- Joined
- Oct 12, 2007
- Messages
- 487
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- 299
- Location
- Fredericksburg, VA
- What state or country do you live in
- Virginia
I teach and have set up a 30g IM AIO in my classroom. Summer started about 2 weeks ago, but there are still people in the building feeding the fish and looking in. I've been going in about 3-4 times per week to check on everything. This morning my co-worked called me at 0700 and sent me this pic and said, "The tank doesn't look right."
Not my first precipitation event as I had another about 20 years ago give or take, but I've been out of the hobby for the better part of the last 16 years so.... I knew it was either an ATO failure and kalk overdose (unlikely as the tank would have overflowed), or worse, my part B solution emptied into the tank. Let's check apex.
So at 0430 everything went to hell. The doser is set to add 4ml of Part A and Part B (sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate), every other hour alternating, 5x each per night for a total of 20ml. The part B container was empty and the part A had 400ml left... so I assume 400ml of Part B was dumped into a 30g tank. Ugg.
Raced to school with the 20g nsw I had mixed up. An orchid dottyback decided to jump for it rather than take it's chances in the diluted household ammonia he was up against. I managed to grab 90% of everything else and get it transported to my home tanks. We'll see if anything survives, though the clowns did eat a bit so that's good. The crocea has me most worried at the moment...
So. Failure point. The doser obviously. And I believe the mistake was mine. I don't have a lot of room to work around this tank so the dosing vessels are currently resting above the tank. Best guess is that a siphon formed and the dump happened.
In the meantime, even changing out 20g, the ph is currently sitting at 9.04. The alk has plummeted to 6.0dkh. I'm mixing more nsw and I'll do another 20g change.... Anything else I should be doing? (Other than addressing my failure point)
Not my first precipitation event as I had another about 20 years ago give or take, but I've been out of the hobby for the better part of the last 16 years so.... I knew it was either an ATO failure and kalk overdose (unlikely as the tank would have overflowed), or worse, my part B solution emptied into the tank. Let's check apex.
So at 0430 everything went to hell. The doser is set to add 4ml of Part A and Part B (sodium hydroxide and sodium carbonate), every other hour alternating, 5x each per night for a total of 20ml. The part B container was empty and the part A had 400ml left... so I assume 400ml of Part B was dumped into a 30g tank. Ugg.
Raced to school with the 20g nsw I had mixed up. An orchid dottyback decided to jump for it rather than take it's chances in the diluted household ammonia he was up against. I managed to grab 90% of everything else and get it transported to my home tanks. We'll see if anything survives, though the clowns did eat a bit so that's good. The crocea has me most worried at the moment...
So. Failure point. The doser obviously. And I believe the mistake was mine. I don't have a lot of room to work around this tank so the dosing vessels are currently resting above the tank. Best guess is that a siphon formed and the dump happened.
In the meantime, even changing out 20g, the ph is currently sitting at 9.04. The alk has plummeted to 6.0dkh. I'm mixing more nsw and I'll do another 20g change.... Anything else I should be doing? (Other than addressing my failure point)
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