Worst tank accident?

[PostalPenguin]

2nd one, was, again with the husband. In November (winter) we went to visit his family out of town. Without my knowledge, he turned the heat in our apartment off (since we were going to be gone)... the single heater in the 75g (same 75g) couldn't keep up - we got back, temp. was at 62 degrees and all fish are so cold they are WHITE and fins are shredded. No casualties though...

I had a tank get down to 58 and the platies at the time were still begging at the glass for food. All the other fish were dead but there were the platies, begging away, happy as could be.

My worst accident happened last week: Hose popped off my Eheim and the Eheim proceeded to drain the tank. Since it was at my GF's apartment, unnoticed the water sat in the carpet for days. Smelled horrible and permanently stained the carpet. Good thing was a good carpet cleaning removed the smell.

I nearly lost all my biofilter but luckily I placed two "emergency" sponges in my girlfriend's tank months ago so they'd be seeded if ever needed.

 

[McPhishy]

My 180 cracked a sealed. The glass was completely fine, but the seal just gave out and there was a leak in the seal. That teaches you, when buying a new tank, reseal the tank.

 

[turboGarrett]

A couple months ago the wife took my hose I used for filling the tanks out to the garden. Long story short,I refilled 50 gallons in the big tank with 5 gallon buckets and now have a bad case of tendonitis (tennis elbow) in my right arm. May have to have surgery to fix

 

[ouano]

poor tanks! i haven't had an accident yet. knock on wood!

 

[sibernation]

mine was while doing WC. i was about to pour in water to replace the once i removed. the tank was on the kitchen. suddenly a long lost friend knocks, chat chat chat and i forgot the tank. an hour after, mom was screaming. she was on the living room. she was dumb founded why her slippers were running on the floor. she then realized 3 inches of water is slowly flooding the whole living room. thats when she shouted some nasty name calling.
guess what!??! she was calling for me.

ps
my visitor ended up helping me clean the whole house.

 

[cichlasomaphobe]

My turn, I guess. After 25 years in fish, I saw the worst tank blowout I've ever seen, up close and personal, in my bedroom. I found a small puddle and watched it happen. The right rear seam broke loose (thanks for the mitered moldings, tank manufacturers! The one-piece ones are much stronger) and drip, drip became dribble, squirt-woosh! I already had 3 drain hoses in it but DANG! 26 CA cichlids from 4-8" relocated, some quality shop vac time and the mess was over. Collateral damage seems to have been limited to some new ceiling tiles downstairs, running exhaust fans and (of course) tank shopping.
"Old silicone" was the reason for the waterfall. I bought the tank used and probably would not have benefited from resealing it. If someone wanted-or still does-want to disassemble it and re-silicone all of it, that would work.
I keep telling myself that with 5800 gallons in tanks, these things are inevitable but I wish Murphy's Law wouldn't make such disasters in my bedroom.

 

[beluga/arapaima]

one of my turtles managed to completely smash its internal heater so we had to do a full clean out of a 200 gallon tank whilst being attacked by a scared turtle

 

[Crispy]

>few years back<

just got a 130g filled and was adding the filtration when I heard a loud CRACK!! it didn't shatter, but cracks from bottom to top on the back pane. water was gushing out to say the least. Me and gf did what we could with a few 5g pails trying to catch it, but we flooded the place.

 

[Goldenboy]

Had two!

1st one was years ago...Heater malfunction overnight.....by morning everything had been boiled alive!!!

The 2nd was last year when I had a ph collapse....lost most of the tank including 4 very large parrots and 4 large clown loaches and a numbe rof L number plecs...total loss about £1000.....completely gutted!!! Some parrots survived, as did my red gibicep. A year on, all well and thriving tank again!

 

[Grae]

Two disasters here
1. My "tropical tank" - moved tank to a better spot so i could put a 4" in its stead. refilled tank and the fish were fine. Couple days later, everybody starts dying, angels, bristlenose, widows, tetra, whatever i had started dying on me after a panicy couple of days, going out and not wanting to come home, ony a few were left, a honey gourami (who died eggbound later ) a female fighter and my pride and joy, a big male bristlenose.
Panicy, i called my boyfriend, almost in tears. He comes over and tests my tanks for me, and everythings alright but my fish kept dying. Ended up with the gourami and fighter in the tank. He thought it was mini-cycle in the filter that did it

2. "Tropical tank" AGAIN!!! (this tank hates me) - bought three dalmation mollies for my gran to restock the tank. Killed everything then died themselves (bastards)

Other than those, its just general flooding of water during WC