Our fish tank 'incident'

Make sure you are comfortable. I hope this won't take too long, but I never know once I get started. I think this is the longest journal entry I've done yet, so I hope you don't get bored or anything. Oh, and the pictures are small, but if you click on them, you can see them better.

On Tuesday night, Pete opened up the doors to the sump tank underneath the fish tank. Time out, I guess I should explain that this fish tank stands about 6 1/2 feet tall and is SALTWATER! And the tank itself is either 80 or 90 gallons--I forget. Okay, time in. So we have to add water to
the tank below because it slowly evaporates or whatever, but Pete had been adding three gallons for the past three days and he opened it up to find that he'd need to add more AGAIN!!! Fishy, I know... So he said, "I guess maybe the algae is absorbing more water, since there is more algae." "Three gallons a day?!?" I asked. "Right...there must be a leak somewhere" replied Pete. He continues to feel the carpet at the base of the fish tank. "Yup, it's wet." "Lovely" I am thinking. I have wondered when this would happen. We've been "baby sitting" Pete's brother's fish tank for over a year now and I have just been waiting. When we got the fish tank, I told Pete--"This is your project. You take care of it." So, when he told me the carpet was wet, guess what I said? Yup, "You take care of it." So, how long exactly has this thing been leaking water? Pete guessed just a couple of days, since he's been putting more water in, but I informed him that I had been putting water in the tank during the day because it had been pushing out air instead of water. So, maybe a week or so. YUCK!!! The cause of this leaking? When Pete cleaned out the wool sock in the sump last, I guess the lid it is connected to slipped and knocked some tube, so it had just been dripping slowly, but about 3 gallons of water a day for who knows how long exactly. It was an easy fix, but the damage had been done. We HAD to move the tank.

So, as a reminder, this is Tuesday night. Maybe 10:30 or 11:00. He's got school in the morning and is cranky when he doesn't get his sleep. This would have to wait until tomorrow. And so it did. Wednesday, he comes home from work and starts taking gallons and gallons of water out of the tank. He takes out the live rock s o that the fish have nowhere to hide and starts taking out the fish too. To get the water out, he siphons it, yes, with his mouth. He did get a mouthful of yucky saltwater once! Now, this tank is huge and I'm kinda a wimp, so I told him to call some buddies to help. He did and it was before 5:00. Of course no one is off of work yet, so he keeps taking more and more water out. Finally a couple of friends show up to help out (thanks Kent and Trent). Just getting all the water, fish, and rock out has been making a mess not only on the carpet, but on my couches too (sniff, sniff). The smell of the fish tank makes me want to vomit and now our whole house was beginning to smell like it. Pete grew up on the Washington coast, so he loves the smell (and loves seafood too). Anyway, through the help of muscles, the men got the fish tank down stairs. Let me put an insert in here--I wanted the fish tank in the basement to begin with for this reason, but I have enjoyed it being upstairs where everyone can see it. The basement living room is really the only place it could fit because it is so big.

And this is what the carpet looks like after taking the fish tank down stairs. The only noticeable damage is from the stain in the wood that got wet and therefore stained our carpet. We had put some carpet cleaner stuff on and scrubbed for a while, so this is an improvement. And the carpet just smells musty. We're going to borrow a carpet cleaner from our friends.

The guys had to get going, and I was off to an enrichment activity, so Pete was left to fill up the fish tank with Jonas playing at his feet. Let's just say that is was rough. I didn't get to see it in action but here are some wound shots from the day. The one of Jonas's finger is when he was playing with the doors to the sump tank and it scraped the skin. Pete's armpit and arms are from 'slipping' when he was filling the fish tank. There are so many marks on his arms, I don't know if he slipped more than once or not. That acrylic can be vicious. The ones of Pete's foot and leg happened earlier in the day. The one of his leg happened at school and it much more purple now then when I took the picture. You can see how his leg is swollen on the outside.



And me? I am good. The only injury I had was that I think I pulled a muscle in my calf when I ran down the street to borrow a cookie press because mine wasn't working and I was already going to be late for enrichment. Now, I can't take a picture of that! Plus, it is fine now.

Sorry it was so long, but I hope you enjoyed it.