake. In order to make a mistake that would bring his salinity that low, he would have had to accidentally do a 100 gallon water change with fresh water. I doubt he would make a mistake of that magnitude. You get lazy and you forget to dose something or you think you know the proportion and you forget and add too much of something...those are plausable mistakes. But you have to make a hell of a mistake to nuke a 400 gallon system.

 

[gregx]

Spotted owls like new growth forests, yet its old growth that are being protected to safe guard the owl........actually hurts the owls because they dont nest in old growth forests they like new growth areas like those associated with logging industry.
Spotted owls like the logging industry.

Actually, the truth is they like logged forests - all the flat surfaces of the exposed stumps make for good walking and wing-spreading surfaces for them. Similarly, they like pavement and large tracts of ground with the subterranean oil drained from them. These are all facts.

Who cares.

 

[Anonymous]

I just read the original thread

Actually I only read Eric's posts.

Very sad, and from the last post in that thread it sounds like he found out something....

 

[MartinE]

Very sad indeed. If it is a malicious action, I think it is a shame some people cannot stand that others have things and distroy them.

 

[Anonymous]

Sad, indeed.

from the last post in that thread it sounds like he found out something....

What?

 

[Anonymous]

Click on the link in the first page of this thread. That's a hell of a cliffhanging/dramatic/edge of our seat way to end a thread, Eric! I suppose we will find out what occurred someday.

You know what this makes me think of? The huge reef tank at the Georgia Aquarium. Since it has an open and accessible top, it would be insanely easy for anybody to drop a gallon of bleach in the top. Even if they were caught in a short time, bye bye corals/fish/eveything. The blueprint for the Steinhart reef tank is the same way IIRC. I wonder if it's something they're considering.

 

[MartinE]

Matt I it is something I think public aquarium planners should think about, people just do things to be hateful, like the Waikiki aquarium's theft of some of the clams in their outside clam tank they had to put a cage around it to keep them safe and I think one of them they found died.

 

[Anonymous]

Well, I am not going to joint the speculation. One thing that we should take away from this is that we should put a timer on RO/DI so that it must be overrided to have more than a few gallons of fresh water being dumped into the tank (just enough for the evaporation and a bit more). I flooded my tank more than a handful of times with RO/DI (never lost anything from that). I learned that a timer will limits the damage (amount of time using a vacuum to dry the carpet, that is) considerably.

 

[Anonymous]

That sucks!