Woke Up This Morning And . . .

[MikeB]

Well me and the wife woke up this morning and our kitchen was flooded. I ran and turned off all pumps. I could not see where the water was coming from at first. I have a Fuge sepereate from my sump. The Fuge was overflowing. My ATO runs in to the fuge but I don't think thats the culprit. I trimmed all teh Chaeto in the Fuge on Saturday. Well I think the bits a pieces have clogged up the overflow going in to the sump from the fuge.

THis is an OLD picture as it has changed a little but still the same concept.

I still dont know the exact reason but its all I can think of. The fuge was not draining where it should have, back in to the sump. I have turned off the Ball Valve that lets water in to the Fuge for now since I had to come to work. Our Salinity dropped to 1.023. We had about 15 Towells all over the kitchen to clean up the water. Thank goodness the water did not make it to the LIvingromm where there is carpet.

I will give everyone an update when I get home from work today. I will find the root cause.

 

[SaraB]

Sorry to hear about the mess!

 

[kev2me]

That sucks, hope everything is ok when you get home.

 

[slipondajimmy]

Oh dang.

I had the line that connects my pump in back of the nano to the water nozzle pop of while I was out and had about 5 gallons of water all over my carpet.

Hopefully there is not real water damage at your place.

 

[MikeB]

I did not have time to inspect all the cabinets, etc for water damage but I will see when I get home.

 

[Ladipyg]

That happened to me once also...I went to Home Depot and got a water alarm...of course it's only going to help if you're home but it's better than nothing. Just raise the salinity back slowly so you don't shock your fish and corals too much. I would suggest a drip in (saltwater of a higher concentration, without precipitating) and a drip out of tank water...match them up and you won't have to worry about it as much. Good luck with the clean up.

I also added a bulkhead strainer to keep it from happening again. Keeps everything running smoothly.

 

[Hungriee]

hope everything is well.

could it be the return was faster than teh drain speed?

 

[MikeB]

hope everything is well.

could it be the return was faster than teh drain speed?

No No, Nothing has changed in 1 year. EVerythign is the same. Thats why I am blaiming the drain on the Fuge.

 

[lutte100]

man that sucks, just got to keep trimming that chaeto, i aslo had a similar problem

 

[MikeB]

man that sucks, just got to keep trimming that chaeto, i aslo had a similar problem

I trim it about 1 every 2 months, The problem was when I trim it, lots a little slivers get lose and they got trapped in the pipe around a 45 degree turn. I took apart the pipe going from the fuge to the sump a found a Chaeto hair ball. That was the culprit. All it back to normal except my salinity which we will be bringing back up slowly. No serious water damage either so thats good.

 

[Wild1]

That sucks out loud! Hope everything works ok for you...Johnnie

 

[rarelyseriousb]

all this could have been avoided with one shamwow. jk. seriously could you hook up a water alarm to shut off the pumps?

 

[bellareef]

That stinks. Stuff like that happens to everyone at sometime. I like to use these flood alarms. When we're gone, the security system monitors audio, so I promptly get a call if there's a flood.

http://www.harborfreight.com/cpi/ctaf/displayitem.taf?Itemnumber=92334

 

[Atomikk]

My solution to this is ALWAYS redundancy. I always have two holes for my refugiums that are 50% bigger than the inlet. So if your inlet is 1/2", the outlets are minimally 3/4". This will always prevent a flood like this. If one clogs up, the other can take the brunt of the load. You will rarely have both drains clogged at the same time.

HTH

 

[Saltysteele]

oh, wow! sorry for the mess, but glad you didn't have a situation like labman's!

 

[MitchReef]

Bummer Browns, deeply sorry to hear about the disaster...I have flooded so many times in the process of getting where the system is now that I have started forming slight webbing of my feet....Make sure and shopvac under the edges of everything that the water may have gotten to if you cannot move it to dry under...and just let the shopvbac run for a few minutes in each spot....