Bizarre failure with my Durso (kind of): water on the floor

[Hal]

I was working in my basement fish room doing a water change via my sump. A few minutes after restarting my pump I notice a small stream of water flowing out of the hole in the ceiling. Crud.

I quickly check all the seams on my pvc plumbing. They're all good.

I run upstairs and check the all the hose connections on my overflow. They're dry too.

No water flowing over the side of the tank.

Then I see it. I have a Lifereef overflow with 2 drain lines. One has a durso on it, the other does not. I have several long airline hoses stuck into the durso and the other drain line to further silence my overflow. The outlets of some of them are taped to the top of my hood, and some are hanging down the back of my tank. One of the hoses that was hanging down the back (not one in the Durso) had amazingly filled with water and become a siphon. It was dripping a fairly steady amount of water onto my floor, some of which made it down the hole in the floor into my basement fish room. BIZARRE!

I have NO idea how the airline hose filled with water. It seems to defy the laws of physics. Especially since the airline SHOULD have been sucking air into it. Caveat: I've noticed that some of my airlines become dislodged and stop sucking air.

What a mess. Literally.

My recommendation: make sure that all your airline tubing terminates above the water line of your tank.

[rustybucket145]

When you cut the pumps there was likely a small backflow into the airline. B/c the airline is so small in diameter the viscosity of the water will almost cause it to auto-siphon. I've witnessed this several times when setting up kalk drips. Just raise the airline ends 8ish inches above the top of the tank and you should never have to worry about it again.