Averting Water Tragedy

[karin]

Okay here is the story.

I got a 29 gallon tank complete with fish, outside filter and UGF on craigslist and hauled it into my office. I'm a relatively new therapist and, well you know the aquarium calming connection. So I refill it with water, we had drained it more than one half to move it. I got the AquaClear filter running and then I plugged the tube for the UGF filter into the air pump and it belched gunk out into the tank. So I stopped that, poor fish. I felt like the AquaClear would be enough at least for the short term.

Okay here is the catastrophe. I go home and come back 12 hours later and the tank was nearly half empty. I almost had a heart attack. Water had soaked into the carpet and since I'm on the second floor of an office building, it went down stairs dripped on the copy machine of an engineering firm and created a nice 6 foot in diameter water spot on their carpet. And you can imagine what the engineers thought about this crazy therapist upstairs.

What happened? Water had dripped through the tiny air tubes from the air stones in the UGF and since I had, for some reason, disconnected them from the air pump they were just suspended in air off the back of the tank. I guess I had created a siphon. My question is this. Would this have happened if I had not disconnected the tubes from the air pump and just shut the air pump off? And secondly, is there any neat valve I can get to protect air tubes from doing this again. While the tank is up and running now and all seems fine, I find that I'm always a bit stressed that it may happen again. And like today, I'm home snowed in and can't get to the office to check things out.

Any ideas to help my stress level.

P.S. Had a 9 year old client in my office friday who is having trouble with anxiety and depression and was mesmerized by the tank, Said, "It calms me down to look into this fish tank." All worth it right there.

 

[star4]

Unless you have non return valves fitted on the airlines the water can just syphon straight into your air pump if you switch it off and leave it. Its well worth investing in a couple of non return valves, they are only a couple of quid.

 

[Amberleaf]

If I were you, I'd either get non-return/anti-syphon valves, like star4 said, orrrrr.... I'd just get rid of the air pump altogether, and cycle another filter for it. ^^; Urrgggh, I hate air pumps sometimes. Some of them are just so.... welllllll.... *NOISY*. DX D

 

[Schmill]

Sorry to hear of your disaster! i guess now you will be one person that will never ever forget to fit checkvalves

What you want, nay, NEED is an airline chaeck valve such as this one by elite:

You can see inside that it has a rubber plunger and a spring.
You fit it so that the 'clear' piece (on that one) is connected on the pipe that goes to your pump, and the black end is connected to the pipe that goes to the tank. When the air is on it pushes in through the clear end, pushes the plunger up slightly and then moves around it and out of the black end. When the pump is off, or disconnected, or there is a powercut (ie. the airflow stops), the spring pushes the plunge back against the clear end blocking it, so teh water cannot syphon backwards along the pipe and out.

 

[markandhisfish]

you can get em on ebay 99p for 4

 

[MOW4T]

dont worry i did the same thing a couple of months ago with brand new expensive living room furniture

live and learn

 

[Truck]

or you can place the end of the air line that connects to the air pump above the water level, that way there isn't enough pressure, to back siphon the water everywhere.