Did I just kill my whole tank?

dasickle

New member
So I finished setting up my UPS a few hours ago. I plugged everything in and went about my business.

Come back to the room an hour later and there is water everywhere. My powerhead is half way of out the tank pumping water onto the floor. My 5g ATO bucket is basically empty. I immediately checked my SG and sure enough it was down to 1.01.

Luckily, I had enough saltwater to do about an 80% water change. Tested my SG a few times and its back to about 1.023.

Everything in the tank looks ****ED. Ricordeas, duncans, torch and frogspawn are all shrunk down. My flower anemone is still someone open by much smaller. Zoas seem to be macking a slow comeback.

Should I be expecting a total loss by the time I wake up in the morning? SG had a huge drop and temp went down from 81 to 74 for about an hour.

P.S.

My frogspawn is melting I see little neon green things floating around the tank. Should I take it out or give it till the morning?
 
The SG and short term temp drop shouldn't be a big problem. Everything is stressed but should recover. I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it. Everything you mentioned is pretty hardy. The only thing I'd be worried about is inverts. They can be sensitive to large salinity swings. I'd leave the frogspawn in there, too. Even if you lose a head or two.
 
The SG and short term temp drop shouldn't be a big problem. Everything is stressed but should recover. I wouldn't lose too much sleep over it. Everything you mentioned is pretty hardy. The only thing I'd be worried about is inverts. They can be sensitive to large salinity swings. I'd leave the frogspawn in there, too. Even if you lose a head or two.

Thanks! I just got the tank to where I want it to be and now this.

Looks like I will be counting snails in the next few days and smelling the water... Hopefully my starfish will pulls through.
 
Since the event lasted only 1 hour I would think chances of most things surviving & recovering are reasonably good. Those Frogspawn bailouts may be able to form new colonies if you can expend some time with them. Keep an ehe on things and get dead stuff out ASAP. Good luck.

BTW, how did this happen, mechanically speaking. UPS as in uninterruptible power supply? Or an an ATO, auto too off? ATOs should never contain enough fresh water to bring salinity down to those levels. Is that it? Explaining the error may help somebody else down the line.
 
You freshwater dipped the whole tank! :) Hopefully things will all pull through. These crazy things just happen in this hobby, unfortunately. I agree it's a good time to rethink some fail safes on the ATO and troubleshoot how to avoid more problems. Good luck with it - I think it will mostly be ok, but keeping my fingers crossed for you.
 
In a real FAST salinity dip, you can sometimes get away with an equally fast rise. If the fish have had time to adjust (they adjust downward very easily, but not so well upward) it's dangerous to raise salinity---but I've had the same accident down to 1.016 and within a matter of an hour found it and corrected it upward as far as 1.021 and had everything survive: I then brought it more slowly up to 1.025, didn't lose corals or even shrimp. Certainly not recommended- --but these creatures do get rained on at low tide now and again, and they are tough, when well-established in their own environment.

What I would recommend is (a) a water alarm, a really loud one, with a battery change every few months on the calendar. B) securing lines and devices with strong clamps.
 
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