Well I woke to silence about 4 weeks ago, didn't hear the faint sound of water running or pumps pumping. I came out to find my 240 gal reef tank dead, nothing running, lights out, pumps off, and 8 inches of water missing.
From what I can tell at about 2 am both breakers tripped (GFCI) and the pumps stopped, well one of the check valves on the returns did not seal correctly so it siphoned about 8 inches of water off. When I opened the sump of course it had overflowed and drowned the external pumps, plus filled the bottom of the stand with about 6 inches of water (at about 7 it would have spilled onto the floor). Luckily I had 40 gallons of water on the porch ready for my water change. I pumped out the stand, put new water back into the tank and got the power heads running for circulation, I checked the water temp and about fainted 94, could that be right? Looked at my leather, it was gone, looked at my frog spawn, it too was gone. I figured at this point I have to get the chiller running again, so I jerry rigged something to cool the tank. It took almost a full 8 hours to get the temp back down to 78. So after all this I have lost 2 prize corals I had been growing for at least a year, I lost the frog spawn, the leather is gone, I lost all but one of my ricordia, I lost my jaw fish and my 6 line, I lost all my porcelain crabs and peppermint shrimp...... so now I am trying to muster the will to go on, at this point the tank is a total mess, I have had outbreak after outbreak of algae, bubble algae seemed to come out of nowhere and it trying it's best to take over...... someone please give me the words of encouragement to continue this quest....