Power Failure Disaster

[lanamarks]

With the power outage last night in my area of town I came home after church and 1/4 of my tank's water was in the sump/on the floor. I closed the valve that went from the overflow to the sump only to have another 5 gal overflow. Thats when I figured out that I must of had a siphon in the return pipe and the check valve was not doing it's job. I had holes drilled in the tubing to prevent this but I think they were clogged.

So then I added as much water from the sump (by hand) back to the top of the tank. I then put water from my auto-topoff back into the tank. Next comes the second bad thing. A bunch of kalk junk in the bottom of the tank washed into the tank. So now my water is cloudy and too low, not to mention a possible pH spike.

I mixed up two 3gal buckets of saltwater (unfortunately cold since no heating method available) and added those to the tank. My mandarin was swimming listlessly around the top of the tank so of course I am freaking out.

I now have to unplug everything because if the power comes back on my Tunze, return pipe, and heaters are all going to fail without water. Protein skimmer is in the sump so it is virtually useless.

When the power comes back on I plug two powerheads into an extension cord and put them in near the top for circulation. So right now my tank is cloudy and cold. No idea on what died or what survived until I get home from work today. After work I will pick up 10 gal of saltwater from somewhere and go home to assess the damage. Needless to say, I got very little sleep last night.

Wish me good luck! This is so aggrevating because I tried to make sure this wouldn't happen and tested it several times before filling my tank. I guess the holes clogged and the check valve failed all at once. What luck!

[RamManOK]

sorry to hear that. I hope that everything comes out okay.

Tom

[TheMcs]

Let us know how everything fares. Sorry to hear about the headache! Let me know if there is anything we can do to help.

[oddballs]

ditto !that stinks weve been a little worried w storm season coming!if there is anything we can do feel free to holla!man my spelling gets worse by the day.good old coweta high school !hey greg give me a ring.

[lanamarks]

We'll see how it goes after work.

At least on a happy note my work got me a 100.00 credit to Aquarim Oddballs for graduation. So at least if I lose a few things I'll have some cash to help counter the losses.

My nano suffered nothing at all and is just fine and dandy so that's good news.

[Travis L. Stevens]

Looks like your nano will now be a grow out tank

[lanamarks]

Appears that everything made it (although stressed). I have to get 10 more gallons of water after work and then hopefully I can get everything up and running again. A few cheap powerheads sure come in handy!

[Travis L. Stevens]

*cheers* Im glad to hear that everything is now going okay. Just let us know if you lost anything, or need any help. Im sure we might be able to scrounge up something out of our tanks to be similar to something you have lost.

[TheMcs]

Awesome! I was all set to frag the candy cane and shrooms I got from you. Guess they're safe for now.

Are you able to engineer your plumbing so this won't/shouldn't happen again?

[Travis L. Stevens]

What about getting a sump big enough to help extra water? That way if you engineer right and it still goes wrong again it wont spill in your floor.

[lanamarks]

The sump is large enough to hold the excess water from the overflow in case of power failure (I made sure of this before setting up initially). However it could never hold the 60 gal or so that a reverse siphon could pull out. That is why I put both a check valve in the line and siphon break holes in the return piping.

Guess I need to buy a more expensive check valve and clean the holes out more often. The sump size is not the problem in this case. Only about 1" from the top of the tank should have flowed into the sump from the overflow in case of a power failure, not 8"!

Any other suggestions to prevent a reverse siphon?

[Travis L. Stevens]

oooOOOoooohh...I thought it was like an overflow that didn't break the siphon, not the other way around. I never realized that it could flow back. I'm definitely going to research into that.

[quaz]

Hmmm... you might think of doing a safty float shut of on the return tube where when or if the water in the sump rises to unsafe levels it will act as a second cut off after the one way valve. It'd work like kent or other floats for smaller airline like tubing but bigger. with a little engineering and tinkering it might work.

[lanamarks]

Thanks everyone for the tips. I am doing a little upgrading on my check valve and cleaned out the reverse siphon holes. Everything made it and all is well (for now).

Next mission - nuke the flatworms!