Yesterday Jane helped me work with the marine tank. We were doing a water change. She unplugged the auto-topoff as she should. We had to leave it off, because we spilled water, and that plays hob with the plugs.
This morning as I was cooking breakfast sausage, I left it to cook, went downstairs to the sump/topoff area and plugged it in. As I thought.
We had breakfast. I went to wrap Jane’s b’day present. On my way back, I passed the tank. Light wasn’t on, but the water was snow white.
Wak! I run for the basement to see what happened. The topoff tank has ‘kalk [limestone] powder’ in it, which feeds the corals and clam. It is supposed to go in when the float switch detects the water level has fallen by, oh, a couple of tablespoons.
I heard water running as I came down the basement stairs. Yep. The sump had overflowed and a waterfall was making a saltwater puddle around the area. I realized it wasn’t the topoff regulator I’d plugged into the power strip (which was now, incidentally, in mid-puddle) but the topoff pump itself, which normally is plugged into the topoff regulator. Jane’s method of stopping the topoff is different than mine. Oops. And my eyesight betrayed me. I didn’t even see the second black dangling cord in the shadow of the handle.
So…I grab a 32 gallon barrel and start siphoning to stop the waterfall. This means the tank AND sump have been hit with an overdose of fresh water. This is potentially lethal. I bang on the AC duct to get Jane’s attention, and keep siphoning, trying to think. She arrives. We take inventory. We have a) 20 gallons of proper salinity saltwater as yet unused. We have b) 20 gallons of kalk-laden fresh water in the topoff barrel: don’t need more kalk, thank you. And c) I’m running the ro/di filter to get more salt water going, and have put 15 cups of salt mix into that, with a mixing pump. It’s going to take about 8 hours to run 30 gallons of water and mix it. Things can die in the meanwhile. Jane suggests we start the ro/di instead to creating pure fresh water, which is yet one more barrel (fortunately we have enough) and take the salt water we have upstairs, draining off part of the problem water in the main tank.
Good idea. Jane starts carrying massively heavy 5 gallon buckets upstairs, climbing a ladder, dipping 5 gallons out, putting 5 in, until we have lowered the water level in the 100 gallon main tank by about half and put in 20 gal new salt water.
Meanwhile I’m trying to use what I drew off by siphon plus what’s dissolved in the salt water bin to regulate the salt water in the sump, which should be 1.025, and is 1.020 salinity. Upstairs is 1.022. Not too bad. So—the electrics shorted out in the waterfall—thank you, GFI switches.—and we now start raising the salinity of the sump to match the salinity upstairs, plus a .002 overshot so we can RAISE the salinity upstairs. Marine creatures survive a salinity drop of .004 fine, but raising it too fast can kill them. So we get it up to 1.024. Excellent. Bottom of the ‘good’ range.
Then we get a hair dryer to dry out the plugs, and plug the pump in, because we have had them purely on circulating pumps to try to keep gas-exchange going in the water, above and below. We pump a little water upstairs, test, add more downstairs, and keep this routine going…never more than .002 at a go.
We install a ‘sock’ to try to catch some of the kalk that’s adhered to floating particulate, which is working.
Water begins to clear. Salinity is proper above and below. The fish are all alive. The clam is open for business. All the corals are open and happy. The water is still white, but you can make out the rocks and corals. We’re gaining on it…
My plan to finish work with the tank and get the heavy canopy seated back on has come a cropper…Jane’s party tomorrow is going to have a marine tank that looks like January in Fargo North Dakota, and the canopy will still be sitting in the floor.
But all’s well that ends well. Everything’s alive.
It is no wonder that you can write convincingly of the Dinner getting to the filters!
Would it be feasible to color code your cords. Say put red enamel on the pump plug, and then some where it gets plugged in, and maybe green for the regulator plug and where it gets plugged in?
Plus, you and Jane need to agree on how it should be arranged, especially if one of you is gone for a few days and the other has a similar emergency, you’ll both know how it was plugged in.
No offense, but the more I read of these, the further away from a marine tank I want to be. I really like marine fish, having been a SCUBA diver on one of the nicest places to dive, but it’s a bit frightening to me to think of the maintenance I’d have to do!
In my opinion, freshwater tanks are quite a bit easier to maintain. I have a number of them without anything other than light added (no heaters/filtration). ONE plug in the wall. I could do without that if I had all those tanks on the windowsill. Most have freshwater shrimp in them as critters or a pair of killiefish or other nano-fish. Lots of live plants for added beauty. About all I have to do is water changes and feeding and if I’ve got enough algae going, I don’t even have to feed the shrimp tanks. Takes about 2 seconds a day…and water changes in less than 5 mintues (these are 2.5g tanks). Water right out of the tap + a teeny spritz of dechlorinator….no need to ‘make’ my water (RO/DI etc). I know CJ feels saltwater tanks are easier than FW….but I beg to differ. And I’m a maine biologist in the real world so I get my fill of marine critters at work.
