Over the Top

I'd been noticing that the flow of water into our Feeder Goldfish tanks had been a bit...sluggish the past little bit. Where it was difficult to get a good strong flow going. 
Not a good thing when you have like 2000 fish that are needing flowing water so that they are getting enough oxygen. 
Normally pulling off the lock lines that control the waterflow into each tank helps, as they can get clogged up with gunk/snails/and other things. 
But as I pulled off the first of the locklines...I had the thought that perhaps something in the back sump/holding tank area was clogged up. As back there can get a bit messy and needs gravel vacuuming from time to time.
So leaving the tank as it was -without putting the lockline back on- I went into the back, and discovered that the part that sucks water from the sump into the tanks had a filter thing that was basically clogged. So I took it off, rinsed it out, put it back and gravel vacuumed up the rest of the gunk in that tank back there before adjusting the gravel vacuum so that I would be able to put water back into the tank since I'd vacuumed out a lot of it in my effort to clean the thing.

And I think somewhere in the middle of that, where I was filling the back tank back up, I got a phone call that took me away from my task and onto the floor.

It didn't take long, but as I headed back I happened to glance at the fish wall...
And noticed that the tank where I had left the lock line off....was overflowing. 
:S 
AHHH!!

Apparently not all the gunk had gotten sucked up by my gravel vacuum, but some of it had gone through the pipes into that tank and clogged the baskets that prevent the fish from swimming into the pipes while allowing water to still flow....
and with clogged out flows...the water just filled up the tank...and went over the tank.... :S

I reacted quickly darting into the back behind the fish tanks to get the gravel vacuum -that was putting water into the tank- out of the sump back there and turned off before I darted outside.

Only to realize that the water wasn't going down.
I noted that the other locklines were hardly running...probably due to the fact that that one lockline was missing so the water had easier access to getting out there. 

So I figured...why not even out the pressure of the water?
Which lead to a mad scramble for me to undo the locklines in the rest of the feeder goldfish tanks (there's 8 total) which allowed the water to spread out and lessen the pressure. 
Which thankfully meant the first tank's water levels were going down and no longer flooding the floor. 
-It wasn't a bad flood, easy enough to mop up.

And after I discovered that the baskets...the out flows were clogged, and taking them off and cleaning them...
The water levels evened out. :D 

Which finally allowed me to get the all the locklines back into their proper places.
And yah....definitely a moment of high adrenaline for me lol. 
But hey! The locklines are once more back to their stronger flows so that's a good thing. ^-^

-Sarnic Dirchi