Disaster Planning

[immortl]

I was just reading a thread about a guy whose son 'fed' the tank to help out and crashed it with several full containers of food and a lot of extra alk. This got me thinking...

I have a smaller Biocube 28. What if something accidentally got dumped into my tank? Perhaps I spilled alk mix, or a bottle of the ABCD additives or something...

I can pretty easily do a full water change, as it is I tend to replace 18 of the 23 gallon total volume for large changes (no ill effects, but I don't have anything overly exotic - 2 clowns, cardinal, firefish, 6 rose bubble tips, 2 torches, green carpet, hammer, zoas, candy cane, 2 plates , duncan, 2 fire shrimp, and a few others I'm probably forgetting).

In a pinch, let's say I don't have distilled water ready. I'm thinking I could fill a few tubs with warm (instantly near or at desired temp) tap water (well water, high TDS but no chloromines) and mix in some salt. It would be pretty easy to move everything over, even making up an extra tub for rinsing purposes. Move over heater/chiller and circ pumps for the short term and buy myself time to make distilled water, fill and flush the display tank and or address whatever else I'd need to do to rectify my theoretical problem. Filtration might be a problem depending on if rocks came over too or not, probably have to keep an eye on ammonia levels...

Has anyone done this? Am I missing or not considering something with this approach?

Thanks,
Joe

 

[JCTReefer]

Let me tell you a story. About a year ago my wife decided to dump a whole years worth of new life spectrum fish food in my 54 gallon. I woke up to the smell of ammonia in the living room. Tank was so cloudy you barely see the rock. Bacterial bloom from h*ll. Talk about panic mode. I was very very angry with her. Can’t believe I’m still married actually. I don’t think she understood the damage she did. Basically just poisoning the tank. I have a 65 gallon Ro/DI reservoir that sits in the garage. It only had 10 gallons of water in it. My bad there. Tested my ammonia and it was off the charts. I hauled rear to Walmart and bought 50 one gallon jugs of RO water. People were looking at me very strangely as I rushed to fill my cart. Looked like I was preparing for dooms day. Lol. And the checker probably thought I was crazy. Now this water was very unlikely 0 TDS water but it’s all I could come up with. Made up 60 gallons of water in about an hour. Temp/Spg matched and did a 100% water change. Prior to the Walmart trip I dosed an emergency dose of prime to neutralize the ammonia. After the water change I dumped a whole bottle of biospira in also. I always keep a few bottles of bottled bacteria around. The only fish I lost was a Royal Gramma. I was surprised nothing else died. I hope I never have to go through that again.
Here’s what the tank looked like.

 

[immortl]

Wow, I'm very glad everything worked out well for you! That's crazy. So yeah, emergency 100% water changes using not quite 0 TDS water seem to work in a pinch.

 

[andrewey]

It's worth mentioning that the response should always be proportional. In JCTReefer's case, they did the best they could in that situation and likely prevented A LOT more loss of life. The flip side is also pretty common. When the actual accident wouldn't have done too much damage, but the response is responsible for causing the loss of life (e.g. not matching water temperature when trying to do a rushed water change). Obviously, the adrenaline in the situation is high, so it's not always fair to "monday morning quarterback", but always take a second to ensure you can estimate the full extent of the situation to you don't compound the situation.

 

[immortl]

That makes sense. On that note, somewhat off topic but hey it's my thread, I get matching temperature and salinity, but other parameters such as Alk and whatnot... I maintain 8.6, but when I do those large changes, it jumps up to 10.7 or so, the salt mixes higher. Never noticed any issues from doing this.

Overall, point taken, although it's an emergency, take 2 moments to consider your response and match up as much as you can. Think things through.