Boy, did I screw up today.

[Ummfish]

Wandered away from my tank while it was topping up. Lowered the salinity to 1.018 and the temp to about 74. Ugh. So far, it looks like the cleaner shrimp are not dealing well. They are still alive but don't look good. The blood shrimp seem fine, though. The corals are all retracted, so the jury's still out on them. The fish are fine, of course. I put about 40 gals. of saltwater in to push the water level up a little and am mixing new. And now we wait. If the small invert population takes a hit then I'm screwed. That's too much biomass for me to deal with. So far they seem okay, though. So, wait for evaporation and top off with salt water for a while.... Sigh.

[Mantid]

Dang, Ill bet your kicking yourself! good luck, keep us updated on how it all turns out.

[68sting]

I can beat that one. I unplugged my dosing pump last night and when I was plugging stuff back in I plugged into the outlet and not the timer. It dosed almost a 1/2 gal of alk over night. My alk went from 9-13. Only time will tell.

[Ummfish]

Ouch. About the same as me: Turn off the pumps to feed, forget to turn them on, lose everything to low O2.

Good luck with yours.

[kwws]

Good luck to both of you. Hope everything lives and turns out alright. I done things like that in the past and I am sure I will do something like that again.

[hurrafreak]

That sux!! I hope everything turns out good for the both of you! It would suck to lose so much.

[stugray]

Sorry to hear!

One trick I use: I have a ceiling light in my fish room.
When I do something that needs attention, I leave the light on.

If I walk by the fish room and see the light on ( ding! light bulb in my head ).

Just a simple reminder but it works.

You dont want to know how many times I heard "Dad the kitchen timer was going off and I dint know what it was for so I turned it off"

Many Gallons of water on the floor, dead fish, my angry tirades, and ....... My kids wont touch a Dinging timer anymore without checking with me ;-)

Stu

[Zooid]

One of these days I'm just going to program a PLC from work to take care of everything. Machines fail far less than I do hehe.

[Ummfish]

Update: The display took it harder than the fish room. Top off water goes to the sump and the next stop is the display. The fish all look good so far: The citrons are spawning right now, the Banggais that were holding eggs are still holding, and the rest are eating fine (though I'm feeding a little less). I think I've lost a brain coral, though I'm not sure it was exactly at its best before. The Euphyllias are still not happy. I've lost four shrimp now (three in the display and one downstairs). I'm excited to see some movement in the snails finally. I don't see a lot of small crustaceans in the display, but amphipods, copepods, and mysids in the fish room are all fine.

I like your idea, Stu, but I can't see the lights in the fishroom except when I'm in the fishroom. I did (eventually) hear the sump pump thunk as the check valve closed (from the water running through the floor drain). That's what tipped me off. I need to just put a chain across the door that'll remind me to look at the dang ball valves.

Update: Hmm, the shrimp are still moving a little. We'll see, but I don't have a lot of hope.

[Zooid]

Good luck Andy....sorry about all the problems.