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Mogo

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To make a long sad story as short as possible, I came home from a vacation (Atlantis Bahamas = ironic). To my 150 gal aquarium nearly 100% fresh water. Everything dead except Hal the triggerfish whom I watched pass away before my eyes the next day.

The tank-sitters (my kids) did everything they could including constantly bailing water from the sump to prevent further water on floor. Turns out it was a busted float valve that allowed a constant supply of fw into the system. Suspecting this, I instructed them to shut off the main fw valve from the house water supply. (There is no way they could trouble-shoot a busted float valve).

I arrived home to every fish-keepers worst nightmare. Everything dead, main fw supply valve wide open. I immediately introduced a salt slurry into the aquarium to bring the SG up to normalish as well as changing out some water beforehand (hours and 3:00 in the morning).

Next day was mostly removing jelly from the tank as well as any LR that smelled like sulfur. Almost 8 years of happy aquarium literally down the drain. I wont list the deceased except to say that an original Sarcophyton I acquired at 3" across when open was about 16" on its demise.

There were 2 immediate options. Dry-wall the tank hole in the wall in and turn the fish room into a gym, or start again. With every encouragement from my wife, I am re-starting. 50% water changes every day for the last 3 days. Not done yet. First time in many years where I had to buy ammonia and nitrite test kits.

Moral.
Never do major maintenance on your aquarium a day or 2 before you go away. Bad things can happen such as detritus clogging equipment, falling rock, malfunctioning equipment, etc, etc. Doing maintenance A FEW DAYS before you go away allows you judge if everything is running ok before you leave.

Question.
Is my live rock still ok after at least 2 days of nearly 100% fresh water?
 
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Anonymous

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:( I am so sorry to hear what happened! What a horror. The rock is prolly "fine to reuse", but most if not all of the bacteria is most likely dead due to that severe SG change.

You can get some liverock at your LFS and kick start the reseeding process, but I'd expect it to have to fully cycle again. Good for your family encouraging you to start over.
 

ChrisRD

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Man, that sucks - sorry to hear... :(

Maybe there's something positive that can come out of it... ...now you have a chance to start fresh and have an even better setup based on all that you learned in the last 8 years...

I think you can reuse the rock too. You might want to give it some time to shed detritus (from the die off) for a while before you put strong light on it again.
 

Mogo

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Thanks Lawdog and Chris (Cripes you guys have been at this site for a long time!!)

I will keep half of my lr and add half new. See how it goes over time. In the process of turning a negative into a positive.
 
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Anonymous

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Start a new build thread in the Member's forum so we can follow along ;)
 

Ben1

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I know a big loss can be very disheartening so good luck getting it all going again!

FWIW this is the very reason I use a liter meter to do my top off, mine is the old style. But it pulls from a 5 gal bucket next to my tank that has the float valve from the RO/DI in it. So if the float valve breaks then the bucket overflows but it doesnt add to the sump just spills on the floor. Plus this way the float valve isnt in any slatwater so theres a much lower chance of failure. The liter meter is set to only dose a certain amount a day and is backed up by a type of float valve.

In any case, so sorry for your loss and gl on the rebuild.
 

Mogo

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I like it Ben, I like it.

BTW I have never had a problem with my (Kent) float valves before. I have only replaced it once in 8 years, and that was about 2 years ago. The mis-functioning float valve was obviously bashed out of shape probably when I was manhandling the skimmer which is in fairly close proximity. I never noticed...

I will post progress of my tank with photos in the members forum.
 
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Anonymous

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Sorry for the horrible return home!

I would have to echo Bens statements about float valves, but with a different solution. A 'dual' float switch that runs a pump in a resivor fed by a float valve on RO. The lower switch powers up the pump when water gets low, and the upper switch only comes into play if the first switch sticks allowing extra water into the system. If the water level gets to high, it turns off power to that feed pump. You could easily add a timer to the float switches to really limit the amount of water that can be pumped into your system.

EDIT: Oops not RODI, RO. :D
 
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Anonymous

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wow. Very sorry to hear about the loss.
Im glad your getting the support to start over again.

At last you now have the freedom to start with a new plan if you want. Maybe different fish and corals, a different aquascape design, etc. Should be fun to work with a fresh canvas
 
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Anonymous

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Sorry for your losses.

I also use a litermeter. The best $100 I've spent on my reef, hands-down. I bought mine used, so I got it cheap. I did just buy the GF a brand new one for chirstmas, and they're not cheap. But the piece of mind knowing it's just gonna work it well worth the cost.

If you're going to hook up your RODI to a float switch, make sure you put a solenoid valve in BEFORE the feed to the RO membrane. If you just put one on the output of the whole unit, the water will still flow across the membrane and all go out the waste line.

