What to do when your tank breaks...

[grimes135]

wells the unthinkable happened, my tank broke. just a little background information on my situation, i live on the second floor in an apartment. my tank was 135 gal with a 45 gal sump and 35 gal refugium. how the break occurred is still unknown, there was no rock on the glass and the tank was pefectly leveled. however, as bad as a tank breaking is, i feel extremely lucky in how the events unfolded. there are always some good things to have on hand if this happens. first would be enough containers to hold all of your livestock. for me this meant one five gal bucket for each of my fish, one top of this it is nice to have larger containers just to hold water, i got six 23gal containers from walmart for about 8 bucks a piece.i was standing next to the tank when it broke, i was extremely lucky because it didnt completely shatter, there was a crack that ran diagonally across the entire back panel and was leaking about 25-50 gallons per minute meaning that i had about 3-4 minutes to figure out what had happened and what to do. first thing that i did was get the fish out. i had to move a lot of rock but it was fairly quick, i only had three fish and got each of them into a five gal bucket in under a minute. next i ripped the return pump out of the sump and had an extra hose precut i put it on the return pump and put it in the draining tank and started filling one of my 23 gal containers at over 2000 gph, my girl friend was in charge of making sure that when one container was full that she started filling up the next. then i grabbed a five gallon bucket and started taking water out five gallons at a time. took about 3 minutes to drain the tank and we took out about 100 gallons. now clean up consisted of a lot of towels. start at the moldings and base boards and work your way in. after everything was dry i removed the 200 lbs of rock and 200lbs of sand and took it to the pet store that i work at and set up a 125gal, took the livestock too and they are doing fine. i feel extremely lucky about how this situation went down with no losses except for the tank itself and no damages to my apartment or the apartment below me.. but there are a lot of things that everyone could do to minimize damages and i think that the most import is to just be prepared and have enough storage to put all your water and livestock in and to try not to panic. the faster and harder you work for the five minutes after it happens the better everything will turn out in the long run. hope this helps just incase anyone has their tank break in the future

 

[loyalrogue]

Dear God, it was lucky that you were standing right there at that exact moment.
My big fear is that someday I'm going to wake up one morning to a couple of inches of water in my living room.

 

[plecoperson]

I'm glad you were there when it happened and kept your wits about you when it did. Thanks for posting your advice-next time I'm at Target I'm picking up a few containers.

 

[melosu58]

Thanks for the info. I`m sorry it happened.

 

[unda_da_sea]

what brand aquarium?

 

[AndyH5512]

Wow, that really sucks, but not as bad as it could have. I also would like to know what kind of aquarium. That was quick thinking, Im sure that everyone-including myself-will learn some good emergency procedures from your incident. I hope all is returning to normal for you and your aquarium friends.

Andy