My boneheaded catastrophe...

[Dan Fox]

I did the same thing once. Ended up killing the entire tank, destroying the hardwood flooring it sat on, and killing the furnace in my home - in February - in Wisconsin! (air return duct was right behind the tank and water ran down the duct and into the furnace circuitry). All told, this was a $7,000 insurance payout (new floor, new furnace, water mitigation). All that from a 150GPD RO Unit running into a 24 gal cube. Needless to say, my taste for the hobby and my wife's willingness to let me start over was all gone. Took five years before I was allowed to rebuild.

I feel your pain!

 

[Gareth elliott]

Hope everything pulls through.

I had a radiator seal burst in an apartment with carpet. Waited 3 days for the land lord to “fix it”. The smell was horrendous. Ended up removing the carpet myself. Lease was up the next month, never resigned; carpet was still not replaced when i left.

 

[Reeferdood]

Just checking in, you have already heard everything I would be typing.
Just a heartfelt reach out to see how your reef and everything else is doing..
Total bummer..

 

[Crabs McJones]

Oh no! I just came across this thread. Daniel i'm so sorry that happened to you . Any update on how everything is doing?

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Thanks everyone. Fish are alive. BTA is a casualty as are all SPS. I'm hoping palys pull through. I had around 100 rainbow incinerators on a rock... hoping they last. All motile inverts are dead.

 

[HotRocks]

Thanks everyone. Fish are alive. BTA is a casualty as are all SPS. I'm hoping palys pull through. I had around 100 rainbow incinerators on a rock... hoping they last. All motile inverts are dead.

Bummer... So sorry to hear this

My palys did fine when I had unintentionally lowered my salinity down to 1.018 due to a refractometer out of cal...

 

[mcarroll]

@Dana Riddle did you notice effects from rain storms on tide pools? Seems like that would have to drop a tide pool's salinity like a rock.

I know Sustainable Aquatics has a white paper where they say they looked at fish and salinity and they apparently don't seem disturbed much at all by swings.

 

[KrisReef]

I feel your pain brother !
5 days ago, I left my ro/di line running to top off my display tank sump (takes 3-5 minutes) and was distracted, then went to bed.....thank god my wife woke me up 4 hours later when she went to the bathroom and walked across the carpet !

My salinity in the tank was 1.018 and I quickly used a calculator and figured out how much salt it would take to put my tank back to 1.024 where I keep it.
I mixed 6 lbs of reef crystals up in a 5 gallon ro/di bucket, arerated with pump for 10 minutes and then drained 5 gallons out of tank and dumped my mix in.

No signs of any losses as of yet.....believing I dodged a bullet this time, the next morning I ordered a Neptune ATK and reservoir to use with my Apex controller....now I just need to fill the resivoir by hand like your doing....don't think I'll automated this part.

Nice to know I'm not the only one

How are your tank inhabitants doing today after the rapid salinity replacement? I probably would have dripped the replacement brine slowly (30-45 minutes / 5 gals) into my sump and leg it mix in the tank for a couple of hours before I removed the excess 5 gallons from my 150 system, but raising the salinity back rapidly, not slowly over days.

I am curious to hear how your system faired over time, as well as the results from the OP who raised the salinity slower??

Lagoon salinity on island reefs is sometimes subjected to localized salinity drops during storms especially near river mouths. The sessile animals that live there survive.

 

[ReeferBean]

Thanks everyone. Fish are alive. BTA is a casualty as are all SPS. I'm hoping palys pull through. I had around 100 rainbow incinerators on a rock... hoping they last. All motile inverts are dead.

Have a friend near by that can hold your corals? I'd offer my tank but its not quite ready.

 

[KrisReef]

How are your tank inhabitants doing today after the rapid salinity replacement? I probably would have dripped the replacement brine slowly (30-45 minutes / 5 gals) into my sump and leg it mix in the tank for a couple of hours before I removed the excess 5 gallons from my 150 system, but raising the salinity back rapidly, not slowly over days.

I am curious to hear how your system faired over time, as well as the results from the OP who raised the salinity slower??

Lagoon salinity on island reefs is sometimes subjected to localized salinity drops during storms especially near river mouths. The sessile animals that live there survive.

