Don't do Water Changes if you're tired or sleepy

[Orthopod]

I’ve overfilled and flooded my house multiple times and It’s wearing thin with the wife but here’s my best overfill story.

My best overfill story - I was resident working in a city hospital and living in a shoe box studio in manhattan on the 16th floor of a high rise. I had a 150, a 135 , a 65 and a 72 gallon tank in this shoe box.

I had been on call the entire weekend and slept a total of maybe 5 hours over 3 days and I decided it would be a good idea to do a water change when I got off .

I was changing the 150 and then I wokeup and their was 6 inches of water on my parquet wood studio 16th floor apartment floor - Iimmediately freaked out and put the water filler on suck and started attempting to mop up the mess. I used a pile of dirty scrubs to assist with mopping up the water as I hadn’t done laundry in a month.

About a half hour in to my mop up, I get a knock on the door and the security from the building is at my door and tell me theirs water draining 3 floors below me. I quickly tell them that I overflowed the bath tub and that I had everything taken care of. In reality I was still frantically mopping up and I wasn’t supposed to have more than a 30 gallon tank in the apartment.

I waited over the next month and 1/2 for my eviction notice but it never came somehow. I destroyed the parquet wood floor and got my deposit back other than a small cleaning fee somehow. In reality, several of the security guards were buddies and probably knew what happened but didnt turn me in because they were cool with me, lol.

 

[DiscusnAfricans]

I've definitely overfilled tanks a few times, usually the sound of water overflowing woke me up, but a few times it was on carpet, so had to replace carpet when moving. At least once also overdrained and gave the tank a 99% water change. Neither is good, but hate the cleanup and drying process on carpet. I've learned to not sit in the lazy boy when the tank is draining.

 

[esoxlucius]

No horror stories here i'm glad to report.

I'd say the vast majority of my water changes are done at weekend. I'm an early bird so I get up and crack on, tiredness is hardly an excuse for me if i've just had hours of sleep!

On top of that i'm totally anal about my water changes anyway. My routine is regimented from the moment I switch my pump off to the moment I switch it back on and all the bits in between too.

I've been five years back in the hobby this August after a very very long hiatus, and no problems yet.

Note: now i've said that, watch out for my upcoming blockbuster of a thread next week about how I drowned my wife and kids during a water change

 

[MrsE88]

^Yep, that’s how it usually works out. ?

 

[Dalfrey86]

I have my fish tanks in a room with hardwood floors. The misses made it very clear that if I ruin them I will be redoing the floors by myself.

 

[Gourami Swami]

Done this plenty of times, usually minor, one time real bad. Just slipped my mind that I was filling the tank and I went to do something else, came back probably an hour later and the tank was a waterfall. This was an old wooden house and thankfully there was actually a hole in the floor that allowed most of the water to drain down into the basement. But the wood floor fight under the tank and around the hole was definitely damaged. Ended up selling the house without repairing it so I don't know how extensive it was, but the floor was obviously puffy in this one area from then on.

 

[DN328]

Fortunately, no over drain or overflow, yet...knock knock. I will go back and forth to get things from garage. As others do, I typically babysit in front of the tank when that's going on, sometimes on MFK LOL. Heighten alert when water reaches closed loop for drains and water reaching weir teethe on fills.

I chose to have almost 300 gallons in my livingroom/diningroom on hardwood floors, there is a level of paranoia and OCD in everything that I do tank related. This hobby is so relaxing isn't it?

 

[MrsE88]

I thought of this thread last night....

I was doing water changes and Oliver’s tank was my last one. It takes a good while to fill and I had some chores to do outside.
I drug my hose over to the guinea coop... clean and filled their water. Watered the cherry tree. Watered my garden and pine trees. Walked the hose over to the chicken coop, cleaned and filled their water. Then went and collected some worms and snails to offer them. I sat and held them a while before going over to check the pond. Once all that was done I make my way inside and as soon as I walk into the kitchen I hear the sink running. And it hit me, I was still filling the tank!
My heart sank and I felt so dumb. I know better then to let myself get so distracted!
Thankfully with the sump on the tank it didn’t overflow. I had another 5mins I had to wait till it was done.
Ugh, any other tank would have left me with a huge mess. ?‍