crustytheclown
Member
Last Friday, I left town for 3 days to attend a business convention in New Orleans, and when I arrived home at approx 1:00am yesterday morning (Monday), I immediately looked in on the tank, and did a much needed water top-off. Since the lights were off, everything seemed normal, except I did notice that my snails seemed sluggish (no pun intended), and 1 of my Flame Scallops was unattached from the rocks and seemed to be a bit retracted...
When I got home from the office last evening, things looked a bit worse, and In noticed a huge red-slime outbreak in the fuge (it wasn't there yesterday morning), so I diligently cleaned all of that out. At this point, the majority of my corals were now retracted, but since I was playing in the fuge and sump, I didn't think to much of it, and figured they would be back out in an hour or so... Since I had only been able to get roughly 6 hours sleep since last Thursday, I crashed around 7:30 last night, and when I awoke this morning, I saw that the corals were looking even worse, and the snails were now off the glass, and laying at the bottom of the tank. I was running late for work, but I did change the micron filter in my Magnum-350, to hopefully do something (anything at this point).
Thank God, when I got to work this morning, I was ordered to go home and get some rest for the next 2 days. My lack of sleep was due to having visited w/ friends in Slidel, LA on Saturday evening, which turned into an all night affair when my buddy's new 22' boat sank in the bayou... Damn if that didn't make for a long night of "Operation Salvage & Motor repair"!
Anyways, when I got back home from the office this morning, I saw that things were even worse than they were 2 hours earlier, so I immediately tested all of the levels and found that the ammonia was suddenly showing at .20, and everything else was zero's -- my calcium was about 460. Being puzzeled about the ammonia, I decided to check to make sure all of the pumps were running properly, and they were. Just as I was putting all of my pumps back in place, I noticed there was no glow coming from my UV sterilizer, so I turned it off and opened it up to be sure it wasn't slimed up with something... When I opened the top tube, water poured out of the bulb housing, and I saw that the electrical components had somehow shorted out, and melted the gaskets, allowing water to circutate directly around the bulb. This obviously caused the bulb to explode at the base, and now there was all sorts of pasty gunk around the inside of the housing.
I instantly took the now dead Turbo-Twist of of the loop, and replumbed my sump. After everything was back in place, I tehn noticed that my titanium grounding probe was literally eaten up, due to voltage spikes, and was no longer able to function, all the while, 120v was being pumped throughout the entire water system. I stripped the wires and placed them directly into the sump, and immediately upon having done that, my fish all became quite active again.
I have a call into Coralife, and hope that they will take an active interest in this situation, as well as possibly compensate me for any loss of livestock -- so far, it seems to just be 7 turbo-snails and 2 scallops, but the corals don't appear to be doing very well. I figure the loose 120 voltage killed off bacteria, thus causing the ammonia spike, and unfortunately there is nothing I can do about that, since I don't have any fresh salt water currently made up, I did a 20% water change last week before I left town.
Here are the pics of the Turbo-Twist and of the tip of the grounding probe.
When I got home from the office last evening, things looked a bit worse, and In noticed a huge red-slime outbreak in the fuge (it wasn't there yesterday morning), so I diligently cleaned all of that out. At this point, the majority of my corals were now retracted, but since I was playing in the fuge and sump, I didn't think to much of it, and figured they would be back out in an hour or so... Since I had only been able to get roughly 6 hours sleep since last Thursday, I crashed around 7:30 last night, and when I awoke this morning, I saw that the corals were looking even worse, and the snails were now off the glass, and laying at the bottom of the tank. I was running late for work, but I did change the micron filter in my Magnum-350, to hopefully do something (anything at this point).
Thank God, when I got to work this morning, I was ordered to go home and get some rest for the next 2 days. My lack of sleep was due to having visited w/ friends in Slidel, LA on Saturday evening, which turned into an all night affair when my buddy's new 22' boat sank in the bayou... Damn if that didn't make for a long night of "Operation Salvage & Motor repair"!
Anyways, when I got back home from the office this morning, I saw that things were even worse than they were 2 hours earlier, so I immediately tested all of the levels and found that the ammonia was suddenly showing at .20, and everything else was zero's -- my calcium was about 460. Being puzzeled about the ammonia, I decided to check to make sure all of the pumps were running properly, and they were. Just as I was putting all of my pumps back in place, I noticed there was no glow coming from my UV sterilizer, so I turned it off and opened it up to be sure it wasn't slimed up with something... When I opened the top tube, water poured out of the bulb housing, and I saw that the electrical components had somehow shorted out, and melted the gaskets, allowing water to circutate directly around the bulb. This obviously caused the bulb to explode at the base, and now there was all sorts of pasty gunk around the inside of the housing.
I instantly took the now dead Turbo-Twist of of the loop, and replumbed my sump. After everything was back in place, I tehn noticed that my titanium grounding probe was literally eaten up, due to voltage spikes, and was no longer able to function, all the while, 120v was being pumped throughout the entire water system. I stripped the wires and placed them directly into the sump, and immediately upon having done that, my fish all became quite active again.
I have a call into Coralife, and hope that they will take an active interest in this situation, as well as possibly compensate me for any loss of livestock -- so far, it seems to just be 7 turbo-snails and 2 scallops, but the corals don't appear to be doing very well. I figure the loose 120 voltage killed off bacteria, thus causing the ammonia spike, and unfortunately there is nothing I can do about that, since I don't have any fresh salt water currently made up, I did a 20% water change last week before I left town.
Here are the pics of the Turbo-Twist and of the tip of the grounding probe.
