Emergency!!!! Need help fast

rjjr1963

rjjr1963

New member
I dose kalwasser with my ATO through a reactor. Something went wrong and filled my tank with kalwasser. The tank is completely white and I see a lot of the particulate matter covering everything.


It's a 40 breeder and I did a 15 gallon water change right away. Mixing more water right now.

What should I do? Is everything in the tank going to die?
 
I would not worry about the precipitation. But what is your pH if it is really high you need to get it down. some club soda or vinegar should help out with that.
 
It will be fine as long as your pH stays at 8.7 or above. The tank will clear up faster if you add 6mL of soda water or 1mL of white vinegar per gallon of tank water, but don't add vinegar if your pH is already low.
 
Wrasse jumped out of the tank. Picked him up off the floor and put him in a QT tank I have set up. He has white on his lips and is breathing very hard laying on the bottom of the tank.

Thanks for the ideas.......
 
FWIW I was fighting dino and regularly dumping kalk slurries in my tank to bring pH up to above 8.4 and hold it there throughout the lighting period. I broke 8.6 a few times. Think something like 25+ tsp a day in a 70 gallon.

Did not do a darn thing to livestock, corals, nems, snails, inverts or anything else in the tank.

If it were me, I would just test parameters tomorrow. You already did a WC (hope water was same temp as tank water-fixing stuff fast can introduce bigger problems). Your wrasse is probably wigged out about the jump. Your pH should be normal in 24 hours and your Ca might be a little higher (single digits) and dkh might be high for a few days. Adjust dosing during this period.

kalk is pretty forgiving. I would bet you will be back to 8.2 by tomorrow.
 
Thanks for the help everyone. Fortunately I always have salt mixing at the correct temp and salinity. The wrasse is calming down but still doesn't look good. I just started 2 part dosing to eliminate the kalk so this won't happen again.

The problem started with my skimmer. It was overflowing the cup within minutes as I tried to get it dialed in. Normally not a problem but I was draining the cup via a valve and hose and loss track of time. The cup continued to fill and drain which kicked on the ATO. I'm glad I found it when I did because I had just refilled the kalk reactor.
 
It's pretty much a full blown disaster. All fish are dead. Some of my most prised sps corals are dead. Still plucking coral out of the milky soup and doing what I can to try and save them. Getting pretty stinky now and feeling pretty dejected.
 
what type pf ato do you have. i have a tunze 3155, thats why i love it. the pumps shuts off after 3 mins, so if there is a spill it wont empty your ato into your tank. if dosing kalk, this extra safety net as you found out is critical
 
I'm using the Tunze 3155 as well. I think it only dosed about a gallon or two of water so I'm not sure how the tank got filled so quickly with so much.
 
The ATO reservoir is 7.5 gallons.

Good news is I managed to find my two clowns among the soup which I thought were dead. They are in the QT tank now and appear to be in good shape. Fingers crossed.
 
Sorry about the losses. That sucks.

I am curious as to the reactor size and the amount of kalk (not mix) that was in it? Was there any kalk left at the bottom of the reactor after the event?
 
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