Time Flies...

...when you're in crisis management mode. Monday I got in the tank to clean and do a water change. You have to drain some water out then close the valves, shut off the pumps and get in the tank to clean twice a week. Monday, after doing EVERYTHING the way I always do it, I realized about halfway through the dive that the water level had gotten lower while I was in the tank. I pulled myself out of that tiny hatch so quickly and dropped my weight belts as I sprinted across the deck and down the stairs to the pump room. Sure enough, the reservoir was overflowing like crazy. I turned the pump back on to get the water out of the reservoir but at that point I had already lost a good portion of the water.

I have to make the RO water now since we are in port and I can't just pump in this nasty-ass marina water. The RO unit takes a long time to do it's job - about 30 hours to make enough for a water change. On top of that, add the fact that I'm paranoid as hell about that hose coming off again, this was not shaping up to be a great day. And I was only supposed to have 3 days left. (Turns out it's 4 since Neil's flight to Barcelona was canceled for today due to labor strikes all over Spain - awesome). So I did what I could to keep the fish alive in an isolated tank. There is 1 pump running to just circulate water but there is no heater/chiller, and no filtration. The main concerns are lack of oxygen in the water and a drop in temp - funny, the first crisis was a spike in the temp (actually, none of this has been funny).

By the time I went to bed Monday, I had nowhere near enough water to get the system going again. I placed a small powerhead pump in the top of the tank and left the top hatch open so that there would be some oxygen exchange happening. Since I had no problems during the day with the RO unit, I decided to let it run through the night but alerted some of the guys on Odyssey to just check in there every once in a while to make sure there wasn't water gushing everywhere.

A small knock on my door woke me on Monday morning. Matt was there to tell me that water was pouring out everywhere and the pump room was flooded. It was 2:00 AM. I scrambled over there but all I could really do was just vacuum up the mess. Of course, after about 10 minutes of vacuuming the vacuum overheated and I had to stop. I went back to bed.

Tuesday I sat in the small, dark, stinky pump room ALL DAY just babysitting the damn thing so that if it busted open again, I could stop it right away. Nothing happened. Though after about 24 combined hours of water RO water, I still didn't have enough to fill the tank and reservoir enough to run the pumps. I turned off the RO unit last night - I wasn't going to deal with that again and I started making water at 7 AM this morning. I'm praying that by midnight or so I should have enough to start the tank up. I now have an oxygen tank that the engineers use for welding acting as an airstone to pump O2 into the tank. Luckily the temp hasn't dropped at all even though the air has been quite chilly. The animals all look ok - even the corals and anemones are open and happy. I did notice a dead anthias fish this morning but they had been dying since before Neil left so something else is killing them.

Well, I have to get back over there and babysit. I will be leaving Barcelona on Friday afternoon for Pisa where I will meet up with family and stay with them for a week. I will then (hopefully) drive up to Hungary with my nonna. She's got a cold right now and is not 100% sure they will make the drive. If they don't I will have to get there via train or something because my flight home to SF is booked out of Budapest.