- Joined
- May 5, 2020
- Messages
- 819
- Reaction score
- 403
We went out of state this weekend, for Easter. Water change, check. skimmer cup cleaned, check. ATO filled up, check. What could go wrong? Certainly not another heater malfunction. Thanks to Inkbird and my neighbor, I already averted that crisis. I asked the same neighbor to stop by once on Saturday and once on Sunday for a quick feeding, as I would return Sunday evening. Well, this morning I got a phone call around 11am. He had been trying to call me since 9, but I had my ringer turned off. Apparently my ATO stopped working and my return pump was running dry. Thankfully he knows enough about my setup and was able to scoop some water from the ATO res to fill up my return chamber. Everything is good now, right? WRONG! I started dosing kalk through my ATO a few weeks ago...panic mode! At this point, he is out of town doing the Easter thing. I'm in the middle of Iowa, doing the Easter thing / reef tank, freak-out. Well, I made it home a couple hours ago. Return chamber almost dry again, bubbles in the dt. Everything still alive and thriving, but dang! I did install a pH controller when I starting dosing kalk and it was turned off. It's the Milwaukee mc122 with the giant, red power button on the front...and it was switched to off. I'm to the point where I'm either giving up on vacations or reef tanks. (Vacations) It seems no matter how much planning goes into my out of town trips, something always goes wrong! It's like, if Charlie brown set up a reef tank.