Automating an aquarium for a couple weeks.

[jkreefer]

[quote author=sfsuphysics link=topic=2711.msg29896#msg29896 date=1200172721]
Well I just got back and everything looks more or less fine. The red poof algae issue I have showed up a little bit, but what can you expect with almost 2 weeks of no manual cleaning. The acrylic ironically was great! I did notice my dad did forget to dose my 2 part though, so I'm a little worried about how low the levels went, don't have time now to check.

My glass tank had a bigger issue, I noticed my two internal pumps and skimmer stopped working, which is no biggy it's a softie tank, apparently I got another RBTA out of that though *SIGH*... but I dodged a big bullet because the power strip those three things were plugged into (and only those three), was quite char-broiled. I'm guessing my pops got a little careless with adding top off water or something, but luckily the strip was right in the center and only made some soot on the inside of the cabinet. THere was quite a bit of algae, but eh... no skimmer, no internal pumps only the return pump as flow... I think I did ok.. .so that tank will go skimmerless until I get a replacement pump (that pump didn't get the cord melted but for some reason isn't starting... but once again don't have time to do any sort of fixing).


[/quote]

Wow, your lucky Mike. I had that same problem with wet powerstrip, and my wife woke up (after i had already left for work) on the 2nd floor because smoke was comming from under the doors. It started the stand and the wall behind it on fire. Im glad that everything was ok!!

 

[sfsuphysics]

Patchin: Trip was great, expensive as all fricking hell over there though, makes San Francisco look cheap. One thing that I just couldn't figure out is that all the fruit grown over there, cost more than it does here. Hell Fruit grown in California is cheap in California, because it's grown here, if you go to the mid-west that same fruit is much more expensive, so I was figuring no problem, I'll eat fruit over there.. I like fruit, but geezus! I could run out to the fields and pick it myself it was that close, yet for some reason fruit was expensive, I thought maybe the fruit stands were just tourist trap type things, but all the major supermarkets were the same. Eh who knows. But other than that it was fun, went snorkeling just about every day, Maui had some young reefs, only encrusting and bushy SPS type corals, no sticks, but it was fine, saw tons of fish. Couple tangs that swam close to me which were about the size of my chest... green sea turtle was about as big as I am tall, even saw some humpbacks (although not while snorkeling ). One thing that was really missing were yellow tangs, apparently collectors really hammered their numbers to near nothing off the beaches I went to, really got an eye opening experience for what our hobby does (they have no laws regarding collecting or fishing of fish, or at least very few). But overall I'm a little more tanned (very little ) and a bit more muscular from the swimming/snorkeling, but I'm glad to be home, there's not much I wanted to do on Kauai and that was my last stop (plus they seemed the rudest over there, "how dare you tourist come here" type of attitude I saw from some locals, which I can almost under stand from locals who can trace their ancestry back to the original Hawaiians but not from white people who moved there).

JKReefer: Yeah I'm kind of lucky this was a crappy power strip too, of course I had only about 100watts plugged into it so I didn't exactly need a robust unit, if water dripped into any strip the same thing would happen, but due to the crappy construction it burn itself to a non working (no electricity) manner quickly so didn't have time to burn much else, or at least that's my theory Who knows what really happened. It could have been a slow smolder type of burn for all I know. But being as my dad was over every 2-3 days he never reported smoke, and I keep an ear shattering smoke detector in my fish tank room just for things like that, so who knows. At least I only lost a couple pumps.