Enormous Tank Crash Please Please Advise!!!

[THEPHISHGUY]

So, I did a 10 gallon water change on Friday. Note: my tank is in the office. Since I do WC from the sump, I have to unplug the ATO cause if not it starts filling the sump with kalk water. Well anyway, I forgot to plug it back in when I left the office. I came in this morning to a completly dry sump and a quarter empty tank. But, I had shut off the outlet of the closed loop at thwe top of the tank and only left the one on the bottom open. So I am assuming there was a loss of oxygen (no gas exchange). I have hundreds of dead starfish and bristle worms everywhere. The fish are all dead as well. My tank is mostly zoos and while they are closed, they have not melted like the rics, two chalices and one micro. So basically what should I do. BTW, my frag tank is perfectly fine cause it is gravity fed in and out. I did fill the sump with fresh Salt water and closed the line to the frag tank. I got everything out that was dead that I could. I only found one fish. Do u think all clean up crew is dead? Basically what should my pl;an of action be??? THANKS THEPHISHGUY

 

[rleechb]

I would take out all the rocks, and hand-pick all the dead animals off. If your corals have "melted" then scrub/pluck them off the rocks and toss them in the trash. Then do a massive water change (50% or so). I'd let everything settle over the next week or so, and do another water change. You'll probably get a small cycle, but I'd imagine you'd be able to save your zoos.

 

[stereomandan]

Wow, truly sorry to hear that!

If this happened to me, first my mind would go blank after seeing the devastation, knowing how much hard goes into keeping up a tank like that. Then, once reality set it in, I would:

1) Remove all dead things that you can find.
2) If you can, scrub off melted/dead coral in a bucket of mixed salt water, or a bucket of tank water, and place back in tank.
3) Mix up salt water, and get it warmed up to proper temp, and do as big of a water change that you can.
4) Run carbon
5) Run tank as usual and hope for the best. It will have a big nitrate/phosphate spike, and the resulting algae bloom, but that’s to be expected.

If I can think of more things, I’ll post again. Hope all goes o.k.

Dan

 

[THEPHISHGUY]

Thanks a lot guys. No one else has any help or ideas???

 

[ACBlinky]

I'm not sure there's much else anyone can offer. I'd clean out everything dead, skim WET, do a huge water change and keep a very close eye on parameters. You may need to do a few back to back water changes to avoid an ammonia spike; I'd keep fresh SW on hand for the next few weeks just in case.

Sorry you had to go through this, what an awful experience.

 

[Sk8r]

serial water changes, polyfilter, carbon, and skim, skim, skim. If the water goes cloudy, get a micron filter or diatom filter and run that until the water clears.

 

[THEPHISHGUY]

THANKS EVERYONE, I appreciate it. Do you really think I should take everything out of the tank? Seems a little scary to me. I did two 10 gallon changes today and will do two more tomorrow. The tank and sump are only 50 gallons, so as they say I am going with the "the solution to pollution is dilution" theroy! THANKS PHISH