Lol—they’re both a heckuva lot easier than they used to be. My memories of freshwater are from the days of undergravel filters, which are not my favorite things in the whole universe. Jane’s running her freshwater tank as an afterlife for the 54 gallon marine, with a downflow, and a sump, and (if we can squeeze more sump into that stand, an autotopoff. Lights are on timer, and there’s even an autofeeder to handle that job. My marine tank, once I get it really going, will be automated re topoff and dosing, but right now we’re still in the throes of having transferred a reef to another tank.
I made my big mistake when I delayed doing a sump-cleanup after the initial cycle. We did fine just moving everything over into the new tank cold, with enough live rock (60 lbs from the tank I was breaking down and 40 lbs from a friend’s breakdown, but with new water and new sand. We didn’t have a cycle, thanks to that fully-set-up sand/rock/weed sump, but it was a mucky mess, and while it amply seeded the new tank so it ‘carried’ it with no cycle and a fast colonization, I didn’t then go down there, strip down that sump and clean it up, then rely on the UPPER tank to carry the sump during its re-set-up. Nay. I left it a mucky mess, and flat forgot about the situation and my intention to do a thorough clean—writing got in the way. Amazing how absent-minded I get when writing takes over. Mea culpa! But once I get it going, it will be pretty easy.
CJ – you are right about how we approach tank setups these days and the gear/options available for those who like gadgets. My opinion is that it often takes having a ‘feel’ for what needs to be done and that helps you keep the magic balance. I tend to know when I have enough critters/plants to do that. And I have a feeling for how to make bacteria work for me instead of against me. CJ describes lots of things she does to work with bacteria….it’s important! My own personal challenge right now is finding the balance in a 33L tank that allows me to keep 2 ryukin goldfish (now baseball sized) in a planted tank so I can actually SEE tham instead of watching from above in a big black stock tank. I’m getting there…..but I have a 75g tank outside in the carport as back up in case I give up on making this work. But it will be a juggling act to switch out tanks (sigh). I can’t move a 75g tank just by myself….
Jane takes care of it when I’m not there. I take care of it when I am. Both of us did right, but we didn’t do it the same way. My fault for not checking how someone else had set it…I was in a hurry, the sausage was cooking, and I just did a job and skipped on up stairs.
I advise anybody starting out with a marine tank start with a 3o gallon softie tank or a 30 gallon all-in-one. Dead simple to manage tolerably well. I grow stony coral, and those require a little bit more complexity: they have to be fed limestone and the water has to be adjusted so it will be edible. Hence the kalk feed. if it were just softies, there’d have been a topoff tank without the extra excitement. 😉
I remember when you gave me the tour of the system. I had a lot of fun listening, and if I had had more experience, would probably have understood and remembered it a lot better. It’s also been 3 years and 4 months since then, so my memory has faded a bit.
BTW, if Jane gets a strange email from “Jacquie Lawson” tomorrow, it’s from me.
How about colored duct tape, if not the enamel paint?
Very glad the fish, clam, corals, and other critters are doing well. It sounds like you caught it quickly.
You can both enjoy Jane’s birthday, knowing you worked to earn it! Though really, you weren’t planning on quite that much lift-and-carry.
Or those colored velcro tapes, meant to hold stuff in convenient bundles? The orange and yellow ones ought to be pretty visible.
Yep. Did I mention—this is the day toward which I have been writing for 2 months, doing a massive rolling rewrite so I could take up today’s installment which points us for the first time toward the ending?
I knew I tempted the gods of fate when I said last night that I had such an important scene to do today, and when I almost suggested we put the canopy back on the tank, it was looking so good…
I swear your life is straight out of the Keystone Kops. Never a dull moment. Hope you and Jane have a fun day tomorrow, especially the birthday girl. Glad everybody survived the crisis.
As I recall, 5 gallons of water weighs a little over 40 lbs. (I remember it very clearly every time I have to lug a bottle of water into the kitchen and upend it on the dispenser!) The thought of having to lug 5 gallon buckets up a flight of stairs makes me come over all fluttery. You lot certainly get your share of aerobic exercise.
Jane was able (despite her birthday) to climb a 4 foot ladder with the bucket and accurately pour said 40 lbs of water into the 1×2 foot opening atop our 100 gallon tank, sideways…This is pretty amazing. I could do it, but there would be spillage.