Snail disaster....Everyone should read!!!!!

[william1]

So I leave for work today and as soon as I get there I get the phone call the tank is going to overflow. So they unplugged the whole tank to stop the water from flowing over the top.....

When I get home there was silence do to the tank not running kind of sad I love the sound of the tank..... My family said that the water was not emptying down the overflow tube.....

So after plugging everything back in the water seemed to drain ok but then its starts to fill up agia. still no water in the overflow tubes, funny I just cleaned the overflow 2 weeks ago.

So I pull it apart still not draining. hmmmmmm so I got the trusty closehanger out and fished down the overflow tubes to my suprise there was a snail stuck in there but alive......

Well that was the problem if no one was home it could have been really bad for my rental property..


This has never happened to me in the past so theres one for the books. So I am going to use some eggcrate to construct a cover for the overflow...I am going to make a few more changes soon for safety now....

 

[gwhiz]

Welcome to the club! Sort of. I usually find floods by stepping into the room and wondering why my socks are wet.....

 

[william1]

I hope that never happens! oh man my wife would be pissed.

 

[john e]

I am glad you were able to avoid disaster.

I had a clown fish sucked into my canister filter about a month ago. He was not as fortunate as your snail.

 

[william1]

Stupid snails have never gone into the overflow before.... Just happy I dont have a canopy becuase we would have never seen it coming...

 

[johnr2604]

What type of overflow do you use?

 

[william1]

Its a corner overflow dont remember what kind but I just was looking at some and they all have a vent over the tube intake.

 

[william1]

No it never had that and I just started to see more of them as I thought to myself why dont I have one well I need one and this is one of the reasons why.

 

[william1]

:up: Good idea my elbow at the top of the pipe comes right off. So for about 5 bucks I could add 2 pieces 1st one with the slices the 2nd is the end cap...... Good thinking

 

[jtshack]

When we bought our 120g, it didn't come with overflows and we had to make our own. When we tried slitting the pvc, the water wouldn't flow properly into the pipe. (Maybe we didn't do something right, but it just wouldn't work for us - made a loud "sucking" noise.) The end of our overflow pipe also has that strainer type end with no endcap. What we ended up doing was taking a small piece of screen (not the metal type, but the plastic type) and zip tying it over the end of the strainer. We clipped the screen around the zip tie to "clean it up" and it's working fine. No stray fish, snails, or anything else that gets in there can get into the tube.

 

[family reefer]

They do sell intake screens that are shaped like cones that thread or slip right into the overflows. had the same prob. with snails until added the screens. Should be available at any good LFS

 

[jmaneyapanda]

Just be very cautious about "screening" the overflow pipe. You could have just as bad a disaster with a lesser a reason. The screen will need to be cleaned very frequently. Otherwise, it wont take much debris (coralline algae, sponges, vermetids, food, etc) to plug the slits, and you're back to overflowing. Either make the opening quite big, or make the pipe very long.