Just one day in the life of an aquarium keeper

So I'm awake early to wake the kid to see the blue red moon, red blue moon, super red blue moon. Anyway. I normally let the dogs out of the garage when I wake up. But being 4am, earlier than normal, I let them lay.

Now about 6:30 I go to let them out and hear slurping sound and see water running through garage. Open tank stand to see return pump sucking air. Unplug it and glance at ATO reservoir, still has water. By this time water is drained from display and about done. So I stare ate it for a second, plug it back in and it looks normal. But was still low. Where the heck is this water coming from?

Look at skimmer and it's almost all water very little air. It's coming from my skimmer overflow container. Quickly unplug it and it stops. So from about 6:30 am till about a half hour ago been nothing but circulation pumps running. Busy morning with kid, phone calls, lawns and just relaxing. Took out skimmer and venturi was clogged. Cause? Salt creep. Weird thing right at the pump connection. Not at the top where you'd think it would be sucking in air/salt mixture.

Any moral to this episode? Not really. My overflow container for skimmer holds a gallon. I lost about 3 gallons I figure based on what I added. Didn't pay much attention. Had I seen this at 4am may have been preventable? Was it happening before then? After and I wouldn't have noticed even if I did let the dogs out? Don't know.

Obvious question. When was the last time I cleaned skimmer? Couple months ago when I changed out sump. Before that? Longer. Maybe I loosened it last time and it made it's way down to where it was and grew from there. ??

Glad it was in the garage. Keep on keeping on.

I decided against a skimmate locker on my current build. Do you have a float valve on your skimmate overflow container? So it kills the skimmer pump when its full?

Too high tech for me. Usually takes about a week to fill up for me. Just a 45 gallon set up. Pretty amazing something so small could do so much. When I saw the little salt rock pop out, I saw my kidney stone fall into the strainer. Deja vu.

Well good thing you caught it when you did. 3 gallons in and sounds like your ATO could have pumped the rest of your reservoir before the skimmer ran out of water to pump. Part of the reason I'm going with tile that looks like wood instead of actual wood for the living room, hall and kitchen. These things are always bound to happen at one point.

No controller?

Controller? On a $150 set up in the garage? Most expensive thing is my skimmer for $90. Have no idea why pictures come out sideways.