near meltdown ( at least i hope just near)

[TroyPham]

i awoke this morning at 4a.m. to an abnormal sound in the living room. :o at closer inspection the skimmer pump was acting up. so i unplugged it and plugged it back in. it ran for a few min. then shut down again. i had to be up at 5 to go to SA so i fiddled with it for another 30 min. but didn't want to take the skimmer out(submers. skimmer ) so i just left it unplugged and hope for the best. when i got home this evening. i saw the tank water was clowdy and thought it was just cuz the skimmer wasn't running. no big deal. upon closer inspection of the tank, all the fish were fine but the corals were bleached, the xenia's were burned up at the tips but the clams all looked ok.

i pulled the skimmer out and the pump had melted and was shocking the tank. all water param. look ok. but i did a 15gal. water change anyways to be safe.

now is just hope for the best.

will the corals color come back? the polyps are starting to extend again. but i'm wondering if the damage is beyond repair.

everything was going so well. and it has to happen when i have to travel out of town!!

put a new pump on the skimmer for the time being till i can get a new skimmer setup.


it's amazing what we hear in our sleeps when our baby's are sick

larry (instar), i'll post pics for u tomarrow of the shrimp pump... still trying to clean everything up.

[eric]

I can sleep through a lot but a slight sound change in the tank will wake me up. Hope things recover alright.

[Polkster13]

You might want to invest in a titanium grounding probe. This will help greatly if you have this problem in the future.

[TroyPham]

is there anything else i can do to get the tank in better shape after this. ie. more water changes? or should i just let it runn its corse for the next few days and hope for the best?

[Polkster13]

I would not do anything else to stress out the corals. If it was just stray voltage and that has been removed, then those corals that will recover will do so over time. Just have patience.

[OldSalty]

All the more reason to have your system on a GROUNDFAULT circuit breaker ;)

[garagebrian]

Wouldn't a GFCI have prevented this? It would have immediately tripped as soon as the pump started going.

I really hope that everything recovers, at least it wasn't for too long. Goes to show one of the rules of thumb when running an aquarium: If anything can go wrong, it will, but only when you are gone.

[Tim Marvin]

I would do another water change and run some carbon. It sounds as if you may lose some coral, which will release waste into the tank. I am willing to bet most will recover. It must have been a lot of voltage, because I have shocked my tanks in the past and not had any problems. They are also conducting studies on coral growth with small amounts of voltage. Some reef building corals actually grow faster with some voltage, but the skeletons are thinner and more brittle.Hope all goes well.

[Instar]

Troy, sorry for all this mess. What kind of pump was it? I might raise the lights up from the tank a bit if the corals really bleached. If they just reacted and shifted colors from withdraw of the zoozanthelae then they'll go back to normal pretty soon. Don't want to burn the tissue if there was too much with draw so thats the reason I say to raise the lights up higher away from the tank a bit. No doubt Tim is right with another water change and carbon. Since the voltage was uncontrolled, unmonitored, a thing or two could have reacted, shedding toxins into the water.

[Tim Marvin]

Was it a RIO pump? Just curious.

[astrong]

That was my first thought too, Tim.

Put Poly Filter in there, it pulls out all sorts of horrible stuff including copper, which may have leached from a burnt out coil.
Definitely do the water change.

[TroyPham]

Tim, good guess on the rio.. haha. i thought i was a lucky one with mine but i guess i wasn't. i think everything is gonna make it ok. all looks well but one clam and the xenia's. all the sps and lps look fine now. just not as colorful. polyp extension looks ok on everthing but one coloney of blue staghorns. but i think it will pull through just fine.

thanks for the help guys and it was on a gfci. it wasn't shorting out completly it would run the slow down and start running and stop, then run,then slow down. kind of intermiten so it didn't dead short. i also have the pumps on a 1hr backup system. and that didn't trip.

yea **** thos rio pumps.