Disaster Averted

[tanker]

Came home from shopping and my 100 gal looked empty-- No fishes in sight.

Looked closer and all my fishes were at the surface gulping air.
Looked at my bubble counter and it is going crazy!! My reacter is behind a large sword so I could not see the CO2 going into tank, but coming out in a stream!! Tried adjusting the valve but no use--either no CO2 or LOTS of CO2.

Turned off CO2, and turned my filter outputs towards the surface!! Did a quick 10 gal water change (did not have water ready--had to do the old fashion way with buckets!!)

All looks OK now. :thud:

Lucky!! Will try to fix the valve. Do not know what is wrong with it.

[halfmoonplakat]

Whoah that'd be really scary
I'm happy all your fishies are fine :)

[Jill-O]

I'm happy the fish are okay!

[Chrisinator]

That's why I always have a small airpump handy! Sorry to hear about it, thank goodness nothing happened

[newfishkeepper]

nice save, glad you saved them nothing worse than having a tank crash from a bad line or faulty equiptment

[andyjh]

Is this a solenoid activated unit, or do you run it 24/7? After narrowly averting a similar disaster I decided to run 24/7 with my CO2. I found that the solenoid would turn on and unfortunately the regulator didn't want to hold previous settings. 24/7 things have remained stable.
Andy

[BioHazard]

Wow! Hope everyone is okay now. You'll have to keep an eye on them for a few days. I'd hook up an extra air pump and bubbler if you have one.

[tanker]

Is this a solenoid activated unit, or do you run it 24/7?
Andy

No, it has it's own timer. Comes on half hour after lights come on, and turns off half hour before lights go off.

PS--This is the unit I use. Have been in use for years.

http://www.jbjnanocubes.com/contents/en-us/p824.html


Wow! Hope everyone is okay now. You'll have to keep an eye on them for a few days. I'd hook up an extra air pump and bubbler if you have one.

It is not working now. Whenever it comes on, it just "pours" out CO2. I have unpluged the CO2 timer and turned off half of the lights (only 192 watts over my tank now).

No deaths (at least I do not think so) that I can see. Very hard to count 20+ neons and Cardinals :) but others look fine.

[Cory Keeper]

sounds like the regulator is shot.

[Izzy2]

Was this an end of co2 tank dump that I've heard of? Those needle valves are fickle and a room temperature change could of set it off. I've got several of those units in use. All of them have had the solenoid valve jam in the open position. Thankfully you caught the problem, hopefully all of the fish will recover.