Robin woke me this morning saying that my tank was a bit louder than usual, cloudy and the whole office was smelling like coral.
I woke to the, some say, inevitable tank crash. Fortunately I had 20 gallons of make up water ready to go and immediately started as big of a WC as possible all while trying to trouble shoot the problem. For me, 20 gallons is about 60%. For some reason my ATO reservoir is empty and my first though was that the switch had stuck open pumping near six gallons of Kalk into the tank causing it to over flow the rim onto the floor. Right now I'm feeling like I've made a bad decision buying only a single stage ATO switch.
Anyway, I finished my 60% WC and put a huge bag of carbon into the HOB filter.
After finishing the WC I started looking closely at he corals and fish. So far, Ive lost my CBB and emerald crab. I still havenmt seen my algea blenny and the hawk fish is hanging in there. The snails are and hermits seem to be hanging in there but I dont hold much hope for them long term. The cleaner shrimp seems to have plenty of energy. All of the softies and LPS are opening back up and looking far better already and the birdsnests and catspaws are looking like they will make it. IM not so sure about the red planet and a couple other acro's at this point.
I'll be doing another 60% within a couple hours to help with the recovery of any survivors.
Now back to the lack of failsafes.
I recently added a new Eshopps skimmer to the tank. Last weekend I went out of town for three days and knowing that the collection cup would be too full I put a hose from the cup into a gallon jug in the stand. For some reason, the skimmer went crazy and overflowed causing the ATO to kick on. This added near six gallons of RO/DI Kalk to the tank raising the Ph and Alk all while lowering the salinity to 1.021. The gallon jug simply overfilled when the skimmer went crazy. I should have known better and taken the hose off the skimmer as soon as I got home.
You should never simply have a hose on your skimmer without the proper collection bin with either a float valve shut off or on some models I've seen a ping pong ball type float shut off.
I woke to the, some say, inevitable tank crash. Fortunately I had 20 gallons of make up water ready to go and immediately started as big of a WC as possible all while trying to trouble shoot the problem. For me, 20 gallons is about 60%. For some reason my ATO reservoir is empty and my first though was that the switch had stuck open pumping near six gallons of Kalk into the tank causing it to over flow the rim onto the floor. Right now I'm feeling like I've made a bad decision buying only a single stage ATO switch.
Anyway, I finished my 60% WC and put a huge bag of carbon into the HOB filter.
After finishing the WC I started looking closely at he corals and fish. So far, Ive lost my CBB and emerald crab. I still havenmt seen my algea blenny and the hawk fish is hanging in there. The snails are and hermits seem to be hanging in there but I dont hold much hope for them long term. The cleaner shrimp seems to have plenty of energy. All of the softies and LPS are opening back up and looking far better already and the birdsnests and catspaws are looking like they will make it. IM not so sure about the red planet and a couple other acro's at this point.
I'll be doing another 60% within a couple hours to help with the recovery of any survivors.
Now back to the lack of failsafes.
I recently added a new Eshopps skimmer to the tank. Last weekend I went out of town for three days and knowing that the collection cup would be too full I put a hose from the cup into a gallon jug in the stand. For some reason, the skimmer went crazy and overflowed causing the ATO to kick on. This added near six gallons of RO/DI Kalk to the tank raising the Ph and Alk all while lowering the salinity to 1.021. The gallon jug simply overfilled when the skimmer went crazy. I should have known better and taken the hose off the skimmer as soon as I got home.
You should never simply have a hose on your skimmer without the proper collection bin with either a float valve shut off or on some models I've seen a ping pong ball type float shut off.
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. I hate to say it, but this is one of the main reasons I don't do anything automated if I can help it besides lights. I just don't trust a lot of things. I rather manually top off, dose etc than to rely on some equipment to do it for me. Guess it's my OCD. 
