The Puffer Forum

About a month ago I was doing some work in my bedroom where my puffer tank is located. I had some furniture moved and left the room for a minute. I then heard a crash and yelling, my one year old daughter had pulled a bed frame I had propped against the wall and smashed my 55g GSP tank. Fortunately I was able to scoop up my puffers and algae blenny and throw them into my quarantine tank. (Those things are lifesavers, literally.) However you don't want 55g of water, live rock and substrate all over your bedroom. Has anyone else ever experienced a tank break? I'll tell you I was in shock when I ran into the room, expletives were used...

PS My four year old son caught the bed fram before it hit his sister in the head causing a concussion or worse. He's a hero!

The moral of the story...don't EVER leave unattended furniture propped against the wall near your tank

I have had 2 nano cubes break on me. Both in the middle of the night. There is a thread floating around here about it. Luckily neither were reef tanks. I will never own a nano cube bigger than 12 gallons again.

wow that's one of the things i have been worried about with my 50gallon i cant even imagine cleaning up after that im sorry but its good noone got hurt with all that glass and rocks.

A wet/dry shop vac is a life saver and should be owned by anyone with a tank larger than 20 gallons IMO.. its still not something you want to deal with, but it makes it a LOT easier.

I agree, that night if I did not have a shop vac I would have probably burned my house down...

+1 for a shop vac. And yes my 160 gallon cracked and water was sprouting out in 3 places. Me and the hubby jumped out of bed ran down stairs to find the cracked tank, grabbed both garden hoses and the python, had hoses going out the front and back door draining the tank. We also had the kitchen trash can a 55 gallon drum and a 25 gallon tub catching water from the sprouts. Once I got the tank drained down about 90% I removed all the rock and started catching fish. I put the fish in the kitchen trash can took the canister off the tank and hooked it up. After that we got the shop vac and another wet/dry vac and started cleaning. It took us over two hours to get all the water out of the carpet. This all happened on a Sat. night. When we got as much water up as we could we took some fans pointed them on the wettest spots of the carpet to dry. We left it like that until Monday. Then we called the carpet cleaners to come out on Tuesday to shampoo the carpet so that it wouldn't stink. The carpet guy said we did a great job getting the water up. I took all the fish to the lfs on Monday and sold them. I didn't have a tank large enough to keep 50+ fish. It took a couple of months to get a new tank in. That's how Elvis got a new home and I got Annabelle for Elvis' old tank. My hubby says I planned it all along.

lol why is it always at night? it is a fear of mine, especiaaly having twp flats below me

you all acted so quickly!

lilacamy931 wrote:lol why is it always at night?

Fish Kharma...

Ouchies @ the tank breaks. I'd be so panic-stricken if that ever happened to me.
And for that reason I (third??) the wet/dry shop vac! Those things are a lifesaver. I can't attest to using them for fish tanks, but I can say that they are handy when your basement leaks in the middle of February after a week of heavy rain.

Or when the bottom of your hot water heater decides to fall out, or you leave the sink running, or you spill beer all over the carpet when transporting a full fermentor, or...

Seriously, I'm sorry to hear it.. tanks breaking are just not fun in any way shape or form.

Or a wrasse gets stuck in your intake...

Oh yes, I forgot about my improperly set up sump that overflowed when the power went out.. the very day I moved into my new apartment. What an impression that was to make on a new landlord.

yunachin wrote:Or a wrasse gets stuck in your intake...

Some fishes just make themselves unforgettable.

Eek! That sounds absolutely horrible! How often does that happen? Just from sheer bad luck?

Shop-Vac was essential in clean-up! I had a friend come over with his and I used mine so we cleaned it pretty well. Still took days for the carpet to completely dry out. I then shampooed it and now it's fine. Never had a Wrasse in my intake but I have found clownfish in my overflow, and a banggai...lucky mine is a double overflow so i'd need two fish to simultaneously plug it for a flood. (I think I just jinxed myself)