It looks as though I'm going to have to have my house tented. I realize it's pretty obvious that I'm going to have to do something about my 90 gallon reef. Am I going to have to disassemble it completely or is there some other solution (a long shot)? I expect I'm going to have to move it out of here but I thought I would ask anyway because I finally got everything working smoothly (everything lives and is happy). It's been running for over a year now. Does anyone have any experience with this situation and if so please help. Thanks.
House has to be tented...what do I do?
- Thread starter Mike&Pam
- Start date
Just a thoguth and probably not feasable... How about you 'tent' the tank ? Pump in fresh air from out side into the tank tent. It may require some thought to make it work, but entirely possible I would think. You could even run an exhaust port from the tank tent back outside as so not to disrupt the purpose of tenting your house. The tank would have to be able to run on 'auto pilot' for the entire time. You would probably have excessive evaporation from all the air being circulated to keep the tent filled. You would need automated top off for sure.
Ouch. Here is an idea:
Lights out, turn off skimmer, seran-wrap every opening. Run an air pump in a safe area (outside probably, maybe a neighbors house) with long tubing into the tank. This should create a positive pressure in the tank to keep the pesticide out. Run the pumps to circulate the water. You may need a pretty big air pump to make this work. If you have a sump, it will have to be sealed to boot.
Lights out, turn off skimmer, seran-wrap every opening. Run an air pump in a safe area (outside probably, maybe a neighbors house) with long tubing into the tank. This should create a positive pressure in the tank to keep the pesticide out. Run the pumps to circulate the water. You may need a pretty big air pump to make this work. If you have a sump, it will have to be sealed to boot.
I have to agree with Minh, I am a toxicologist and under no circumstances would I leave a tank up during that process. The fumigation is made to penetrate the ENTIRE house, even into the walls. There is no way to seal a tank against it. Remove the animals.
Wade
Wade
Think about how much livestock you have in that tank and how much time, $$, blood, sweat, and tears you've invested. Do you *really* want to chance tenting your tank while the house is being tented? Man, I wouldn't. I'd be preparing to move the tank to some other location until you have your house tented and everything's back to normal. For $60 you could pick up a 100 gal rubbermaid stock trough from your local Tractor Supply Store and you could move all of your livestock, fish, and whatnot into that at a neighbor's, family member, friend's, etc house until the tenting is complete and everything is back to normal.
Heh, be thankful it's not any bigger than that!
Shane
Heh, be thankful it's not any bigger than that!
Shane
Talk to an Lfs about renting a single tank for 3 or 4 days. Put your corals, fish and inverts in it. Use a 'cycling' style tub for the live rock and live sand. Also, be sure to seal up your tank and equipment anyway, so as not to get any residual toxin upon setting it up again. Good luck!!!
I feel for you.
Whitey
I feel for you.
Whitey
Is it possible that I can just take everything out of the tank, move the tank, and set it up somewhere else temporarily and put the same water back in? It's been so long since I've dealt with all new water in tanks and therefore would have to review the cycling process. I know this is a lot of extra work but is this a possibility. Please keep bearing with me. Thanks.
Mike
Mike
I went through one fumigation.
I removed all livestock (I wouldn't worry about sandbed now as they will be deep under water during the process) to my LFS for 3 days. Lay 3 coats of saran wrap on the water surface to seal against gas exchange at surface level. Remember to extend the saran wrap to the tank walls as well to ensure a good secure air seal. If your tank is too wide where the saran wrap covering the tank is not possible, You can get plastic coverings at Home Depot where the painters used to cover up windows during the painting process. It's pretty cheap.
After the fumigation tent is lifted, run a big fan blow air into the tank to air out every single ounce of toxic air out of the tank. Remove saran wrap and start aerating the water for 12 hours before you place livestock back into the tank.
Remember to unplug all powercords from the wall when you are covering up the tank.
Good luck
I removed all livestock (I wouldn't worry about sandbed now as they will be deep under water during the process) to my LFS for 3 days. Lay 3 coats of saran wrap on the water surface to seal against gas exchange at surface level. Remember to extend the saran wrap to the tank walls as well to ensure a good secure air seal. If your tank is too wide where the saran wrap covering the tank is not possible, You can get plastic coverings at Home Depot where the painters used to cover up windows during the painting process. It's pretty cheap.
After the fumigation tent is lifted, run a big fan blow air into the tank to air out every single ounce of toxic air out of the tank. Remove saran wrap and start aerating the water for 12 hours before you place livestock back into the tank.
Remember to unplug all powercords from the wall when you are covering up the tank.
Good luck
Before you decide what you are going to do find out what they are going to use on your house. I made the mistake of dumping most of my stuff only to find out that the stuff they used, Vikane if I recall correctly, doesn't have any appreciable water solubility. When they were untenting my house the supervisor told me they warn people with fish because most people have fresh water tanks and the fish will go to the surface and gulp air. That is not good and the fish will die. And to top it off the guy said I could have left the recirc pump and a heater on during the fumigation. Which makes sense because we didn't have to unplug the refrigerators, so electrical stuff shouldn't be a big deal. As it turned out the damsels and corals no one wanted did fine even with the recirc pumps off for 3 days and the temp getting down to 71 oC. All with a blanket over the tank to help reduce heat loss.
If I had it to do over again and the solubility of the compound was << LD50 I wouldn't tear the tank down.
I still kick myself because I didn't check out what they were going to use, assumed it would be really bad for a reef and didn't talk to someone at the fumigation company that knew what was going on.
As always FWIW and YMMV.
Derek
If I had it to do over again and the solubility of the compound was << LD50 I wouldn't tear the tank down.
I still kick myself because I didn't check out what they were going to use, assumed it would be really bad for a reef and didn't talk to someone at the fumigation company that knew what was going on.
As always FWIW and YMMV.
Derek
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