Fun with Fish

Every morning before I leave for work, I check on the fish tanks. Why? I'm not sure. I don't expect to find anything. This morning was a different story...

I walked in the room and quickly realized (due to lack of "white" noise) that nothing was on. No pumps, no heaters, no anything. What?! My brain was kind of working this morning, so I realized that the circuit had been tripped (not sure if that's the right term - the whole room is on one of those outlets that when too much current is drawn it shuts it down and you have to push the "reset" button on the outlet). So, I reset it. And it turned off again. We haven't changed anything since the big move, so I was very confused. I tried again (if at first you don't succeed...). Still didn't work. Hmmmm.... So I thought of some things that weren't "necessary" for the short term and unplugged those items. After unplugging and resetting a few times, I finally got everything to stay on. So I raced off to work (cuz now I'm running late).

On the way to work I text Ben so that he knows what is going on. Just as I returned to my desk after my 8 am meeting, he calls to find out what circuit I'm talking about. So I tell him and tell him what I unplugged. Turns out the one thing (pH probe) I took out, also turns on the heaters. Oops! So I decide that between all of my meetings today, I would run home and turn the heater back on.

I got home and was talking to my mom (van broke down in Iowa last night on the way home from Virginia) and noticed right away that something didn't sound right. I let Zoey out (she was going crazy) and went to see what was making the noise. I nearly slipped on the floor because it was wet!! (Enter frantic/panic mode). I unplugged the pump that was making all the noise (because it was out of the water). Panicked for a little bit then called Ben. He was able to cancel some of his meetings and come home. In the meantime, I cleaned up all the water, started to replug things back in, make salt water, scratch Zoey behind the ears, etc.

By the time Ben got home, everything was up and running except the part that circulates the water between the tank and the sump (big thingy that holds extra water and rocks to help keep the tank perimeters steady). We got that working again. And everything is happy once more.

So what happened?
1. The heater in the sump died. For some reason when heaters die they draw more current, thus tripping the circuit. (The heater is now replaced).
2. The syphon that pulls water out of the tank broke (we have no idea how). That caused water to stop flowing out but water still flowed in until the pump was out of the water. The tank overflowed resulting in water on the floor.

The "funny" thing was that these two events are completely unrelated! They just "happened" to occur on the same day. And the pump that ran itself dry just "happens" to be close to the top of the water, so really we only lost about four gallons of water (all on easy-to-clean linoleum).

I'm just so thankful that I checked this morning because otherwise our little fishies probably would have been very unhappy (aka dead).