Largest Private Reef Tank in the US Springs a Leak

Picture from Kenosha News

What happens when you’ve got a massive tank that springs a giant leak? Well, if you’re Bill Wann and the tank just so happens to be your 20,000 gallon reef, then obviously you rush to the nearest aquarium retailer and buy up 60 plus buckets of salt, fire up the RO unit, and stat to work immediately.

That exact scenario played out for Bill Wann, owner of the largest residential aquarium in the United States. His massive 24-foot-long by 10-foot-wide by 10-foot-deep aquarium sits right in his living room, obviously having required some special installation. The incident occurred when a six inch pipe cracked, emptying all but 18 inches or so of water. The massive loss of water caused most of Bill’s corals to perish, but luckily all of the fish survived. And as aquariums disasters usually happen, this all went down at 4am.

Here is a recounting of the story that was posted by Bill on his Facebook page.

Woke up at 4 am to and empty fish tank . the six inch pipe that I was working on replacing cracked and emptied my whole tank . looks like most of the fish will be fine but I lost most if not all of my coral . working on getting 100 or so buckets of salt to get it refilled . it has 18 inches of water in it right now that is running though the heat exchangers and sand filter so I can keep the fish alive for quite some time . what a great way to start the day . guess all of of the water changes I didn’t do caught up to me all at once .