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Share your DIY disasters on the radio!


Emerald525

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I am posting this again because I think it got lost in the thread shuffle. Most of us have had some floods, other disasters, and great stories of things going wrong. Don't be shy! Share your experience and bring some more exposure to our wondeful club! I know there have been some great stories!Here's the original post:

 

Radio Show Interview

 

Hello, my name is Jaymee Cuti and I'm a producer for a radio show called Destination DIY. I'm also an aquarist with a 15g reef tank.

We're producing an episode on DIY disasters. In my experience, I've caused a lot of fish-related disasters (flooding, letting a sump run dry that nearly resulted in an electrical fire, bagging the wrong fish together that resulted in unnecessary fighting...). I'm wondering if anyone has any fish-keeping disasters that they'd be willing to talk about on the radio.

Destination DIY airs on Oregon Public Broadcasting and a few other stations in Oregon, New York and Texas, as well as a podcast online. To learn more about the show, visit www.destinationdiy.org or contact me with questions.

Please contact me at jaymee@destinationdiy.org to talk further. I'm on a very tight deadline so I hope to hear from you ASAP. Thanks!

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I have turned on my RODI filter to make up some water and the next morning wake up to a flooded house, now this would be ok if it happened a couple of times, but I am going on 10+ times now that I have done it, you would think after the 3rd, 4th, 5th time, I would have put a float or some form of stopper on it so when it fills up it will stop, but I havn't...So in a way, I create disasters by not doing some form of a DYI float valve....I need to do it before I ruin my house...lol, and I don't know if anyone has ever done this, but sitting and watching a 40g garbage tub fill up with RODI water is BORING!!! I end up walking away and getting side tracked and the next thing you know, I wake up to a flooded house...LOL

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I have turned on my RODI filter to make up some water and the next morning wake up to a flooded house' date=' now this would be ok if it happened a couple of times, but I am going on 10+ times now that I have done it, you would think after the 3rd, 4th, 5th time, I would have put a float or some form of stopper on it so when it fills up it will stop, but I havn't...So in a way, I create disasters by not doing some form of a DYI float valve....I need to do it before I ruin my house...lol, and I don't know if anyone has ever done this, but sitting and watching a 40g garbage tub fill up with RODI water is BORING!!! I end up walking away and getting side tracked and the next thing you know, I wake up to a flooded house...LOL[/quote']

 

Beth did that about 3 times before we finally put in a float valve. I thought cool no more RO/DI floods but last wednesday in the basement I felt that tell tell squishy carpet feeling between my toes and the main ro/di somehow got left on.

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Well most of you know about my marine velvet disaster of Christmas 2010. But if not I bought a powder blue tang and it looked like it had ich. It was still eating so no big deal.. Right? Wrong!!!!! I lost that fish by the time I got home from work and within five days I lost a naso tang, two bi-color anthias, two saddleback clowns, and I think one or two more fish. The only survivor... My leopard wrasse. It's still around to this day but I was close to throwing in the towel after loosing so much money on fish during the holiday time.

 

Gotta love reefing!

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I fill buckets with RODI water in my sink... LOL. That sort of alleviates the issue of flooding' date=' as any extra just goes, you know, down the drain.[/quote']

 

I have some nice lagoon shaped impressions on my hardwood. Now I only fill up my jugs while in the sink too. It took me three times to figure that one out.

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I had one when we were on vacation, my two boys were supposed to be taking care of the 180g tank (yeah right). My daughter had stopped by and I was talking to her on the phone when she said, "is your tank supposed to be full of air bubbles". I had a tall sump in the cabinet and the water then flowed thru two 2" pipes into another sump behind the tank and cabinet. The acrylic had cracked around one of the bulkheads in the cabinet sump, Tom from Upscales was my emergency go to guy, he went over and replumbed the overflow line into the sump in the back, cleaned up the mess. Now I pay to have someone stop by once a week when we are gone and check things out, also have a "sump" cam so I can see the water level!

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Did you two share the flood of 2011?

 

Speaking of leaving town. Why do things always happen when we go out of town? The flood of 2011. I remember it well. The effluent from the calcium reactor decided to pick the very night we left town to dump into the stand instead of the sump. We did have someone watching the tank(Kendra and Gillian) and I get this urgent text message while I'm in Texas watching the Dallas Cowboys game.

 

Apparently the saltwater tank decided a full basement expansion was in order and the stand and carpet were soaking wet. If that wasn't enough the trusty autotopoff kicked in to make sure the water level remained steady and the salinity dropped significantly. I can't remember the exact number as I tend to block out that day. Most of the sps turned a bright shiny white but luckily most of the corals did fine and survived.

 

It could have been worse if we had not had Kendra and Gillian checking on our tank.

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Yeah, my second major disaster was also when we were gone for a month. After I set up the 250 I bought a Purple Tang which had Ich, it went away so I thought all was well. The first week we were gone I got the call that my Mandarin Goby was dead in the over flow, I thought oh well bummer he must have swam over and got stuck against the screen. The next week check up found two more fish dead and some missing and all the fish had Ich, by the time I got back half the fish were gone and the rest died soon after, all except the Purple Tang!

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Yeah' date=' my second major disaster was also when we were gone for a month. After I set up the 250 I bought a Purple Tang which had Ich, it went away so I thought all was well. The first week we were gone I got the call that my Mandarin Goby was dead in the over flow, I thought oh well bummer he must have swam over and got stuck against the screen. The next week check up found two more fish dead and some missing and all the fish had Ich, by the time I got back half the fish were gone and the rest died soon after, all except the Purple Tang![/quote']

 

Maybe the purple tang was a serial fish killer (laugh). That happened in our Fowlr tank. We went away and came back and the puffer was covered with ich and slowly just about every fish died. The Powder brown decided to take matters in his own hands and just jumped out of the tank. The silver lining was that's when we decided to do a new tank project and put up the sps tank.

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I emailed Jaymee for more info. Below is her response.

If you are interested in doing so contact her directly, using the info. below.

 

 

Hi Mike,

Thanks so much for responding to my request.

I am working on this segment over the next couple of weeks so I'd like to get the process started right away. The process starts with a pre-interview, where I talk with people who are interested, answer their questions and hear their story. This is informal, not recorded and done over the phone. I take notes. Then if we both agree that it's a good fit for our show, we do a recorded interview in person, with questions very similar to those I ask during the preinterview.

The show Destination DIY has been around for several years but started airing on Oregon Public Broadcasting in its current one-hour format last year. We're about to kick off our second season. The theme, DIY, lends itself to do-it-yourself concepts, not instructional crafts. In the past, we've explored topics such as DIY Representing Yourself, DIY Economies and DIY Rituals. You can take a listen to past episodes here: www.destinationdiy.org.

The concept for this particular show is DIY Disasters, in which we're exploring situations where people tried to do something themselves but it went horribly—or hopefully, hilariously—wrong. We have a mix of serious and light stories. I'm envisioning this one as a good mix of humor and passion about the hobby.

Please let me know if that answers your questions, or what else you might want to know. I can be easily reached at 503-830-4785 or jaymee@destinationdiy.org.

Thanks again!

--Jaymee

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I E mailed her also below i her responce.

 

Hi Robert,

That sounds great. I'm interested in hearing about your fish-related disaster stories. Would you be available for an informal, unrecorded phone conversation at about 4:30 today? If not, is there a better day this week? What questions do you have for me?

Thanks,

Jaymee

 

I got this Email at 6pm today so I wasnt able to chat.

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