Did something stupid

[snowmansnow]

Ok I KNEW BETTER than to do this, but somehow managed to accomplish an act of stupidity. I’m going out of town a week so I set up a big ato container w kalk. I run kalk in my ato. I come down later and notice, yup you guessed it.... a white tank. The ato had a syphon going into the tank. My ph was almost 9:/
I KNEW I needed a syphon break in that line but it totally slipped my mind!
As of this morning oh is back down. Only god knows what the alk is, and I’ve corrected the salinity. Fortunately only about 5 g of ato got pushed in before I caught it. Everything looks ok at this point almost 12 hours later aside from all the kalk dust on everything inside.

So kids.... if you set up a new ato, make sure to test for a syphon


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[jcook54]

And I've been think about dosing Kalkwasser without a controller. I've always been nervous about it and even though my fears aren't this exact situation, I still appreciate the reminder. Hopefully everything will recover just fine and it'll be nothing more than a learning experience. If it does end up toasting a bunch of stuff, please let us know and I'm sure we can get you some replacement frags donated.

 

[snowmansnow]

Hey cook. I’ve been doing it for over a year w no issue. It isn’t a bad system at all and imo is the simplest way to get all and ca into your tank on a regular basis. This was PURELY operator failure. I’ll fix it after work today.
All I have to do is add a T to the line behind the tank and run a length of 1/4” rodi tube up a tad for a vent and I’ll be good
I use to have it that way but dang I just forgot to do it this time.


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[Dmitri]

Sorry for your loss, I could relate to this. My initial ato did same thing and emptied out 50 gallons of freshwater into the system. Luckily it didn’t do any damage because of the water volume. But lesson learned quickly.
Though I’m sure it would have been much worse if I did kalk.


I hope the new setup will be 10x better !

 

[snowmansnow]

Sorry for your loss, I could relate to this. My initial ato did same thing and emptied out 50 gallons of freshwater into the system. Luckily it didn’t do any damage because of the water volume. But lesson learned quickly.
Though I’m sure it would have been much worse if I did kalk.


I hope the new setup will be 10x better !

Well my tank is only 100 total volume and it appears about 5 gallons was dumped in before I caught it... so I was able to correct the salinity pretty easily after draining it back down to the right level. As of this morning nothing was dead or stressed looking. I’ll see how it all looks when I get back from kids camp in a week ha.

I’m hoping I caught it and jerked it back into line in time
Before stuff got too weird in there


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