Whats your worst Reef Experience??

[shallowreef]

I know that i haven't been in this hobby all that long and i have faced a few nightmares with my reef tank. Like when i accidentally slammed my canopy lid closed and my whole VHO light fixture hit the water and exploded.

Whats your worst Reef Experience??

 

[wrightme43]

My cat jumped on the light fixture, broke the legs and knocked it into the tank. It was on. Didnt kill the cat or the fish, or the corals. Just kinda messed them up a bit. Cat stays off of tanks now. LOL

 

[CarlaW]

Had a cucumber get into the intake on a cannister filter that I was running on my 80. Wiped out everything except a yellow watchman goby that is still alive today. This happened about 5 years ago.

 

[payge]

Umm now with our battle of the bristleworms and toppling corals!!!! And the 3yr old touching a hose in the sump and it coming off and spewing water all across the living room!!!! Not to mention when we had a power outage and woke up to a flooded living room!!

I keep thinking to myself wait it gets better....I think that hope may be a longshot hehe

 

[wrightme43]

Had a cucumber get into the intake on a cannister filter that I was running on my 80. Wiped out everything except a yellow watchman goby that is still alive today. This happened about 5 years ago.

That a bummer man. You know your not suposed to feed your fish pickles though, right?
I know I know I just couldnt resist. I am bored out of my mind today. Trinity is sick, I cant take her to day care. I cant work cause shes only three, dont think my customers would be too cool with a sick three year old wandering around. LOL
Just finished reading the Cell S. Kings new book. Got it yesterday. Thats some scary stuff.

 

[CarlaW]

Ah, another Steven King fan!! I haven't hardly had time to do any reading since I got married!!! I am home dealing with a few insurance woes caused by somebody wrecking their car yesterday. Wasn't me or the wife!!!!! Darn kids!!!! At least he is OK, that is the most important thing!

 

[spongebob lover]

mine is flooding the apartment downstairs 3 times

 

[moortim]

A friend just told me a story yesterday about how he was sleeping on a couch at his inlaws house a few years ago and their 29 gal tank was on a table at the end of the couch. He has a habit of thrashing around while sleeping and in the night he kicked out real hard and sent the whole tank to the floor in one huge explosion. The rest of the family thought a bomb had gone off. Then to top it all off he tried to grab some of the fish without thinking about the broken heater laying in the water. If the loud noise and water mess wasn't enough to fully wake him up I am sure the electric shock was.


Well this wasn't my story but I figured it was worthy of being posted anyway.

Tim

 

[shallowreef]

Not my personal experience but my uncles homemade stand went out on him when he was in the filling stages of his tank to see if the stand would hold. Need less to say the tank hit the floor and made a loud boom like a gun went off and within a second the hole garage had two inches of water on it. It happened that fast! Luckily it was in a garage instead of his house. The tank was a 210 by the way. it cracked the garage floor from all the weight hitting it the way it did.

 

[shallowreef]

this thread is great! I love everyones personal experiences!

 

[moortim]

Not my personal experience but my uncles homemade stand went out on him when he was in the filling stages of his tank to see if the stand would hold.

So far this one wins for descructive force. I must ask though, if you are worried about your stand holding, did you make it strong enough to begin with? Which leads to another question, is it a good idea to test it with the weight of your tank? I suppose you could hoist your car up and set it on the stand. (Ha Ha)

 

[shallowreef]

He was pretty sure it would hold and so was i. We where just testing for extra precausions and to see if the tank leaked. This incident has taught me to always buy a already built stand or use 4x4's verses 2x4's.

 

[tony2005]

when my old sump overflow and stayed up till 4:00 in the moring clean and figuring out what cause it.but u know what i still don't know what happen that day when that happen,it might off had a brain fart:lol:

 

[tony2005]

here one,i know u guy here in washington state remember this,the earth quake we had,that day i was confused either run out of my apartment on the 3rd floor or hold up my reef tank:lol:

 

[shallowreef]

Another incident that happened to me was when i was trying to transfer my brown banded bamboo sharks to a bigger tank. My LFS guy said not to net them because it stresses them out too much or something like that. So he said to just catch em by hand. Now at the time they were only eight inches long so i wasn't really worried about losing a finger or anything. So i go to grab one and of course he puts up a big fight and i as i am about to release him into the bucket to be transferred he bites my finger. The best was he wouldn't let go. I guess he couldn't break the skin with his teeth so he decided to not let go . I had him on my figer for about a minute before he let go. After that i had the worst blood blister ever. I still wish i had those sharks they were cool!

 

[Krish]

Just floods man...And more floods. Leaking pumps, hoses blowing off pumps, sump overflowing, skimmer overflowing...You name it!

 

[tony2005]

Just floods man...And more floods. Leaking pumps, hoses blowing off pumps, sump overflowing, skimmer overflowing...You name it!

damn krish u should just stick with the tank u have in your backyard:lol: man u got problem:lol:

 

[Krish]

damn krish u should just stick with the tank u have in your backyard man u got problem

LOL...Every once and a while I like to give the tiles an extra salt cleaning:lol:

 

[jetaero]

Heater... tank to 90. My worst experience.

 

[-=dieseldave=-]

I open opened up a valve on my Kalk container to make drain the last few drops out. I then fill the container with RO/DI water mixed in 2tsp per gallon of Kalk. I left to go out to eat with the wife. I came back 5 minutes latter I had forgotten my wallet. The sound of the PH monitor alarm was beeping in the family room. So I went to go inspect. To my horror when I saw the tank I had forgotten to close the valve to the drain of my Kalk container. The tank was cloudy white with Kalk the Ph was around 9. I closed the valve, ran to the pantry and then added started adding vinegar to the tank to stabilize the PH that was still moving upwards. I'm not sure if adding the vinegar was a good idea but I knew it would lower the PH. The PH stabilized and started moving down. The PH hit 9.8 and then came back down to 8.3 with in an hour and a half. I did not lose any corals after the incident but I did have several corals that did exhibit RTN. A week latter my Algae Blenny died from what appeared to be related he was breathing heavy from the time of the incident till his death. Two emerald crabs turned white and even their eyes they never molted and died about 3 months latter. I had 2 clowns, 1 clam, an anemone, and several sps, zoas, xenia that all survived. Other than the blenny and the 2 emerald crab every thing is still alive and doing well some of the corals that did RTN are making good come backs.
It was sad and I was very angry for a long time about my carelessness that killed some of my favorite pets.