Devastating Tank Tragedy

Bubbly, I do agree, however, we have lots of "single point of failure" areas in our reef tanks, though maybe some could be more "disastrous" than others. Most run 1 heater, 1 lighting system, 1 return pump etc. Any of these areas can be a potential disaster. But still, I do agree. I also will not be putting my Calcium reactor back online, until I have more control over it. A pH controller, set to control the Co2 solenoid, would be the way to go. I'll be looking into this, in the near future. Until I've come up with something, I'll be testing and dosing, with Randy's 2 part, the way I used to...lol.

It's not even the tank disaster... It could have become a hazard for my family as well. A large Co2 event, in the home, could be very dangerous. Luckily we don't have a very air tight home.
 
Very glad your family's quick reaction saved the majority of your livestock :bounce3: and hope the male trigger makes it!
 
Michael I am glad that some of the fish made at and your corals look good! Whew! Did Barbie and Kevin supply you guys with the ro-di water for the massive water change? Or did you guys have that on hand? I'm so happy for you that not everything passed. Again, I am sorry for the animals that did pass.
 
Thank you all for your continued support and thoughts!!

MarineGirl, we had 30 gallons of RO/DI water on hand. Angie made another 30 gallons of RO/DI water. Then I decided I wasn't really concerned about the slight amount of nitrates that might be introduced by using tap water...lol. So, another 60 gallons was made with tap water.
 
returnofsid said:
Bubbly, I do agree, however, we have lots of "single point of failure" areas in our reef tanks, though maybe some could be more "disastrous" than others. Most run 1 heater, 1 lighting system, 1 return pump etc. Any of these areas can be a potential disaster. But still, I do agree. I also will not be putting my Calcium reactor back online, until I have more control over it. A pH controller, set to control the Co2 solenoid, would be the way to go. I'll be looking into this, in the near future. Until I've come up with something, I'll be testing and dosing, with Randy's 2 part, the way I used to...lol.

It's not even the tank disaster... It could have become a hazard for my family as well. A large Co2 event, in the home, could be very dangerous. Luckily we don't have a very air tight home.
Click to expand...
I thought a PH Controller was part of the standard setup on Calcium Reactors these days?
 
Such things are gut wrenching, I know. SOrry to hear, hopefully things will look up.
I had a 140 explode, ruined 90% of our entire main floor and most of our finsihed basement, over $30k in damages. Different scenario, but any big disaster like these makes you sick.
Good luck!
 
The blame seems to be focused on the solenoid, it looks to me like the needle valve is the culprit. Am I missing something?
 
Salty Joe, no you aren't missing anything. After my original post, I re-defined the problem, to include the plugged needle valve, and me continuing to open it further.

Update and in need of advice.

I'm slowly still losing some SPS. Unfortunately, 2 of them are very valuable and I'm hoping there's something I can do to save them. I've heard that with such an extremely high Alk, chances of reversing the damage are pretty slim.

Alk is now back down where it should be. When this initially happened, most SPS, that were still alive, were immediately moved into 2 other systems, with perfect parameters. Unfortunately, SPS continued to decline in both systems. Any advice?

3 fish survived and are doing wonderfully!! In total, I lost 8 fish
 
I'm sorry to hear from your loss. Thanks for sharing your experience with us. Hopefully we can learn something from it.
Do you think it would have been possible to prevent this?
 
sorry to hear about the loss... this is what scares the hell out of me about this hobby.. i just generally don't trust the equipment we have to use. we can put all the time in the world into a tank but if one small thing goes wrong all that time goes down the tubes...

sounds like its not a total loss, though. good luck getting everything back up and running!!
 
rbnice1 said:
This always sucks to hear. A few questions on my part.

What was your bubbles per minute of CO2 going into your calcium reactor?


I only ask because my solenoid could get stuck and it would take weeks or months to drain my CO2 tank at 60bpm

Just trying to learn from your experience to safegaurd my tank as much as possible.
Click to expand...


I am interested in this also, I would like to learn from your mistake.
 
Sid, dude this is hard to read.

Glad to see so much survived this. The fish probably died from CO2 poisoning, which would explain why so many coral survived (less subject to CO2 poisoning IME).



As for saving your acros, the only thing that comes quickly to mind is dipping them in something and also dosing some Vitamin C in your system. I've had montipora that were in the midst of a long-term STN problem, that were nearly 100% dead, make a complete turnaround after starting dosing Vitamin C powder (ala the Vitamin C thread in the Zoanthid forum).


That's a shot in the dark but it certainly couldn't hurt as long as you have a good skimmer running. Would also help with any excess nitrate/phosphate from any necrosis from this major event in the tank.
 
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