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The stupid thing just couldn't wait, could he. About to set up my new tank in the very near future, but does that mean he shouldn't try to put a new leak in my old tank, nope.
Just leaving work one night early this month, got a phone call from my wife that the power was off in the house, but the lights were working fine. Told her to turn off the power point to the tank, check the meter box, which was tripped and then turn it back on. The power stayed on fine with the tank off. She turned back on the power to the tank and it tripped again.
I managed to get home a little bit later to a tank that is was cool, low twenties, so it been off for a couple of hours. Took off the
doors on the stand, peered inside. Nothing looked out of place, no black
marks on the powerboards, smell of something shorted out etc. Leaned inside, drip on top of my head, what the?
Don't take much notice of that, only seemed to be a little bit of water, didn't really register. Continued looking over the equipment, another drip. OK, that water is coming from somewhere. Noticed that it
is dripping off a a single point from the bottom of the top of the stand, plus almost the entire front length of
the top of the stand has some water on it. Floor of half of the stand
had a thin cover of water over it, under where the drip was. Well, that certainly explains why it has
tripped the meter box then, some water has some how gotten in to a powerboard or point somewhere.
Time to find out where it was coming from. First port of call is the leak that I
did have at one end of the tank due to a separation of the silicone, see The Leak! for further details.
But that has been clamped for a couple of years now. Nope, not there, no water on the stand at all under that point.
Try to narrow it down to where it is centered on, right under where it
is dripping. Was using the torch to see properly at the time too, pass
it over the point, voom, see something retract into the sand bed from
the base of the tank, all the way through the silicone. That little
shit had burrowed straight through the silicone and was continuing
to try to do so even further.
Hmm, great, just what I needed. And how to fix it? Couldn't really think of a good way to do it. In the end, got
a short length of pine that was just the thickness of the foam under
the tank. Then put a couple of layers of paper on the top of it to make
a tight fit and shoved that under the tank to seal it up temporarily. That
stopped it well until could do a proper patch. Damn worm even stuck itself
down there to see what was going on, cheeky bugger.
Next I had to
burrown down through the sand bed in the tank and expose the area. Had to also cut
a hole through the eggcrate that I have in the sand bed halfway todwn. But managed
to do that fine, clear away things, then put some silicone over the
hole. That is a bit difficult to do, as it doesn't stick to wet
surfaces very well or behave any good at all under water. Shoved some of the silicone down the hole using a
skewer, then pushed a thick piece of acrylic down there with silicone
on it to increase the area of silicone covering the hole.
What I should have done was use a syringe, but simply didn't think of that at the time. Patch seems to have worked fine, no leaking from it again yet. Couldn't
find which piece of equipment tripped it either, not showed any marks
of shorting or were overly wet in any manner. But things are back to "normal" again with the system.
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