[RonSF]

I took my 72 gallon reef tank to the dump today. The tank and all of it's contents. The tank had a melted center brace from an unfortunate lighting experiment a while back. The stand was a lousy All Glass stand that was water damaged. The rest was dead.

I'm slowly adjusting to the absolute silence in my living room and the stain in the parquet floor where my tank used to be. Amazingly, a simple electrical malfunction was the only difference between the healthy reef I left a week ago last Thursday and the total loss I came home this last Thursday night.

I must admit that there is a certain cathartic effect to my writing this story here on RC and sharing my grief, but I'd like to put my circumstances out in the public forum here in the hope that something in my story might help someone else avoid similar misfortune down the road.

I left my aquarium in the hands of my brother, who agreed to house sit for a week while I vacationed with the family in Kona on the Big Island. I left him with several pages of notes and a joke that I hoped most of the notes would be irrelevant because the tank would have a week of smooth sailing. Nothing of consequence had happened in many many months and I had fairly little anxiety about leaving him in charge, in spite his lack of familiarity with my tank.