Dead tank...

tiffyreefer

tiffyreefer

New member
I posted this in the general forum, but thought I'd let the locals in on my misfortune, lol...

So my heater destroyed my little 37 gallon setup. I woke up to dead everything and a hot tub in my living room, temp at 93. I "saved" so far: 3 zoa colonies, one clown, my clam (no idea how he is still alive), and some mushrooms. I did an immediate water change of 15 gallons with chilly water and got the temp down to 84. I'm really hoping that what is currently living, keeps living. My ammonia is .25 but every other param at 0. PH is 7.9 So where the heck do I go from here? It's my first and hopefully only crash.

Should I start over or save the tank and ride out a cycle? My living room smells like dead ocean. *sigh*

Question: I had a pair of clowns that I think had paired up. One died. Will the surviving clown pair up again? Hopefully he doesn't die of a broken heart :hmm5: :(
 
I have too much time and money: Therefore I reef.
I have too much time and money: Therefore I bought a tank contoller. :lolspin:

Sorry couldn't resist. Sorry for you loss. I just bought a replacement clown of same type and size. Paired up fine right away. Test that ammonia again, bad sign, assuming just from dead stuff which you would have cleaned out by now. Some softies and "my clam" have survived many changes this year. Other fish and corals not so hardy. Keep an eye on parameters and things should settle out over the week. Not sure about another big water change if things are stable.
 
I have a controller....in the basement. lol The heater was on the correct setting still. Not sure a controller would have helped a malfunction. It was that hot all night long (fed fish did water check the night before) so I figured there would be ammonia as the tank smelled like a piece of fish on a hot sidewalk.

I broke my 100 gallon down. The 37 housed my favorites until we build our house and get the biggin' up and running again. I kept it simple with the small tank, didn't think it needed bells and whistles. I just had a baby and the last half of my pregnancy made it impossible to maintain such a large tank. Now the baby has all the money. Such is life I suppose.

Where are you Tony?! How did you manage your crash earlier in the year?
 
When the temp goes up the controller cuts the power to the heater.. of course it prevents a malfunction.. unless the controller itself malfunctions of course.
 
Really? I didn't know it actually cuts power. Thanks for that :) I'm not exactly technologically advanced when it comes to all the stuff a controller can do, and how it does it. That's one part of reefing that is a bit over my head.
 
Sorry for your loss.......and stench. Just curious what type of heater this was?

When parameters,even temp., swing too far in one direction, bringing things in line TOO quick can be just as big a jolt to the system. Once temp. peaked, I would've brought it down over a couple of days to something under 80. At this stage I would be in the mode of doing smaller(under 5 gallon) water changes while making sure that as much dead or decaying matter is being removed as possible with each one. No it won't be a quick process and most of us have been there at least once, though that doesn't make the smell any easier to live with.

As described a controller does in fact cut power to the heater once the temp. setting's achieved. If your heater was slightly small for the tank, and the room temp was relatively low, having it run constantly may have just let it "keep up". Once the room temp. spiked a bit (warmer weather or heating system kicked on), now it was providing more heat than needed to compensate for the warmer room temp. Just a guess here. So if it's a titanium tube, it just did its' job and I wouldn't throw it away.

Similarly, I'm in the process of tearing down a prop system and I was left with the sump/fuge with some live rock in it. The titanium tube sat in the return pump chamber, but the sensor for the controller was in the fuge chamber. The small pump sending water from that chamber back to the skimmer chamber failed. With the sensor now separated from the tube, the tube just cooked the stagnated water in the pump chamber. And I mean it was steaming! The controller was just reading the temp. in the fuge chamber only and kept the circuit to the heater open full time.
 
coralnut, thank you for the post and the insight. It is a titanium heater and up until this point has kept everything in line very well. I think you are correct. I forget offhand the size of the heater and I'm not downstairs to check, but you made me think outside the box. I had that heater on my 100 gallon. It was powerful enough to heat my sump in the cold basement + the display upstairs. Could the reverse be true that it is just too powerful for a smaller tank? I should have seen this coming, but I suppose when you stay in the hobby long enough you screw up eventually...
 
Oh Gosh yes, I'm going to bet it was either 200 or 300 watts from what you describe it was handling.

Tough lesson here. Those tubes have absolutely no controls. That's why they are sold with the separate controller units. They'll just keep putting out whatever wattage they are rated for regardless of water temp. or room temp.

To draw a comparison, my lapse of thought resulted in somewhere in the area of 10 gallons of water to get to a positively steamy stage (it was hot to the touch!) with a 200 watt tube running amuck.

If you're in a temporary situation with this, I wouldn't go out and by a smaller heater. The only down-side would be if the controller unit failed, in which case you would either be right back where you are now or have a refrigerated tank. I've yet to see a perfect electronic product made for this hobby.

Thinking down the line when you get to a permament settup, some folks use two smaller heaters. IN other words, if you need 200W, use 2 100W heaters. One failing in the on position will keep the other from kicking on, and the reverse if one fails to kick on.

I have several controllers with titanium tubes. The controllers do fail. I also use Eheim Jaeger (used to be called Ebo Jaeger) glass tube heaters. I think you'll find a concensus opinion that the Jaegers are the most reliable glass tube heater available.
 
I have a glass tube heater that I can throw in there for now. I used it on my 30 gallon nano a few years ago. I'll just use that. I really can't wait to get my 100g back up and running :(
 
Hey Tiff, so sorry to hear and welcome to a very big club! Seeing as how this is a temporary tank, I'd just let it run it's course for the time being. I'd follow coralnut's advice, keep up with very frequent (weekly) small water changes, run carbon & gfo, get some chaeto in there if you can once the temp is stable again. Which controller do you have? I don't think you mentioned. You're most likely going to have problems with the tank for a good several months before it rights itself, though there are exceptions to the rule.

One thing I absolutely WOULD NOT do is use any rock,sand, or water from that tank when you rebuild the 100.
 
It's a shame because I have a gorgeous piece of rock in the tank that I was saving for the 100. Couldn't I let it die off and cook it and reuse at some point in my big display? I am switching the rest of my LR out with Brent, keeping my really big show piece rock and running carbon/phosphate media until this thing clears up. I also removed my 1/4 inch decorative sand bed so I can easily siphon off detritus that I blow off the LR with a turkey baster. It's actually working out well and I'm optimistic about starting over....it's just a hard pill to swallow.
 
You can, it will just take a little while to get all that crap out of it. Would probably be best to do it in a container separate from the main display.
 
tnyr5 said:
You can, it will just take a little while to get all that crap out of it. Would probably be best to do it in a container separate from the main display.
Click to expand...

agreed. I have done this before by putting the rock in a tote in the garage with a pump and heater and using the water taken from the display tank during the water change as the water change for the tote. I tested for nitrates and phosphates bi-weekly until they were 0 then added the rock with no ill affects.
 
reeftanknewbie said:
agreed. I have done this before by putting the rock in a tote in the garage with a pump and heater and using the water taken from the display tank during the water change as the water change for the tote. I tested for nitrates and phosphates bi-weekly until they were 0 then added the rock with no ill affects.
Click to expand...
+2 I hate seeing stuff like rock go to waste. There's not too many things in this hobby that are cheap, and even less are push-button. It's a process for sure and the rock can certainly be brought back from the dead.
 
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