[This is a copy of an entry I wrote for my reeftank blog, wanted to post it here too...]
With the run of high temperatures, my tank has been evaporating a lot…. A lot more than I expected. At the worst, I was adding over 3 gallons of fresh water a day to compensate. Since my basement isn’t air conditioned, I also was having tank temperature problems.
I tried a couple of things to keep the tank temperature down. I ended up dropping the ‘normal’ tank temp to 78° F (from 80° F), and running a split photo-period on the Metal Halide lights – running the Halides from 7 - 10am and again from 6 - 10pm. Having them off at the height of the day really made a difference. I also tried floating frozen water bottles in the sump, but it didn’t do much at all. They melted too quickly and were too small to really have an impact.
So, here’s where things take a turn for the worse. Saturday (July 8th), at around noon, I noticed the carpet near the tank felt a little damp. I poked around a bit and realized that the closer I got to the right-hand side of the tank, the damper the carpet felt. Then, I noticed something that go my attention REAL FAST – the particleboard square that the lighting ballasts sat on (to keep the carpet from getting damaged by the heat they give off) was discolored as if it were soaking up water! I pulled the main AC power feed for the tank.
The carpet on the right side of the tank was wet, and the ballast's particleboard had soaked up a lot of moisture. The bottoms of the ballasts were damp but fortunately no salt water had got inside of them. If it had, things could have gone very badly – the high voltage on the secondary side of the ballast combined with the highly conductive salt water could have easily caused a fire.
When I was planning and doing the initial setup of the tank, safety was my #1 priority. I installed a GFCI to prevent ground faults, rewired all the old electrical systems, made sure I had drip-loops where needed, etc. It never occurred to me that the ballasts sitting on the floor a foot or so away would be a problem. In hindsight, I can’t believe I was that naïve but there you go. Failures rarely occur where or how you expect them to.
Once the immediate electrical hazard was taken care of, I started to look for the source of the leak. At first, I thought the 20 gallon tank (bought used) that is acting as my sump had split a seam; this would really have sucked, since the sump is too large to remove through the front doors of the cabinet. A sump failure would have meant a pretty-much complete tank teardown and real problems for my reef-life. I pulled all the plumbing, pumps, heaters, and the skimmer out and started really looking closely. As far as I could tell, the sump wasn’t leaking. There was no sign of salt creep, no pooled water, nada.
With the sump out of the picture, I moved on to the tank. No signs of burst seams, no cracks (not really expected on an acrylic tank), no nothing. Next, the plumbing behind the tank. Bingo. The bulkhead on the return leg was dripping slowly down the back of the tank.
When I first set up the tank, I foolishly put it too close to the wall – so close that I couldn’t fully close the ball valves on the drain and return plumbing. Being so close to the wall really made noticing the leak much more difficult. Getting the tank away from the wall a few more inches would be a priority.
How did the bulkhead start leaking? Well, I’m pretty sure it’s my own damned fault. A few weeks ago, I picked up a Loc-Line Y-fitting and associated plumbing and installed it on my return; it screwed into the return bulkhead. When screwing it in, I must have loosened the bulkhead enough to weaken the seal… and cause the leak. Most of the past couple of week’s ‘evaporation’ had actually been leakage.
I drained the tank to 50% and tightened up both bulkheads. I also took this chance to move the tank from the wall a few more inches using a 4’ length of schedule 80 1.5” PVC pipe as a lever. I put the pipe behind the tank stand right at floor level, and with my wife stabilizing the top of the tank in case of swaying, slowly levered the tank away from the wall. It worked like a charm, the only sign being a couple of marks on the wall’s baseboard.
Since it was all apart, it made sense to clean up the sump a bit, wash out the filter sock and do a partial water change. I also re-ran all the wiring making sure that all the power-strip and timers were safe from saltwater (in a ceverless Rubbermaid container) and that the ballasts were elevated off the floor. Much better.
Things are looking okay in the tank; I think I got off lucky. I checked my levels this morning and the only problems I found were low Calcium and Alkalinity, both of which were a problem before and for which I’m dosing Kent Liquid Buffer. Corals and Fish look fine, the Yellow Tang ate like a hog. The Crocea Clam’s mantle was nicely extended. Dodged a bullet.
Anyways, this was a big learning experience for me. I’ve heard the stories of people who’ve had electrical fires on their tanks and at the time, I really didn’t take them all that seriously. I thought I had taken all the necessary precautions, so didn’t give it much more thought. That semi-serious attitude could have cost me dearly; I could have lost my house, or much much worse… You might want to just go take a good look at your own electrical setup right now. Is everything out of the path of saltwater? What if there was a leak? What if a pressurized pipe split and sprayed water in a jet? Remember, failures seldom happen where or how you expect them to.
