This Saturday I woke up at 8:34am to the worst possible sound, the sound of a shower running in my living room. As I ran out of my room down the hall to my 100 gallon I saw a huge stream of water pouring out of the left side. My brother, who was visiting for the weekend, was sound asleep on the couch, 3 feet from the tank. I immediately grabbed a 5 gallon and stuck it under the stream that was shooting out a good 2 feet into the room. At this point, my feet sunk into the carpet while water completely covered them. I yelled at my brother who was still dead asleep. The tank began to bend out a little, the tops fell into the water and pinned all of the fish. My brother jumped up and tried to grab the tops off, but did not see that the light had also fallen in. The light was obviously off as we were asleep, but as he grabbed for sunken tops was jolted. We were both just so out it we did not think . Immediately I turned the power off and began switching 5 gallon buckets. After I dumped the first bucket I put a 30 gallon Rubbermaid down, and tried to identify what the hell happened.
I was able to grab the back and front of the tank and hold it together, pushing the left side and back corner back together. This stopped about 99% of the water but was hard as hell to hold for a long time. This was not some small stream of water coming out, the entire tank was empty in less than 10 minutes. In the next 4 hours I moved all the fish, moved fish out of my 90 gallon to make room, cleaned my unused tanks in the garage and put everyone into new homes. After nearly all the water had poured out of the tank, 14 towels, and countless buckets from the wet-vac later we were finished.
All in all it could have been much worse. Luckily I was home when something like this happened. After jolting my fish and moving everyone, I did not experience any losses either. The constant fan and hours of wet-vaccing really seemed to salvage the carpet; there will still be further work though I am sure. Sorry for the long post, but lesson learned here for me. I have bought new and used tanks in the past, this one was used, it was an older tank, and probably was not the best decision. It was a cheap deal and has worked for months. I think my next tank will be from someone who is also into fish keeping like I am, or, new. Below are a few pictures of what happened. Now I need to figure out what to do with this big thing.
I was able to grab the back and front of the tank and hold it together, pushing the left side and back corner back together. This stopped about 99% of the water but was hard as hell to hold for a long time. This was not some small stream of water coming out, the entire tank was empty in less than 10 minutes. In the next 4 hours I moved all the fish, moved fish out of my 90 gallon to make room, cleaned my unused tanks in the garage and put everyone into new homes. After nearly all the water had poured out of the tank, 14 towels, and countless buckets from the wet-vac later we were finished.
All in all it could have been much worse. Luckily I was home when something like this happened. After jolting my fish and moving everyone, I did not experience any losses either. The constant fan and hours of wet-vaccing really seemed to salvage the carpet; there will still be further work though I am sure. Sorry for the long post, but lesson learned here for me. I have bought new and used tanks in the past, this one was used, it was an older tank, and probably was not the best decision. It was a cheap deal and has worked for months. I think my next tank will be from someone who is also into fish keeping like I am, or, new. Below are a few pictures of what happened. Now I need to figure out what to do with this big thing.
