msmith619
Sun, 31st Jan 2010, 11:22 AM
Last Saturday I got a call at noon that there was water coming out of the front door of my office in Boerne. I have (had!) a 75 gallon reef system in that office that my patients loved. It was in a Nemo theme with 2 percula clowns, a blue tang, heniochus (instead of a Morish Idol), royal gramma, cleaner shrimp, etc. The kids loved it. Also, my GSP, GBT anemones and LPS corals had covered almost every inch of live rock. I loved that tank.
I instantly thought the tank had sprung a leak and grabbed lots of buckets and drove to the office. When I got there, I found water coming out the front door, the back door, and the office next door- way more than 75 gallons. I opened the door and water came flooding out. There was 3 inches of water standing in my office front to back. I found a busted hot water hose below the sink in one of the bathrooms. Now, the City of Boerne plans for this. My office is 2 years old and I had to put floor drains an all the bathrooms. They were not able to keep up with the flow. I had keys to the office next door and water had flowed under our walls into the next office and it was an inch or two deep also. Miraculously, all my office computers were on the floor, standing in water and still running! I shut everything down, called the plumber and began sweeping out water. We got a flood restoration crew in and in 5 days we were back up and running.......with only one casually, my reef tank. In the process of drying out the office, they super-heated the office to 125 degrees with 2% humidity hot, dry air from a trailer with a propane heater/blower. Air flowed from the back to the front and did a great job of drying it out. They put a tented room around my tank and a portable air conditioning unit in the room to keep it safe. For the first 3 days, the tank stayed a cool 83 degrees while the office reached 125 degrees. On the 4th day, the AC unit failed and I came in to a very stinky office with floating, cooked fish and lost all my LPS corals and GBT anemones. The GSP has retracted and not opened yet but has not taken on any odor and I believe it is the only survivor...only time will tell. I took the 75 gallon home and have scrubbed and rinsed the live rock, sand and replaced the entire water 3 times. The protein skimmer is no longer going nuts with foam and the nitrites have fallen to no detectable levels. Time to start over:cry_smile:. I think I am going to go small, docile fish (firefish, Bangaii, Mandarin, jawfish, royal gramma), colorfull cleaner shrimp and all brightly colored LPS corals so, I will be looking for some lower cost colorful LPS frags to get me going again. If I have to start over, going to make this one an eye-catcher with color.
I instantly thought the tank had sprung a leak and grabbed lots of buckets and drove to the office. When I got there, I found water coming out the front door, the back door, and the office next door- way more than 75 gallons. I opened the door and water came flooding out. There was 3 inches of water standing in my office front to back. I found a busted hot water hose below the sink in one of the bathrooms. Now, the City of Boerne plans for this. My office is 2 years old and I had to put floor drains an all the bathrooms. They were not able to keep up with the flow. I had keys to the office next door and water had flowed under our walls into the next office and it was an inch or two deep also. Miraculously, all my office computers were on the floor, standing in water and still running! I shut everything down, called the plumber and began sweeping out water. We got a flood restoration crew in and in 5 days we were back up and running.......with only one casually, my reef tank. In the process of drying out the office, they super-heated the office to 125 degrees with 2% humidity hot, dry air from a trailer with a propane heater/blower. Air flowed from the back to the front and did a great job of drying it out. They put a tented room around my tank and a portable air conditioning unit in the room to keep it safe. For the first 3 days, the tank stayed a cool 83 degrees while the office reached 125 degrees. On the 4th day, the AC unit failed and I came in to a very stinky office with floating, cooked fish and lost all my LPS corals and GBT anemones. The GSP has retracted and not opened yet but has not taken on any odor and I believe it is the only survivor...only time will tell. I took the 75 gallon home and have scrubbed and rinsed the live rock, sand and replaced the entire water 3 times. The protein skimmer is no longer going nuts with foam and the nitrites have fallen to no detectable levels. Time to start over:cry_smile:. I think I am going to go small, docile fish (firefish, Bangaii, Mandarin, jawfish, royal gramma), colorfull cleaner shrimp and all brightly colored LPS corals so, I will be looking for some lower cost colorful LPS frags to get me going again. If I have to start over, going to make this one an eye-catcher with color.