Started off the new year with a flood. Luckily it was a minor flood, but was still pretty funny (now that it's over and cleaned up). I had just got home this afternoon and heard a strange sound, but when I headed over to the tank it was gone. So I went and started doing something else when my daughter shouts, "Hey Dad, there is water shooting out the top of your aquarium!". I look over and the 29G has water coming up over the top of the tank and splashing out on the floor. Luckily by this time the pump was beginning to suck air from the sump, which is where the spray was coming from, and I was able to get the pump shut down before more water ended up on the floor.

Started to look at what was the problem, and it looks like the drain, which is a 1" flexible pipe, is stopped up. I look in the overflow, and all is good. Can't figure out what might have happened, so I pull the Durso off, and take a look inside and everything still looks good. Figured something must be stuck in one of the 90 degree elbows, but can't see it, so I take the return pipe in the sump (it's flexible tubing), get a lung full of air, and blow as hard as I can. I head a clunk, and look up to see a snail has popped out of the overflow tube. He didn't seem too shook up, and starting to crawl off in the overflow, so I move him back to the tank.

Turns out that one of the snails had decided to crawl out, over the overflow teeth, to the bottom of the overflow pipe, back up it, and into the Durso inlet. Then he went down the pipe to where it has a 90 degree elbow and got stuck, blocking everything up.

So I guess my job now is to put a snail guard on the overflow. Guess I'll be cutting some egg crate to fit, and hopefully keeping the little guys from trying this again. I've never had a snail in all my years crawl up over the overflow, the top of it is over a half an inch out of the water, but this guy did it.

So word to the wise, keep the snails guards in place, or you too may have a water fountain when one of them crawls into the overflow...

Good thing you were home. Nice save

Sorry to hear about that Lee. I'm just glad you caught it fairly quickly.

Yeah, no real harm done, luckily the sump was a bit low when it happened and so at worst it might have splashed out a bit more water before it ran dry. Of course it may have burnt up the pump then, but who knows. I wasn't really very happy until I blew on the pipe and this snail comes shooting out, then it was a bit more humorous. And I probably needed some snail guards anyway, at least this little guy was courteous to do it while I was here, and not while I was away.

What kind of snail was it?

Yeah we had a huge Turbo snail block our hang on the back Fuge one time,luckily we were in the room when the thing overflowed in the floor..

Donny

It was a banded trochus, not a very big one, but I guess he was big enough in the 90 elbow that it blocked the flow enough to not handle the return load.

I remeber that one.