It's also advisable not to have your rodi turn on for short periods of time all day. You'll wear out the membrane VERY quickly. It should turn on when your top off container is almost empty, and then run for a while, completely filling your resivoir.

B
 

Mogo

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Thanks everyone. I am taking all the float valve advice to heart. Now is the time to reconsider some things.

As soon as I clean up my fish room a little :oops: I will pull out my camera and do a "re-build thread" in the members forum. Some people might like to see the back-side of my aquarium as well as the front. Plus it may be helpful to new aquarists. Either that or it will scare them off :D
 

scifi_3d_zoo

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Really sad. You even named your trigger. Most of us really care about our livestock and it's sad when there's a loss.

I'm remaking my sump and I plan on using a slow pump (so I can possibly catch any problem before it gets too bad), dual float valves (even then I know both could fail), a small reservoir (never hookup ATO to any sorta of large system or your RO/DI), and a new sump that can handle the entire ATO system just in case (I'm only using a 2 week supply like 10 gal).

I guess you got complacent over the years b/c nothing like this has ever happened. I actually read stories like this all the time. So I'm surprised you didn't think about this. Even if water all over your house is not an issue, certainly dumping RO/DI water (you said tap water??) into the tank isn't good. I got this one friend... trying to convince me to hook up to my RO/DI and actually... ready for this?... run the pipes through the walls and attic of my house. That's what he's gonna do at his place. I told him he's F'N crazy. I actually just had an accident that cost me $1000 deductible ($1000's more on top of that) in water damage. Long story. Moral... expect the worst and plan for the worst. Have back-ups, and back those up... AND don't do anything that you can't accept the consequences of. I don't care what anybody says, or what equipment they are gonna use... don't hook your TANK up to ANY large holding tanks, water supplies, RO/DI units, etc. It's extremely RISKY. "

My flood story involved RO/DI water. For now on all I do is make water while I'm at home to watch then turn it off. I guess.. somebody pushed a refrigerator over my hose and severed it... thus flooding too place... and got within feet of all my x-mas presents. I thought I thought about everything. I had shut-off valves, etc. After I assume the worst scenario I decided there was nothing really safe but to turn it all on and off by hand only when I need it... only when I'm around too. I turn it off even if I'm going to sleep and I'm still there, and nobody is gonna mess with it at night. Nope.. still turn it off.

I'm making a new sump that is about 20" tall but my water level will be like 10". So there'll be plenty of room for me entire 10gal holding tank just in case. And that'll cover me for 2-3 weeks of top-off. Sometimes you just shouldn't try to cut to many corners. I'll happily fill my holding tank up every 2 weeks.
 

Mogo

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Scifii thanks for your reply. Yes it was rodi water, not tap water that caused my tank demise over 5 or 6 days. You might note from my previous posts that I'm pretty sure I physically broke the float valve when doing maintenance on the skimmer which is located within a couple inches clearance of the fv. I am very confident it didnt fail on its own. It is my bad that I didnt check ALL systems before I went away and thus am guilty of taking stuff for granted. With aThus the moral in my original post.

I had a float valve running in my tank for over 6 years with no problems at all. I replaced it out a couple years ago just because I thought I should.

As well, under "normal" circumstances my sump can handle several gallons of overflow above and beyond the expected. My sump can handle 1/3 (50 gal) of the total volume of my aquarium.
 

scifi_3d_zoo

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The error is not in not checking things, or anything else you are saying. It was in the design. You could have not done anything you are saying that was a mistake. Had several float valve backups, etc. Whatever size your holding tank was.. it was too big to be linked directly to the tank. That's the only thing you did wrong. All the other stuff is normal mistakes, human error, unavoidable accidents.
 

FifeReef

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Major bummer Mogo! I feel for you, but very glad to hear you are restarting your tank!

My 150g tank has only been running now for about 8 months, but back when I first set it up I had a similar thing happen. Fortunately I was home when it happened and was able to avert disaster. While much of my top-off water is replaced daily by my kalkwasser drip, I do have a JBJ Auto Top-Off system that gives an audible alarm when activated. My fish room is out in the garage and one day realized that I had been hearing the faint sound of the audible alarm for some time. I went out to find my sump to the brim, just starting to run out the overflow and the RODI water still pumping into the system. I found that when I had been performing maintenance in the sump I had accidently swiveled the float valve about 80 degrees! I decided the fear of having something like this happen while I was away was too great a risk. My solution was to purchase one of those power strips with an digital timer. I set the power outlet that the JBJ is plugged into to only power-up twice a day for 1 minute each. This should be enough time to compensate for the amount of evaporation I have and prevent any major dilutions if for some reason my float would ever fail. Now I just have to hope the digital power strip never fail! :?
 

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