Cali Kid Corals

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

[quote author=Gomer link=topic=5730.msg71781#msg71781 date=1230488014]
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.


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Good deal, I should keep some redundancy around too. Let us know how things go with the flooring too.
 
That sucks Tony :(

But you are doing good by highlighting this issue. I've seen two house burn down due to equipment problems (power strips + water = bad stuff). To have these type of threads on the forum gets people critically thinking about the issue :)
 
I didn't have a GFI, but I am not sure if it would matter. AFAIK, gfi needs an imbalance to trip. I believe this incident was a low conductance resistive heating (think of turning the power supply to the vortech into a 2 wire hair dryer element) because the water bypassed the actual load. Either way, I just picked up two GFI's. Even if it wouldn't have fixed anything, it is safer. ..but I am fkn lucky Gresh. I'll count my blessings/karma/voodoo points while I got them.

THe flooring should be cake. Just got back from HD with supplies. THe flooring is glueless laminate so that makes it super easy. Best case, it is $40 in supplies. Worse case, $80.

And about the only lemonaid I can make out of this, is that now I am going to re-do my frag rack a bit more optimally :)
 
GFI may or may not have helped, I have had GFI connected devices both give me a shock (stray voltage) and have had strips arc/smoke/smolder without tripping.
 
This has to be my worst nightmare. It seems so many of us are having tank issues this season. Thank you for taking the time to share what is going on even though it must be tough. Jim and I feel somehow closer to everyone with all the sharing even though we dont personally know you we care about you as you allow us to go through this with you. This is an awsome community of people and glad to be a part of it.
 
You can thank God the problem didn't burn down the house. We're going out of town will be back Tues. Let me know if there's anything we can do then.
 
Tony, I'm gad this turned out to be more annoyance (albeit big annoyance) than catastrophe.

Thanks for sharing, I know I have a powerstrip in my stand that should be moved to a place where water is less likely to travel.

Did the water travel down cords that didn't have drip loops or was the equipment in a place in your stand that was in the path of the water?
 
Water actually traveled down the wall of the tank, the wall of the stand, through the back hole, and over to the back up battery where it was drawn downward to the DC connection.
 
House is still a "wreck" with all the recovery equipment all over the place, but everything is FINALLY back up and running. I ended up re-doing my frag rack, a 50% WC in the transfer, and sucked out a bunch of junk at the bottom hidden by rock (detritus + worn rock + precipitates).

Lights were turned on about 15 minutes ago. Corals look very healthy. Oddly, some look better! No casualties yet (knock on wood). A bit of necrosis on one SPS colony, but that is it.
 
Vortech battery is absolutely dead. The pump and controller..not sure. The powersupply fried. I'll contact eco to see if anything can be done.
The floor is moderately damaged. It is the laminate "fake wood" flooring. There is slight, but noticable buckling at the seams over a ~3' x 9ft section. It is trivial to replace..if I can find out who makes the flooring so that I can match the current tongue+groove+pattern. Otherwise, I'll replace the room floor. Luckily, it is only ~ 100sq ft isolated room
 
All the new building codes call for "arc fault" breakers to prevent stuff like this . I have a dedicated circuit on my tank and have thought about putting one on , but don't think I will . They can be a PITA sometimes and they are twice the cost of a normal breaker .

I get lazy when I work on my equipment and I know it . To prevent myself from making a mistake I mounted all my power strips as high in the cabinet as I could . That way no mater what they have a drip loop .

One thing I have been doing from day one is taking my time to set up my tank before I leave town . I have yet to have a problem when I leave . Its hard for me to get the time so I start the prep a few days before I go , also setting up anything I think that might needed if things go south . To top it off I always have a phone call into a fellow reefer in the area letting him know Ill be gone. Just in case !
 
Without going into detail, I wanted to update the Vortech end of things. Ecotech Marine went above and beyond what I imagined and as a result, I'll have my vortech running again in a week or so :)
 
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