darth_ender said:
The following is a true story:
Once upon a time, there was a husband/wife duo who managed apartments in Tucson, AZ just off campus from the University of Arizona. The apartments were almost exclusively rented by students or adjunct faculty. Some students were mature graduates pursuing degrees in hard sciences. Others were frat/sorority wannabes. Two such students lived together in an upstairs apartment, where they kept two massive fish tanks. Though technically against the rules, the managers did not require that the tenants remove their tanks, since they had owned and used them for some time before the managers had taken over the position. And besides, the tanks and exotic fish were pretty cool.
One evening, the managers are wakened by a bizarre phone call at around 1:30 am. The tenants who lived in the apartment just below the fish enthusiasts were complaining of large amounts of water leaking into their apartment. The brave (not to mention handsome) husband manager raced up to the upstairs apartment and pounded on the door to be let in, but with little success. He then produced the master key and unlocked the apartment, finding it empty of any human life, but still filled with panicking fish life as the fish in the larger tank realized their water supply was quickly diminishing. The manager quickly tried to figure out what the problem was, but suddenly the water bagan to empty even faster. The manager then saw that there was a small, overflowing aquarium with two hoses connected to the large tank, but partially submerged in the small one. Apparently water had been pumped into the small tank, but was not successfully being pumped out. The manager quickly pulled the plug on the pump, but far too late for the poor large fish, who could not even swim upright anymore. He then called and left a message for his idiotic tenants letting them know that their jury-rigged filtration system had failed and that they were in big trouble. He apologized to the downstairs tenants, who in a cruel bit of irony or Murphy's Law, had aquarium water drip on their laptop and school textbooks. When the upstairs tenants returned, they received a bit of a tongue lashing. A short time later, they were asked not to renew their lease by the managers.
A couple of weeks later, the managers wondered if the car difficulties that were so troublesome for the mechanics to figure out, but were finally identified as attributable to water in the gas tank and lines, were caused by the former proud owners of thousands of dollars of exotics marine life.
Ouch...
We're moving our tanks downstairs due to possible weight problems. The floor is bowing ever so slightly, and the floorboards are separating around the tanks, which isn't good. So, as nice as the tanks look upstairs, only one is staying. The floor also doesn't like water being poured on it...it just goes right through and makes puddles in the basement, staining walls and stuff as it goes. We have had a small filter pump water out of a tank, but thankfully not for long, as it was dripping on a laptop downstairs (and going through a light fixture). Nothing as bad as what happened in that apartment building has, or ever will happen, if we can help it.
