Disaster Strikes!

I had to leave town for work, So my son usually takes care of the the tank while I'm gone. He feeds to tank and tops off the water.

So 2 days into my trip, he calls me a says. What's with the tank? the pumps aren't running.

Not only were the pumps not running, the whole tank had stopped functioning. After some remote trouble shooting, we came to find out the the GFI had tripped. This takes everything out in the tank.

More trouble shooting, It appears that a faulty heater was the culprit. My son plugged in a backup heater in to the power strip and the heating light came on. The temperature in the tank had dropped to 65DegF.

So problem solved, and keeping our fingers crossed  that nothing had died.
We  monitored the temperature for a couple of days and it seems to be steady at 78.5F

Next question: Hey dad, how come the lights are never on? After a couple of days we finally get a chance to trouble shoot this problem. Apparently the heater took out the controller power strip and the circuit breaker reset is not working. After another mad scramble to find good old fashioned timers, we have light in the tank again.

Between the heater and the no lights for 4 days, I did end up loosing some corals. My orange crush acan and the pulsing xenias are goners. My Blue chalice took a big hit. I hope it will recover.
Good news: non the fish died.

Lesson learned: Have your tank on multiple outlets with seperate GFI's , so that at least 1 pump can keep going if a heater misbehaves. and always have equipment on standby.