Apparently I have not thought about redundancy enough.
My new nano reef tank has been running really well, and getting aesthetically pleasing.
This is how my nano reef tank looked like before the disaster.
The man pump got stuck a few days before I had to travel, so I have replaced it with another one I had lying around.
Unfortunately while I was away the newly installed pump has also developed problems, and it has triggered the ground fault interrupter it was plugged into. Unfortunately all the other equipment was running from the same outlet, which meant once the GFCI was triggered the whole tank was shut down.
I should have thought about redundancy like I did when I had my big reef tank, but the few pieces of equipment that the nano tank required were all running from the same outlet.
When I came back from my trip I was greeted with cloudy water and the smell of rotten sea creatures. Even after a few water changes the tank looked lifeless as expected after a marine tank was left without water movement for more than a few hours.
I was convinced that nothing has survived (even patches of the coralline algae looked dead). So I have rinsed the inside of the tank including the rocks with tap water to get rid of the smell, and started curing my live rock again.
But this morning I have noticed that some of the rocks have live feather duster worms on them. So something did survive the disaster.
I will need to buy some fresh live rock to restore the biodiversity that has been lost but it should be possible to have the tank up and running again in the not too distant future.