It’s 12 AM, you look into the tank...your worst fear?

[Biologic]

Losing sleep sucks, especially if your tank causes it. You look into your reef tank, your worse fear is....?

For me, it’s when I am 2 weeks without seeing a montipora eating nudibranch just eating away in my QT.

::gets out dip bucket and picks clean 10 frags::

 

[homer1475]

I would say waking up to an empty tank would be my worst fear. Then once fully awake, realizeing I'm standing in salt water all over my floors.

 

[BarSnackz]

Definitely not my worst fear for my tank at midnight but something I run into way too often right before I'm about to head up to bed. Realizing the ATO reservoir is almost empty and if I leave it over night my ATO pump will run dry... so I have to sit around downstairs half asleep for 30ish minutes whole the RODI runs.

 

[ApoIsland]

I would say waking up to an empty tank would be my worst fear. Then once fully awake, realizeing I'm standing in salt water all over my floors.

Absolutely this. Luckily never happened to me. Happened twice to the guy with the best tank I have ever seen in person. He never quite recovered.

 

[fishguy242]

i'm with you..nudi's:mad:acro eating spiders :mad:..

 

[pledosophy]

True story but it was 4am.

GFCI tripped. No reason I found. Tank was dead silent.
7 of 9 fish, all with me over a decade, dead.


Worst nightmare in the daytime, I was home, day trading as usual. Heard a pop sound 3 feet to my right. Pipe had come out of a bulkhead in my closed loop after 9 years. Lost 125g of water in 2 minutes tops. Ended up having to replace the subflooring and the dry wall in the room.

 

[dhnguyen]

My worst so far for me was when I woke up to go to the bathroom and walked by the tank only to find all my fish dead.

The sea apple I had released eggs and apparently all my fish gobbled them up and died.
Never again.

 

[Squidward]

Finding a big leak would be disastrous. Next would be a bunch of dead fish.

 

[gonzo620]

Sorry about the blurry photos but I was a little frantic that morning, at 4:30am. I woke up for work and as I started downstairs I could smell the burnt electrical odor at the top of the stairs and heard the Ato sucking air. I opened the stand doors to find the stand full of water. About 4” of standing water inside the stand. Only thing lost where 3 power supplies. Still the worst thing to happen to me.

 

[FLReefer101]

I have a friend that had a 90 gallon. Had an electrical issue during the day luckily while he was working. Tank started a fire burnt his two story house to the ground and lost everything on top of his tank. That was several years ago and won’t have as much as a goldfish bowl in his house now. If your new to this hobby make sure that you don’t have a fire waiting to happen. My worst fear is a tank fire at 12am while everyone is sleeping.

 

[fishguy242]

i have seen this ,both full house burn along with two neighbors,not mine but friend,have seen 1 time in my home luckily was rt there to see!!! if at all possible keep all power bars away from inside of stand,and protected from salt spray,
it's the salt creep becomes a conductor when dry!!! will arc and start burning at same time breakers shut down
but too late is already burning!!! be careful out there... @Paul B can you back this up??

 

[Jekyl]

I was a state away and had the wife calling me that my heater controller alarm was going off. She was freaking out and had no idea how to fix it.

 

[MONTANTK]

For me it was being woken up by my dad (around 4am but close enough) asking if my tank was leaking. It sure was! Luckily I had probably lost only 5 gallons or so by the time we caught it but the kitchen ceiling didn’t take too kindly to the saltwater.

 

[58e970b2-3f88-4897-87ba-5]

My worst fear is stepping in the puddle on the way to check.

I came close recently. Skimmer (with adjustable collection cup height) slipped lower during the night and started skimming clear.
I fortunately had big bucket for it to drain into, which was about half an inch away from overflowing after just a night of skimming.

Everyone in the tank was fine, but the heater was starting to come out of the water and the power head was close to sucking air.

That was too close. After that the skimmer got unplugged until I was able to make some modifications to it.

 

[PeterB113]

Finding out that a rock fell ontop of 2 of my scolys and stayed like that until i woke up in the morning.

 

[tamanning]

Skimmer gone wild. I've had several mornings wake up to large puddles on the floor because my skimmer will just go crazy and overflow.

 

[PanchoG]

One word: LEAKS

 

[Biologic]

Esh water on the floor is a good one. LEAKS is a bad thing in 12 AM. No sleep that night for sure. I guess you can always walk away from pests. Or a malfunctioning heater, depending on ambient temperature, can be OK given time. A steady leak is one thing that has to be addressed immediately. lol

 

[Ardeus]

2005.

Long story short, I bought a 220 gallon tank and rented it for an exhibition for a few weeks before bringing it to my office - the tank paid itself that way.

It arrived at my office (fish included) around 10 PM and I finished setting it up around 5 AM.

I went home (same building, 3 stores above the office) and around 9:30 AM a colleage bursts into my apartment and yells that the tank had exploded.

I said "I know" and I was already half dressed. I had woken up in panic knowing what had happened. I was so terrified when I woke up that I didn't even find it strange how I knew the tank had exploded.

 

[tinhorse]

Same as many...skimmer overflowing. I have since made modifications that have saved me a few times. I have a reef octopus 2000 hob and have drilled 2 holes into the collection cup and glued in tubes that feed back into the drain. If for some reason the skimmer goes crazy the water in the collection cup spills out of the tubs and back into the tank. Sure some skimate goes back to the tank, but better that than water all over the floor and electrical at the back of the tank