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What's worse than almost crashing your tank...?

Almost having your house burn down.


I went to visit family down south this past tuesday and drove back tonight. When I got home, something wasn't right. My tank was about 2" low with water, my ATO 5g jug reservoir was imploded (like vacuum sucked), and my vortech wasn't running. I checked under my cabinet and a sudden fright washed through me. My vortech controller and batter backup were chared. Cords were burned up with no insulation on sections.

With an amazing calmness (still probably hasn't hit me yet), I traced the problem to my ATO. When I left, I turned off the house heater (why waste energy). My tank would be getting extra cold, so I added an additional heater. Somehow in that process, I must have disturbed my ATO line (which adds to my tank directly since I don't have a sump). When my ATO kicked in, it dumped out of my tank, down the cabinet, along the inner wall (and outer), down the back of the vortech battery, and to the DC plugs. Everything fried and some how didn't catch the cabinet on fire.

Since I was using an aqualifter, the flow was slow, so it's damage creeped. The tanks are on a laminate wood floor, so I spent the past couple of hours breaking down my tanks and migrating my corals. It is a good thing I have a bunch of buckets, tanks, powerheads, and heaters. I'm not sure how much damage was done to the livestock, but the LPS generally looked ok. The SPS looked "pinked up" so I think I may have a mass bleaching coming up. We'll see. I have coral in a bunch of tanks right now...tick tock.

I'm not sure what I am going to do right now, but the place is a disaster (equipment wise). Not sure how much floor damage there is yet. For a brief moment, I was upset at how much $ I lost in equipment and possible coral, but that quickly went away when I came to grasps with how much worse it could have been. I'm tired but don't think I'll get any sleep now. More to come tomorrow.

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Yikes Tony, something similar happened when I came back from Maui last year, I smelled that expensive burning smell. Looking under the cabinet everything was covered in soot, some power cords were completely gone. But like you I was happy my whole house didn't burn down. For me I'm guessing someone was extra sloppy with top off water.

That being said, it looks like your Vortech only has smoke damage on the outside, so should be ok... unless some wires melted where I can't see it in the picture.
 
Yikes! Sorry about the damage! Sure glad that it was contained and didn't go further, it could have been bad! Hope for the best on your coral.
 
Thanks guys.

[quote author=sfsuphysics link=topic=5730.msg71764#msg71764 date=1230476257]
That being said, it looks like your Vortech only has smoke damage on the outside, so should be ok... unless some wires melted where I can't see it in the picture.
[/quote]
The only damage so far is the floor and the vorechs. It isn't shown well, but all that smoke damage is from wires burning up on the vortech power lines. I have no idea if it is superficuial or not. I'll have tp get out the soldering iron to re-wire and find out.

So far all the coral looks ok (or at the very least, I see no dead tissue...so far). Just a waiting game now.

Aside from being tired as hell (went to bed at 4, didn't really sleep and am up now), I'm not terribly put out (yet) and am trying to see how I can take advantage of the situation.
 
Man, Tony! That's terrible, but I'm very, very glad that nothing worse happened. If you need, I can give you a 44 gallon Brute container, used Koralia 1, and a 35 gallon w/ bulkhead (pretty beat up).
 
I think I am good but thanks. I have a cooler, 3 buckets, 10g and a 1/4 filled 40g holding everything. I'm really glad now that I saved all my heaters and pumps. It saved me big time (Which I guess is a good lesson to all...have backup equipment for at least minimal operation :)). Right now, I am checking to see how easy it will be to replace the damaged section of flooring. It should be pretty easy and only ~$100 if it is what I think it is (just need to remove a section to take into home depot/lowes to see if it is it.
 
Wife seems...indifferent. I think it is her way of letting me deal with it without getting in the way. I think she knows me enough to know that that is actually a supportive way of handling it lol.
 
Sorry to hear that Tony! If you would loose your orange acan I will bring the frag I got from you to the February meeting.
 
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