Today it's my turn

Right so today it's my turn for Murphy to make his visit to my place. Last couple of days have been quirky. Broke a coffee maker yesterday while I was cleaning the basket. Snapped a dinky piece of plastic thats integral to the system apparently. Shattered a lexus key fob at work in a drop from about waist height. Finicky though lexus keys are, that's weird. Today I hit up target to replace the coffee pot from earlier and afterwards I go wander petco because its next door and all they carry is equipment and FW. Didn't buy anything after wandering pumps and tanks for a bit and headed home.
As soon as I crossed the threshold I saw a bunch of micro bubbles getting kicked out of my return line. I don't have a huge return section in my sump so I figured it was because I forgot to top off this morning before work. I started the pump to add ro/di to cover evaporation (today was pretty warm for us) and I noticed it was wet around the base of my sump. I started looking for the source and I found a massive crack from top to bottom of the sump. Ugh. Well I killed my return pump and started the process of dismantling everything.
At this point I have all my rock frag from my sump in a bucket (there's one pep shrimp I missed as well) that has a heater and air bubbling in it. I dropped carbon in the main tank just in case (one of my acans has a chunk disintegrated somehow). My chaeto has been moved into the overflow for the time being until I grab a new tank tomorrow to replace the sump. Oh and I did a small water change as well. I guess my question is does anyone think I missed anything? Other than my share of Murphy's law that is.

 

everything happens in threes you should be good

on a side note just make sure you let the silicone cure if you make it your self other than that you should be fine without a sump for a day or two.

 

that sucks.
better it break now then when your gone for days!

 

Bummer man, that sucks! Make sure you've got some surface agitation going in your DT to keep the water oxygenated.

 

Appreciate the sympathy guys. I just put everything on autopilot until I can deal with a new sump. Only thing missing from the tank right now is the extra flow from my return and the skimmer is still out. I took all the LR rubble from my sump and it's now in a 5g bucket with sump water, a heater, and air bubbler. Think I need to do anything else to the bucket to keep the rubble more or less live?

@rc_mcwaters i'm in no hurry to get this fixed at this point and I'll take my time putting it back together properly.

@elwolfe Surface should be ok. Both of my powerheads are now about 1.5 inches closer to the surface now that the overflow isn't running and it's stirring pretty well.

 

Depending on how long it takes you to set a new sump out I'd put some fish food in the bucket with your sump rubble to feed the bacteria and pods you have i there.

 

I just finished restarting my sump yesterday. I got delayed by a day after my first replacement sump cracked when I was fitting my baffles into it. I was moving too fast and I didn't grind off enough plexiglass from the edges. The silver lining is that now I have two identical broken tanks that I can gut to make one working tank. It's a lot of work for a spare quarantine/breeder tank but since I already have all the parts I figure it's worth a little work.
I think everything was okay for the short term in the holding buckets. This experience did make me want a larger mixing bucket though. I found my 5gal buckets weren't up to the task of emergency holding tanks and mixing the new water to fill the sump. My biggest problem was not having enough equipment to heat and aerate all of it at once.
I had to cheat on the heaters and put two of the buckets in a large basin sink in my garage. I filled my basin with hot water around the outside of the buckets and used my spare air pump with a T junction to aerate both buckets. Every hour or two I would drain and refill the basin with hot water until the water inside the buckets was right around the correct temp.
All in all i'm thankful for the petco dollar a gallon sale starting at just the right time, a new tank, and this ordeal is now behind me. Looking forward is more fun anyways.