Wednesday, April 29, 2009

Devastation

Before I start, I should say that things could be much, much worse. I feel very blessed that they aren't. Nobody has cancer. Nobody's injured. The house is still standing. Still, this is a hard trial to deal with. That new fish tank we were so excited about? Yeah, last night I got a call at 4:00 P.M. My frantic wife let me know it was leaking. My boss gave me the go ahead, and I drove home as quickly as I was safely and legally able to (which turns out to be very fast, actually).

I got home to find nearly no water in the tank. The fish were expiring. I quickly grabbed the tank and got it outside. Then the stand. Adrenaline works. They didn't feel like they weighed anything. Later when I moved them to a more permanent location, they certainly felt heavy again.

Pulling back the carpet and running fans wasn't going to be enough to save the floor, so we had to cut the carpet out, and pull up the pad. That just wasn't easy to do. It really hurts to have to cut out carpet to save your home. Still, carpet is cheaper than floor, so we got it out, and quickly.

A visual inspection under the house today didn't turn up any sign of moisture through the sub floor, so hopefully several days of drying will do the trick and we can just recarpet. We've already filed an incident report with the store that sold the tank. A massive crack opened up in the bottom of the tank. That seems impossible, as the tank was properly supported on the stand designed for it, but that's what happened. It must have had a hairline fracture in the glass, or chip, or something when it was sold to us, though I visually inspected the tank before filling and didn't see any problems. I'm told it can be very small and still sufficient to cause a problem in a filled tank.

I hope the store will make this right. They're already offering to refund all the money we spent with them, and that's a start, but they shouldn't have sold an old or damaged tank, so we'll expect them to make any repairs needed to the home. I don't like costing a store money in these economically difficult times, but this wasn't our fault, and we couldn't afford to fix this.

The potential damage to the house is scary, but the loss of the pets was very sad. We bought the tank just 11 days ago. The fish already felt like our pets, though. R.I.P. Blackie (our black molly), Clovis (a black finned orange platy that looked a bit tigerish), Lightning, Sally, Kiesha (our frog), our two platys, our two guppies (one of which was pregnant and seemed to be nearing her time to birth), and our two neon tetras. I know it seems silly and sentimental, but you were fun to watch, and you'll be missed.

Perhaps worst of all is that although I know a faulty tank is rare, I don't see us feeling safe with a fish tank in the house again. I know this one was probably a display model that was out for years, and may have suffered who knows what in that time. Still, I could never put another fish tank in the room this one was in, just in case, and that's really the only room where we'd sit and enjoy them the way we did. With the carpet gone, we can't even use the sitting room now. That sounds fancy, but if you saw it, you'd understand. It's not big, and it's not fancy, but it was nice, and a relaxing place to do some family reading and fish watching. It really is a loss.

Wow. This really hurts to look at. Here's the room just a few days ago:

Photobucket


Here are some shots of the affected area and the carpet and padding afterward:

Accidentally deleted these while cleaning out the album. I forgot I'd linked them.

Here's what happened to the tank:

Note: Same thing as above. Oops.

These photos are a bit painful to look at. Spawn was so happy reading and looking at fish. Hopefully soon we'll at least be reading in there, even if we don't feel good about ever exposing that floor to 30 gallons of water again.

My suggestion: never buy the display model. Ever. I would guess it had been treated roughly, had things dropped in, etc. When its full load of 28 gallons was introduced, the weak spots took the stress for as long as possible, then they cracked.

I'm glad it didn't happen earlier in the day, when I was in Delaware, or when we were all away, but this was bad enough.

1 comment:

  1. Hi Devastation, I just had almost the same problem, I have had a fish tank for a lot of years, the most recent was a 90 gallon freshwater with about 10 fish in it, my boyfriend and I were getting ready to leave for the day( May 31, 2009) standing beside the the tank talking and all of a sudden we heard a sound that sounded like a small gun being fired and then the water started flowing everywhere!!!! We couldn't move fast enough, he went to the garage and grabbed the shop vac, stuck it in the tank, I grabbed the syphoning/cleaner and a five gallon bucket and all the towels I owned!! We managed to get a lot of the water but not before it destroyed the brand new floating laminate flooring we just put in last month. I am just very relieved that we were still here when it happened, just a few more steps from being gone all day!!! I really miss my fish, we loved watching them but there is no way I can go back to having a fish tank that big and take the risk of it cracking and destroying my floor. That was the second tank that has cracked in the same way on me, the first was also 90 gallon but we didn't have to worry about flooring then, we live in a basement apartment and it was still concrete then. I just don't understand why I have had 2 fish tanks crack in the same way( the whole back glass cracked all the way across)!!!! WHY ME ?????? Now I will only own a table top size or even just a fish bowl! You can spend a lot of money with fish tanks, believe me I know! Well I guess we live and learn the hard way!! good luck in the future if you get anymore tanks.

    ReplyDelete