Building the 240 (Twice) and Moving
People say what doesn’t kill you only makes you stronger, but I think they forgot about killing one’s spirit. And that starts the story of our present day 240-gallon display we are looking at today. We bought a used 240-gallon All Glass aquarium from a local guy that had used it for freshwater. It was pre-drilled, so we felt like we were going to be all set and then began assembling our system. Of course, we did a leak test, and after we confirmed the tank looked okay, we bought a sump, pumps, sand and rock… all the things one needs to successfully build a reef tank. With most of the equipment set up we were ready for water, sand and aquascaping; we had been saving water from the tank at the restaurant to help accelerate the new tank’s cycling. Things went well; the sand was in and the rock was set up… parameters were falling into place, so we were getting ready to start moving the animals into their new home.
It was 3:00 AM when I heard the noise. BOOM! It was a fateful noise that woke me from my sleep. I wasn’t sure what had happened. I thought a bomb went off or the furnace blew up, so I rushed to the garage (where the tank was temporarily placed) and opened the door. With the first step into the garage I knew where the noise came from. There was water everywhere in the garage! My heart sank because I knew it was my tank that had exploded.
The previous night we decided to add a little more rock and another bag of sand to the tank. I’m not really sure why it happened (if it was the added weight with the extra rock and sand or if it was just its time to go), but for me, that was the end of my days enjoying the reefing hobby, or so I thought. I turned to my niece and said, “That’s it! I quit!” as I surveyed the damage. It was a real mess; the bottom blew out of the tank and all of the rock and sand dropped into the sump. There were some outlets on the floor (temporary during the setup) that were shorting out. The pumps filled with sand and seized up, and there was rock and sand everywhere (I still find little bits of sand in the garage today). It basically looked like a total loss. I opened the garage doors to the driveway and watched weeks of hard work wash down the driveway.
This is where my niece, Oum, saved the day. We were both in shock, and like I said, I was ready to throw in the towel, but Oum turned to me and said that she thought we could save everything. She stayed calm throughout the entire cleanup, saving as much of the rock and sand as she could by putting it into a large Rubbermaid tub. We made up some water and filled the tub and Oum turned to me and said, “We have everything we need except the tank and pumps, we can rebuild it.” I am so glad we started this hobby together; she was so cool under pressure and this is the reason I am able to be here today talking about our reef.
A week after our tragedy we bought a brand new 240-gallon tank (that matched the specs of our old tank) and started to rebuild the system. We let it cycle for a few weeks and started moving animals over slowly (to test the new setup). About five weeks after rebuilding the new system, we successfully moved all of the animals. Eighteen months later I can say that to this day we did not lose a single animal during the move.