Whoa what a trip! Almost disaster

[Ocelaris]

So we went on vacation for a week, and had 1 fish suicide, one skimmer overflow, and a ups kick off dropping the tank temperature to 73. Not sure what precipitated the fish suicide, but could have been from less feeding as my neighbor fed once a day and one of my two genicanthus Watanabe angels jumped. The skimmer was about a week old and I though it would hold a week's worth of scum, but possibly when the fish jumped it set off the water leak detector which shut off the return pump, making the sump rise and overflowing the skimmer. Not sure what order that happened in.

That was 2 days before we were supposed to come home, so I turned off the skimmer remotely and forced the pump back on via the apex. I thought I was in the clear, but when I get off the plane (6 hour flight) I get an alert that the temp had dropped to 73! what the heck! So I get home and the alarm was going off on what I thought was the apex, but turns out the ups just shut off power to all my pumps etc... Off the apex. Luckily I had the WaveMakers on a regular outlet so at least the fish had air. Luckily nobody seems to be the worse for wear except a ton of algae on the glass.

Calcium and alkalinity had dropped from 450/10.5 to 400/8.4, so I know that I need to up my dosing, but I seem to be in the clear as of now.

Just skated by without a major disaster, but sad to have lost a fish. I need to do a little root cause analysis on the tank failures, but just counting my blessings that I got home in time to get the temperature back up.

 

[Frop]

Whattt sorry to hear about the troubles. I almost makes me want a camera on my fish tank..

 

[Ocelaris]

yeah, I have been meaning to put one on, the problem is I really need one inside the cabinet to spy on the sump. Know any good water proof ones? I have ethernet close by.

 

[Frop]

yeah, I have been meaning to put one on, the problem is I really need one inside the cabinet to spy on the sump. Know any good water proof ones? I have ethernet close by.

There are water resistant ones, not sure how much water they can handle directly. You'd need a wide angle lense if it was going to be close.

 

[Ocelaris]

Next time I go on vacation I'm going to do some dry runs, normally I put time into the tank every day, but that can't be my steady state.

I guess my question to others is: how long could you be away from your tank with someone doing just basic maintenance, like feeding the fish? It seems like the goal should to be able to leave it for a week with just minimal cleaning when I return.

I have a ups that emails me when power goes out, or has a fault, so I may swap that for the ups on the tank which is a dumb ups. I just wasn't expecting the ups to flat out stop putting out power.

 

[hybridazn]

Oh wow that really stinks! I have a camera in my fish room and luckily my stand is open so the sump area is viewable as well.

 

[Texas Reefer]

I was gone for 10 days in June. A friend who knows a bit about reefs fed the fish every day, and I paid my LFS to come out and check on the tank about 2/3 way thru the week. I had a camera trained on the tank so that I could see it. My camera allows audible communication both ways, so once or twice I asked my friend to open the cabinet doors so that I could check out the sump. Worked great!