First Flood

3/3/04
This morning I woke up too early, as I’m prone to do, and realized the pump wasn’t running; it was too quiet. I came downstairs and the entire setup was dark. Thinking it might be the circuit breaker, I went to the basement to reset it, and found dripping water from the ceiling where the tank sits. Further investigation revealed it was wet all around the floor of the cabinet and the rug in front. What killed the power was the water, tripping the ground fault protector (nice to know those work!). I woke up my husbandl to assist, and all told I think the tank leaked about 3-4 gallons. Took awhile to figure out how. One source was the skimmer. It was sputtering water out the air hole for the venturi. We hadn’t hooked up an air tube to that (the instruction left a lot to be desired). The other was water dripping off the input to the sump, wrapping around the bottom a little and missing the sump, even though the vast majority of the water was flowing in just fine. I had to scramble a little to get replacement salt water as I didn’t have any ready, but we were back in business within about an hour. An interesting adventure! I wonder if the wet rug will develop a salt ring? Probably smart reefers avoid carpet!