Bad Morning!

So I had a rough start today. I set up my Marineland 56 RR tank about a month ago. Everything has been doing great. I have coraline algae already growing like crazy and even have zoas multiplying. This has been by far the best looking set up I have had yet.

Well after a sleepless night (pregnant wife wakes me up alot) I wake up and make my stroll through the kitchen to check on my 2 reef tanks. I noticed it sounded like a waterfall. I quickly look around to see my floor flooded. I then open up the cabinet under my 56 to find water gushing out the bottom of the tank! Luckily most of the water was falling right into the sump and getting recycled so at least that was keeping some of the water in the system instead of the floor.

After a quick run to ACE for trash cans I have everything in 2 garbage cans and the coral and fish in a spare 15 gallon tank. I contacted Marineland (no help) and the LFS I bought the tank from. Surprisingly the LFS was really cool about it but wont be able to get me a new tank til at least Thursday (if the distributor has one) and should even be able to deliver it. This is just depressing.

As far as my livestock/corals, I have everything in the 15 with a power head and my carbon/gfo reactor running water through my refugium and back into the tank. Should this be sufficient for a few days? or up to a week? Is there anything I should do differently?

Thanks for listening to my rant...err reading my rant.

Shawn

 

Wow that's really lucky you caught it in time, and scary to think it could happen to anyone from no fault of your own.

 

man I am sorry to hear about this......had this happen to me actually twice in the past year so I feel your pain.

We are in the middle of trying to get our tank replaced and have just about gave up..... the tank was 3 months old and had a faulty heater in the overflow that went crazy and actually heated up enough overnight that the glass in the overflow shattered (after nuking the tank to 98.9 degrees with a controller). The heater is saying it is the tanks responsiblity, the tank is saying it is the heater and my LFS is just not saying anything. So kudos for your LFS!

As far as your plan, yes that definately will work. You might want to do a water test every couple of days to ensure that everything is going well, but I think it should be fine, esp for a short while. I would also recommend putting some powerheads in the garbage cans with the rocks so that when it is time to put everything back in there, you will not have a big cycle. I would maybe recommend replacing the sand when you get the new tank, simply because I am not a fan of reusing sand.

Good luck to you, for the tank and for the baby coming! K+

 

Sorry to hear, congrats on catching it early, your plan of action should work fine until you can replace the tank.

 

Thanks for the good wishes. I'm hoping the baby waits til this is sorted since she is due any time now.

I know your pain with the heater. Had two of them stick over the years. I refuse to use them at this point. Luckily I'm in FL so its not usually necessary.

I already have a power head in the cans with the rock in one and sand in the other. I think the sand should be good. The tank was just set up a month ago and I didn't use the sand from the prior tank. Good idea with testing the water, I hadn't even thought of that. I wish I would of taken a pic of the tank before I tore it down. I just put a bunch of frags in the tank and really liked how it was set up.

 

That really sucks, glad you caught it when you did.

 

Me to! I really got luck that the plastic brace on the bottom directed the water mostly into the sump.