I have two aquariums.   The one in my basement is 150 gallons and it hadn't been cleaned in about two years.  The ice storm that hit last February caused the power to go out and without a heater or oxygen all of my fish died.  I removed the dead fish but didn't clean the tank.    I also have a 50 gallon aquarium in my office on the second floor of my house.  That tank had been cleaned out but had never been filled back up with water.   So one day this past Summer I decided to stop procrastinating and fill up the aquarium in the office while draining the one in the basement.   I ran a water hose up and through the door on my deck and into the aquarium in my office.    Then I went down to the basement and put a hose in that tank.  I pulled the rest of the hose outside the house and sucked on the end of it, trying to start a siphon.   I sucked and sucked and yet nothing would come out.   I finally gave up and pulled the hose back inside the house and closed the door (but like a complete idiot I didn't take the other end of the hose out of the tank!) A little while later my 2 1/2 year old daughter asked me where her shoes were.   I walked downstairs to look for them and to my horror I saw that the siphon had started and about 100 gallons of nasty fish tank water had already ran out of the hose into my carpet.    I should have grabbed the end where the water was running out and took it back outside but instead of jerked out the end in the fish tank to stop the flow.    I then remembered the tank upstairs was still filling up and I wanted to make sure it wouldn't overflow so I ran outside and shut off the water spicket.   I went to the garage and got Shop Vac #1 and started sucking up all the water from the carpet.  After about 30 seconds it malfunctioned and wouldn't suck anymore.  So I went to the garage and got Shop Vac #2.   It worked for a few minutes and did the same damn thing!    So I called my Mom and told her to come get my daughter so I could keep her out of the mess and I asked to borrow her Shop Vac.   I dropped off my daughter and picked up Mom's vacuum.   When I pulled back into my driveway I noticed water was leaking around the spicket.  Apparently I hadn't turned it all the way off!!!    So I ran up the steps and sure enough the tank in my office was overflowing with water and I was flooding the upstairs.     I started Shop vacuuming up all the water and quickly filled the Shop Vac to the max.   I attempted to pick it up and carry it over the baby gate at the top of the steps and the freaking handle broke off and dumped not only all the water back into my carpet, but also all the nasty crap that was already in my Mom's Shop Vac.   It was the biggest mess of all time.  At that point I just rolled over in the floor and laid there speechless for about ten minutes.   It was one of those days where I should have just stayed in bed.Cleaning the Aquariums8.9109