Sunday morning I walked into the living room and saw a huge puddle of water on the floor.

I looked at the tanks in front of me, and they were all in one piece, there weren’t any spots from the roof, there weren’t any spilled or broken glasses on the floor, so I had no idea where the water was coming from.

I said “Jeff, I don’t know what happened in here but there’s water all over the floor.”

To tell you the truth I was getting a little scared – water on the floor is a problem, water on the floor when you can’t figure out where it came from is a bigger problem.

Of course Jeff knew what happened right away.

He’d left the RO filter running on the discus tank, and it had overflowed and ran into the middle of the floor instead of puddling near the tank.

It’s a good thing we’d just tiled the floor!

It’s also a good thing that the we have a wet vacuum.

Ours has really been invaluable to us since we started keeping fish.

Whether we are cleaning up overflows (yes, its happened more than once) or using it to clean water out of used tanks we’ve used that thing a lot.

One of our friends told us that his wife wouldn’t allow him to get an RO filter unless he got a wet vac first.

I think that’s a great idea.

After all, more than likely something’s going to happen, and it’s a lot less stressful to have a wet vac on hand than to try to clean everything up with towels, or to have to run out and buy one.

Have you ever had a fish tank or fish room accident?

Leave me a comment and tell me about it – or just tell me how lucky you’ve been, since you haven’t had one .

How do you tell your kids the fish is dead?

Does the explanation differ according to the child’s age – or whether or not they are the ones who discovered the body.

I have to tell you, in our tank full of cories and bushynose plecos sometimes all we find is part of a skeleton, and then we have to determine which fish is dead by figuring out which one we don’t see anymore.

I think that might be a little more traumatic than seeing a fish that has just died.

I really haven’t thought about what or how I’m going to tell the baby when she’s old enough to start wondering what happened to the fish.

It’s something we’ll definitely have to think about though – with all of our fish now deaths and disappearances are going to be a part of life.

Of course there’s the chance she might not care or notice missing fish at all, but if she’s anything like her dad and me she’ll have at least one favorite.

How did you tell your kids the fish is dead?

Do you remember how your parents told you your fish had died when you were younger?