May or may not have a leak situation...

Found a suspicious puddle of water on the desk next to my tank today. Naturally I panicked, but I stuck a towel next to the tank and after a few hours its still totally dry. So what happened? My theory is that my cat, who loves water, was having a bit of fun while I was doing errands today... Since the tank is open-top, he could have easily played in the water a bit. He has a bit of an obsession with the waterfall from the filter (funnily enough, he doesn't care about the fish one bit). But how do I tell? If I find water next to my tank in the morning, is it a leak, or was my cat fooling around again? I guess I'll just go to sleep and hope for the best... and hopefully the tank won't split along the seams during the night and dump 7 gallons on all my stuff.

 

I hope it's not a leak! Do you have some cardboard to put over it? If it gets knocked off, you'll know it's the cat

 

Sounds like kitty making some mischief to me

You could put paper towels under the tank and keep an eye on the water level??

 

I would strongly suspect the cat, as the four I have just now never disappoint when I suspect them of some sort of mischief. They, of course, blame it on the dogs.

Also, you mentioned that the puddle didn't continue to form after having wiped it up, so stick with the cat theory and sleep well---rick

 

could also be you filter the lid on my HOB wasn't on tight ansd it leaked a little water. a drop at a time so I could never find out where the water was coming fromIt wasn't until I was tearing down my tank that I realised what it was from

 

Good news, its the morning and there's still not a drop of water on the desk. You'd think that if there was a leak big enough to make a substantial sized puddle of water in an hour, there would be some water by now. Looks like kitty was the culprit! Well, it looks like this means it's time to get a lid.

So excited, since its Black Friday, I thought I'd treat myself and buy a nice tank. I'm getting one smaller than I planned (37 instead of 55) because the maintenance tasks on the larger one seemed a bit intimidating with my busy schedule. But a 37 gallon will still be great fun to set up and stock!

 

Glad that you did not wake up and find yourself treading water. That said, I'd go with the 55g, Oddly enough, the larger the tank, the easier it is to maintain.
Happy Thanksgiving plus a day, BTW, and please remember that if a cat wasn't up to something at any given time, they would not be a cat, and that would be a shame- so I fully expect a post from you about how adroit cats are at removing tank lids.
BTW, I've always wondered, why is Black Friday called Black Friday?----rick