Help me avert disaster - share your tank crash story

[apex003]

My tanks is doing really well right now and I feel like I've taken steps to prevent basic catastrophes. I've got a battery backed up MP10 and chiller to protect against power outage and heat, both of which have caused crashes for me on previous tanks. LMIII dosing pumps seem dialed in and should never fail "on".

However, I'm paranoid that I'm going to wake up to a milky colored box of death because I'm not thinking about an issue that could arise.

Please share your *preventable* tank crash story and what you would have done differently, so I (and others) can potentially prevent the same mistakes from happening.

Why is this in the sps forum??? Because I think the folks here probably are, on average, putting together the more well-designed and, perhaps, complex systems. I want to know where the potential weaknesses are in these types of systems... Thanks for sharing!

 

[rovster]

Never leave your tank unattended for a prolonged period of time....aka vacation. Have someone stop in and check, possibly a good friend or family member. Also good to know someone you can have on call if the need arises.


I had a friend go out of town for a week. He asked me to stop in to check his alk since he was having some issues. A couple of days into his vacation he had a controller failure which wiped out over half his stuff including all pumps including the return but one MP, on a 250 gal sps system. Long story short, crisis everted....

 

[apex003]

Thanks rovster. Can you elaborate on the controller failure? I'm thinking of adding one to my system, but worry that's just another point of failure where I don't know all the things that could go wrong...

 

[rovster]

Basically a whole EB8 got taken out by a thunderstorm. Not sure why it did not reset on its own.

We personally have a dog sitter that comes to our house when we are out of town and he usually feeds my fish. I also have a couple of local friends on standby if something were to ever happen if my dog sitter couldn't handle.