Oh, and don’t get me started on my own past floods. I’ve spawned events that make Noah’s flood look like a fish store tour.

 

[Willie Villasana]

Sorry to hear about your tank, I lost all but 2 crabs when my tank started leaking and my ato was adding water. My stand made of MDF soaked up the excess water but my this lasted a few days until I figured out what happened. I set up an old biocube I had and tried to save the stock I had. I broke the tank down and decided not to put it back together and get out of the hobby after 15 years of reefing. Fast forward a month and I started to miss it. I built a new stand keeping my old 72 gallon bow front, new sand new sump new ato tank. After 2 months of it being up and running I'm enjoying reefing again and having fun.

 

[Reeferguy365]

Wow sorry to hear that. I feel your pain. In december I lost everything in my 180 but fish and mushrooms..my dumb butt didn't install the brand new heater I had sitting in my garage that mistake cost me thousands in SPS. Then a couple months later my return pump got unplugged and my check valve decided to fail there was at least 50 gallons of water in my front room....Wife was not happy about that one. We all learn from mistakes now I have 2 heaters 2 sumps and my check valve is right above my return pump so cleaning is easy. The only guarantee in this hobby is it will definitely test you. Best of luck!!

 

[DBryan]

One small point of good news...I just ordered 2 big buckets of Brightwell salt in the Drs. Foster and Smith sale...so at least I've got plenty of salt to work with. LOL

I have my ro on my apex so it fills at dinner time a small tank, that way i can always check to make sure every thing is ok. You could just use a timmer.

 

[RamsReef]

This has somewhat happened to me before as well. I used to top off my tank with just a hose and a valve to my rodi. I flooded twice (Thankfully was just my fish only QT) before I learnt. Always use a float valve as a fail safe on Top Off Lines.

Sorry about your tank MD

 

[Gahngoo]

Thanks everyone. Fish are alive. BTA is a casualty as are all SPS. I'm hoping palys pull through. I had around 100 rainbow incinerators on a rock... hoping they last. All motile inverts are dead.

Do you have aftermath pictures?

 

[RichtheReefer21]

Ugh... the worst...

Hang tough man... this too shall pass.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Do you have aftermath pictures?

Still in the fray. I'll post up pics afterward to show the final result.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

You could just use a timmer.

This is what I typically do. I just shouldn't have been messing with the tank as tired as I was. I gotta learn that somethings are better left to the next day...

 

[Daniel@R2R]

The only guarantee in this hobby is it will definitely test you.

Agreed!

 

[Dana Riddle]

@Dana Riddle did you notice effects from rain storms on tide pools? Seems like that would have to drop a tide pool's salinity like a rock.

I know Sustainable Aquatics has a white paper where they say they looked at fish and salinity and they apparently don't seem disturbed much at all by swings.

I made salinity measurements in some tide pools hat were isolated from the ocean at times. See here:
https://www.advancedaquarist.com/2009/6/aafeature
With that said, there had to be instances where tide pool salinity was under the influence of torrential rainfall and greatly affected.
I'll take a close look at these when I get a chance:

Coles, S.L. and P.L. Jokiel, 1978. Synergistic effects of temperature, salinity and light on the hermatypic Montipora verrucosa. Mar. Biol., 48: 187-195.

Coles, S.L., 1993. Experimental comparison of salinity tolerances of reef corals from the Arabian Gulf and Hawaii. Evidence for hyperhaline adaptation. Proc. 7th Int. Coral Reef Symp., Guam. 1: 227-234.

Glazebrock, J.S. and R. Van Woesik, 1993. Effects of low salinity on the tissues of hard corals Acropora spp. Pocillopora sp. and Seriatopora sp. from the great keppel region. Proc. 7th Int. Coral Reef Symp., Guam. 1: 307.

Nakano, Y., K. Yamazato and S. Iso, 1993. Responses of Okinawan reef-building corals to experimental high salinity. Proc. 7th Int. Coral Reef Symp., Guam. I:308

Nystrom, M., F. Moberg, and M. Tedengren, 1997. Natural and anthropogenic disturbance on reef corals in the inner Gulf of Thailand; physiological effects of reduced salinity, copper and siltation. Proc. 8th Int. Coral Reef Symp., Panama. 2: 1893-1898.