Poll: Ever had an aquarium nightmare?

dbl · Feb 23, 2018

Fun Friday Poll. Have you ever woken from a bad dream or nightmare and raced to the tank? What did you discover? Was it in fact just a bad dream or did you actually find a problem and it turns out it wasn't a dream at all. Share your stories, both good and bad!

siggy · Feb 23, 2018

nautical_nathaniel · Feb 23, 2018

I had a dream once that all of my corals had RTN and were dissolving in front of me, woke up in a cold sweat and stumbled to the tank and shined a flashlight on everything. Everything was totally fine, most of my SPS and some of my LPS corals had their feeding tentacles out so I went ahead and dosed some marine snow for them and went back to bed. My cat and girlfriend were both still sound asleep

shaggydoo · Feb 23, 2018

My nightmares always involve a tank leak or some kind of equipment failure. I can't help myself, so I always have to go check to make sure everything is humming, even in the middle of the night.

DancingShark · Feb 23, 2018

No not yet. Only time I am awoken by a dream and run like a mad man is when it reminds me I left the rodi unit on.

azbigjohn · Feb 23, 2018

DancingShark said:
No not yet. Only time I am awoken by a dream and run like a mad man is when it reminds me I left the rodi unit on.

Yes, I did this once, too...

Quite the flood!

Porpoise Hork · Feb 23, 2018

On a couple occasions I have had dreams about freak waves in my tank causing it to splash over, only to wake up in the morning to the sound of water sloshing. Upon investigating I discovered that the wave makers in the tank had formed a resonance feedback loop and caused an ever increasing wave and starting splashing out, and as more and more splashed out the bigger the wave action got causing more to be splashed out. This led to having a very angry wife first thing in the morning because her favorite and rather pricey area rug being destroyed..

Wiskey · Feb 23, 2018

Back when I had my 180 I would dream every once in a while that the glass shattered, or the bulkhead on the bottom of the tank (where the closed loop was) shattered causing a new ocean in Arizona. The upshot was that I suddenly owned beachfront property.

Whiskey

ReefQueen · Feb 23, 2018

Never nightmares, but I sometimes have dreams where I have a super high end tank with all the fish and corals I ever wanted. Then I wake up and I am sort of disappointed. I think the disappointment is worse then a nightmare lol.

chipmunkofdoom2 · Feb 23, 2018

Lol, same here @ReefQueen. When I dream about my tank, it's incredibly successful, all the SPS are growing like weeds and they're incredibly colorful. Then I wake up and remember I have almost no growth, pale SPS, and lots of cyano

ScottsTot · Feb 23, 2018

I'm not in the saltwater game yet but I have a few freshwater tanks on stands that I built myself. I'm an amateur when it comes to DIY so my confidence in my stands aren't too great.

Everytime I hear a creak from my bedroom, I run to make sure all is safe in the living room. Then I have dreams about the tanks crashing to the floor from time to time

Mark Gray · Feb 23, 2018

No I can't remember my dreams but I have had 2 aquarium nightmares the first was a 30 gallon tank on an Iron stand had a lab and a chow puppys they knocked it over, while we where out. The second was a 55 gallon, we were watching TV and the front bottom seam split water hit the ceiling drained in less than a minute, but I saved the fish, but not the carpet

GoVols · Feb 23, 2018

Well,
We went to bed Super Bowl night.
Our 20 year old daughter rushed down the stairs and woke us up at 1:30am on Monday morning

We ran into the den:
The reef was super loud and the sumps main return was gurgling with about 50% air.
One of the Red Sea S-Series recirc. pumps had came off the connector inside the overflow box ;Wideyed and was spewing water over the back wall

Was thinking, is it time that we lost our reef ;Dead

Got lucky and shut off the ATO real fast. The reef was still at .35ppt and was mixing fresh saltwater like nobodies business.

In the end... No damage, but took 7 gallons of fresh saltwater to replenish the reef.

(lol)
Daughter gets another six months of rent free living

Scott.h · Feb 23, 2018

I've had dreams many times that my eel got out. Probably stems from the fact that they have. I've managed to save ones life because of it. Of course now it's big and lazy. And I've managed to eel proof the lid.

Adele · Feb 23, 2018

I’ve kept a reef for over 10 years. Before that I had no tank since a fw set up as a child. But I’ve had a recurring nightmare that I’m in my house and suddenly discover I have a fw tank that I didn’t know I had and it needs a water change and top of extremely bad. Like the fish are swimming in 2” of water. In addition to that it pulls a SW scenario and I am frantic that the salinity is way high and everything is going to die in the next few minutes if I don’t act despite the notion that this mystery tank has been neglected for months before it’s discovery.

nfrench2100 · Feb 23, 2018

I had a dream/nightmare when I first started reefkeeping last September, that my tank was overflowing. At the time, I had an HOB skimmer. So I woke up and immediately jumped out of bed and went to the living room. Shined my cellphone light on the skimmer, and sure enough, it was about 1/4” away from the top of the collection cup and filling fast getting ready to overflow.

Our intuitions are one of the craziest things to me

BigJohnny · Feb 23, 2018

Haha this is so funny I literally had one last night! All of my fish had incredibly large sores on their body that kept spreading. That's all I remember.

jeneratesomefun · Feb 23, 2018

Ever since my sump pump caught fire 3 years ago - under water no less (was quite spectacular situation unfolding with all the flames and sparks once you set aside the panic

;Facepalm LOL) - I feel ike I sleep with one ear "on". Any thump or sucking noise and I go running.

I too am guilty of leaving the RODI running which is a hot mess to clean up, but it's the thought of that sump fire that keeps me on edge!;Nailbiting

ArowanaLover1902 · Feb 23, 2018

No but I did have a good dream in which I went to the LFS and they were decided to give me everything I wanted. I ended up with a (somehow fully cycled) 500 gallon reef (with fully grown coral, again, its a dream) and then everything I've learned about stocking went away and I had a huge school of clownfish with a tremendous moray eel and an octopus, there were some Bengal cardinals and angelfish, I think some cuttlefish and a puffer too. I know it would never work, but it would be awesome ha ha ha. Most of that stuff isn't even at my LFS

BigJohnny · Feb 23, 2018

jeneratesomefun said:
Ever since my sump pump caught fire 3 years ago - under water no less (was quite spectacular situation unfolding with all the flames and sparks once you set aside the panic ;Facepalm LOL) - I feel ike I sleep with one ear "on". Any thump or sucking noise and I go running.

I too am guilty of leaving the RODI running which is a hot mess to clean up, but it's the thought of that sump fire that keeps me on edge!;Nailbiting

Man I'd be the same way. Do you know how it happened? What kind of pump?