fallout from prolonged heater shutdown

[Sk8r]

Not to be imitated.
But I moved a thermometer to another tank, because my reef is so stable, right?
The heater got unplugged. I had all sorts of mysterious problems with my tank---notably polyp bailout on lps, about 4-6 of them.
Fish: mostly gobies and blennies, mandy, dartfish.

Coralline was running riot. When I got in to scrape the glass, I noted the water temperature and ran and got the thermometer.

That tank was running at 72 degrees.
Corals were stressing a bit, as aforenoted, but had not retracted, just weren't expanding as much as usual.

The situation had probably been going about a month in that condition.

I reconnected the heater and brought up the temperature slowly to 80.

Corals immediately expanded and the tank is much happier. Fish are hungrier, but not remarkably so.

Just informational---what a tank can take and keep on ticking. A slow temperature decline is not a catastrophe in a fish/lps tank, even if carried on for several weeks, as long as your chemistry is good.

 

[aquaman67]

Interesting story.

I just replaced my single 150 watt heater with two 100 watt heaters for safety.

It's good to know that if one heater fails, even if I don't catch it right away I should be ok.

 

[Lightsluvr]

Alrighty then

Alrighty then

Good information, sk8r. Another reason I'm using a pair of 300W heaters in our new tank.

It's the sudden temperature skids that kills stuff...

Thanks for posting your experience.

LL

 

[bj32482]

I have coral that survived my tank dropping to 40 degrees. We lost all power during the ice storm for 11 days...it took me about 4 days to find, purchase and install a generator. I have lots of zoas, a miracle toadstool, and some gsp. I did lose all of my fish, but I am amazed at how much of my coral survived.