Loading ...I’ve kept a lot of tanks over the past couple of decades. I’ve run all-in-one technological wonders and plain glass boxes under fluorescent shop lights. Aside from the wonder which accompanies the creatures living in live rock and the daily joy brought to us all by the unique behaviors and stunning beauty of the animals we love, I’m fascinated by one thing above everything else: These boxes, designed above all things to hold water, annoyingly often, do not.
Reef tank flooding has caused marital strife of Facebookian levels on more than one occasion. And I hope I’m not alone in this experience. That’s right, I just wished shared misery on you, dear reader.
This shared misery, whether caused by a failed pump, a snail in the return line, a busted silicon seal or any of a million possible acts of nature in a box, will allow you to appreciate a unique joy.
The ice maker in my refrigerator leaked. Not only did it leak, it leaked in a fine spray from the valve in the wall into the wall itself. It did this for a couple of weeks, as near as we can guess.
It soaked the wall and from there, the hardwood floor. A lot.
I replaced the troublesome valve for $3 at Home Depot. Then we called the insurance company.
A guy in a Hazmat suit told me there was some mold, but nothing to be alarmed about. It would have been more comforting if he’d removed the gas mask before saying that.
The total cost of drying, sanding, re-staining, and re-sealing the floor, and replacing the soaked kitchen sub-floor, and moving everything in the kitchen, dining room and living room into storage pods in the driveway was over ten thousand dollars.
Where is the joy in this, you ask?
None of this flood damage could be blamed on the reef tank!
Saltwater will accept 71% of the Earth’s surface as its preferred location with second place going to the hardwood floors of reef tank hobbyists and my little 25 gallons of the stuff chose to stay in the box. Joy!
Unfortunately, the tank had to move to refinish the floor beneath it.
This is where it gets good.
“Rather than empty the tank, move the livestock to a plastic crate, and then move and refill the tank,” I suggested to my long-suffering spouse,”why don’t we buy a new tank, set it up with matching water and move the animals immediately, reducing their stress and resulting in a better-looking end result?”
I further suggested that the old tank could be cleaned out and sold, resulting in no long-term out-of-pocket expenses for us.
There was no reason to delve into the possibilities of the old tank becoming a quarantine tank or frag tank eventually because that would just complicate things. Knowing the time to strike when asking for a tank upgrade is 71% of the battle. See? It all ties together. Such is the beauty of nature in a box.
For a couple of extra square inches of floor space, I found a 47-gallon column tank. Most of my equipment would make the move just fine, but making the change from an 18-inch shallow cube to a 31-inch deep monster determined to bruise my armpits with its holy-crap-why-are-you-so-tall rim was more of a challenge than I’d expected.
Reef tank flooding has caused marital strife of Facebookian levels on more than one occasion. And I hope I’m not alone in this experience. That’s right, I just wished shared misery on you, dear reader.
This shared misery, whether caused by a failed pump, a snail in the return line, a busted silicon seal or any of a million possible acts of nature in a box, will allow you to appreciate a unique joy.
The ice maker in my refrigerator leaked. Not only did it leak, it leaked in a fine spray from the valve in the wall into the wall itself. It did this for a couple of weeks, as near as we can guess.
It soaked the wall and from there, the hardwood floor. A lot.
I replaced the troublesome valve for $3 at Home Depot. Then we called the insurance company.
A guy in a Hazmat suit told me there was some mold, but nothing to be alarmed about. It would have been more comforting if he’d removed the gas mask before saying that.
The total cost of drying, sanding, re-staining, and re-sealing the floor, and replacing the soaked kitchen sub-floor, and moving everything in the kitchen, dining room and living room into storage pods in the driveway was over ten thousand dollars.
Where is the joy in this, you ask?
None of this flood damage could be blamed on the reef tank!
Saltwater will accept 71% of the Earth’s surface as its preferred location with second place going to the hardwood floors of reef tank hobbyists and my little 25 gallons of the stuff chose to stay in the box. Joy!
Unfortunately, the tank had to move to refinish the floor beneath it.
This is where it gets good.
“Rather than empty the tank, move the livestock to a plastic crate, and then move and refill the tank,” I suggested to my long-suffering spouse,”why don’t we buy a new tank, set it up with matching water and move the animals immediately, reducing their stress and resulting in a better-looking end result?”
I further suggested that the old tank could be cleaned out and sold, resulting in no long-term out-of-pocket expenses for us.
There was no reason to delve into the possibilities of the old tank becoming a quarantine tank or frag tank eventually because that would just complicate things. Knowing the time to strike when asking for a tank upgrade is 71% of the battle. See? It all ties together. Such is the beauty of nature in a box.
For a couple of extra square inches of floor space, I found a 47-gallon column tank. Most of my equipment would make the move just fine, but making the change from an 18-inch shallow cube to a 31-inch deep monster determined to bruise my armpits with its holy-crap-why-are-you-so-tall rim was more of a challenge than I’d expected.
Garrick has no memory of his birth parents, having been abandoned at the South Plains Mall in Lubbock, Texas as an infant and raised in shifts by the kindly part-time staff at World of Pets and Orange Julius.
He currently lives in South Carolina with his wife and daughter and four cats and has had at least one saltwater aquarium constantly since 1991.
Way to turn a little disaster in to a new tank!
Your story is why I built an in-wall, sitting in a sun room with ceramic tile floors and wainscoting, with a drain. And it’s never leaked…. of course there’s no reason to now!