Earthquake Cleanup!

bojuben

Member
Yep - I was effected by the earthquake. I live approx 50 miles south on the coast in Arroyo Grande. I was not home at the time but my boys were. I was coming out of Starbucks with my cup of hot chocolate and I felt my legs wobble. Then I heard it coming! I walked as quickly as I could on very wobbly legs (kinda like I had too much to drink) into the center of the parking lot where there was nothing over head to fall and I rode it out. Cell phone service was overwhelmed so I could not get through to my kids who were home alone. Drove home as quickly as I could. The kids and dogs were fine. Lots of stuff knocked over but nothing broken. Talked to my husband at work and all of his employees were fine.
I have lived through hurricanes (living on the ocean on the east coast) and tornados but I have to say this is the scarcest by far. No warning and no control. You just have to take the ride and go with it.
Our power was out for 16 hours and I am surprised it was not longer.
I had to go out last night around 8:00 pm. A lot of the town was still without power. Both LFS had no power and all I could think about was how bad that could be for them. My favorite LFS is a great place! Last week he went to LA and stocked up for the holidays. Hopefully he will have minimal loses. I will probably be stopping in to see how he faired.
SLOfish is also in this area. Though he is on break from Christmas I hope his tank is OK and that someone checked on it.
How my tank faired.......................
I have a 30 gallon tank that rocked and rolled during the quake - but did not fall over. I lost approx 1 gallon of water to the carpet below. Since we had no electricity I could not get the carpet cleaner out to extract the water. I did put a bunch of towels down to get as much as I can that way but it could not get everything. This morning I got out my carpet cleaner and soaked the carpet with clean water as many times as I could to get the saltwater out.
Does anyone have any other suggestions on what I can do to get all the saltwater out? How much long term damage will this do? Will everything smell like sea water? Should I treat the carpet in any way?
I was very concerned about my fish during the power outage. Thankfully the tank is only 3 months old and I was stocking it very slowly. The temp slowly dropped to 70 and is usually around 78.
I have all my pump and lights plugged into a power strip and that is plugged into a GFI. I turned the power strip off so that the tank would not come on without me standing in front of it. I was concerned about electricity because both the GFI and power strip got wet. When the power went back on at 3:00 I work up to restart the tank. My GFI would not work! Checked the rest button and then the breaker. Both were fine. Husband seems to think that the saltwater damaged the GFI and that he will need to replace it today. This will not be pretty as he will have to work over my open sump in a very tight space behind the tank. My power strip now has a beautiful orange extension cord attached to a plug in my kitchen. Has anyone else had a GFI break from saltwater?
I have 4 snails, 4 hermit crabs, 1 featherduster, 1 firefish and a skunk cleaner shrimp. The snails and crabs are fine, the firefish was eating well this morning, my shrimp did not seem very interested in food and was not eating but he is hanging out under his favorite rock. The featherduster seems like he did not fair well. It has not extended himself and just does not "look" right. I am hoping that the shrimp can weather through as I really enjoy watching his antics. I checked all the parameters this morning and everything was normal.
I really tried to think of everything when I set this tank up. I was so concerned about having an overflow onto the floor from a pump gone bad. Never in my wildest dreams did I think something like this would happen.
If anyone has any suggestion on clean up or how I can help my shrimp and featherduster fell "normal" again I would really appreciate it.
THANKS!
 

kevinf

Member
FYI,
Not sure how this will work with salt water but works incredible for stains. It's called Tuff Stuff. You can find it in the auto section at Wal-Mart. It's a red can with a yellow top. It's for auto interiors but works great for home carpet. Worth a shot.
 

skjjoe

New Member
try to get some kind of disinfectant on your carpet like lysol or some thing to keep the molds down in you carpet pad
 

ptchfork

New Member
Sorry, new guy here... what's a GFI? I have had problems in the past with my eletricity going out and it's been on my mind ever since. Also the blackout in August didn't help, and 24 hrs of no juice killed my picasso trigger (my fav)
 

kevinf

Member

Originally posted by ptchfork
Sorry, new guy here... what's a GFI? I have had problems in the past with my eletricity going out and it's been on my mind ever since. Also the blackout in August didn't help, and 24 hrs of no juice killed my picasso trigger (my fav)

Ground Fault Interupter. This basically keeps you from being electricuted around your tank. Fairly inexpensive.
 

ptchfork

New Member

Originally posted by KevinF
Ground Fault Interupter. This basically keeps you from being electricuted around your tank. Fairly inexpensive.

Thanks - not being electrocuted is a good thing...
:thinking:
 
S

slofish

Guest

Originally posted by bojuben
My favorite LFS is a great place! Last week he went to LA and stocked up for the holidays. Hopefully he will have minimal loses. I will probably be stopping in to see how he faired.
SLOfish is also in this area. Though he is on break from Christmas I hope his tank is OK and that someone checked on it.

bojuben,
glad to hear your tank fared pretty well through the quake. Havent been on this board for a while, but my tank made it through too, gladly so. I was in L.A when it struck. Luckily, my roomate was town(he was safe) and was able to check on both our tanks. The tank stayed up, but i lost about 5 gallons of salt water to my carpet too. My room smelled like the beach for about a 2 weeks.
Im starting to believe that SW fish are much more durable than I thought. My 3 fish and corals lived in 68 degree water with no filter for about a 5 days. Of course the 68 degree water and no filtration was by accident. My sump drained dry cause my return pump kept running while the siphon on the overflow stopped. Amazingly enough, my ebo heater, maxijet pump and rio 2100 were all still working even though there wasnt any water and they are still working now. The heater is also still accurate. What a christmas gift!!
BTW, is your LFS Wet Pets in AG.... That place is great!
 

bojuben

Member
You did get a great Christmas gift! Could have ended up using all your Christmas money to purchase new equipment. One of my fears is my sump runs dry while I am not around. Glad to hear that nothing was broken and nothing died.
I ended up losing my shrimp the next afternoon. He was happy the morning of but the next day he would not eat. He was gone by that afternoon. Less than a week later my feather duster died. Though I think my tank was too new for him (tank is only 2 months old)
Wet Pets is my LFH. IMO he has the nicest stuff and at great prices. I checked all the other LFS that I could find in the area and none of the fish/animals seem as happy and healthy as his. He goes to LA and hand picks all his fish. IMO it makes a difference. Which local store to you go to?
I did check in at Wet Pets on Wed after the quake. He said that he did not lose anything from the earthquake - just lots of water.
 
S

slofish

Guest
Havent been down to Wet Pets since the quake, but thats also where i get all my fish and corals. Hes usually got some really nice corals. Even better than Aquatic Adventures(overpriced) in SLO.
Joes a good guy over at Wet Pets, only hes not much of a personality:notsure: . Some of his opinions may also be debated. Ive gotten some suggestions from him that are kinda odd. I always like to double check on this MB.
 
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