Fsurocks99
New member
Once again, it's been a long time since I've updated this thread. No I hadn't forgotten it. I've actually been a little reluctant because this will be a sad update, unfortunately. Sorry in advance for the long story....
While (thankfully) Hurricane Matthew had little effect on my house and the surrounding area, it had a significant impact on my tank. The night the storm hit, we had a power surge that resulted in my controller being reset to the factory default settings and screwed up my heaters. My saving grace (at the time) was that my return pump also seized up (always seems to do this after a surge) leaving the display and sump separated. Within a few hours, my sump was at 91 F, while my display was at 71 F (both are normally around 79-80 F). I caught this about 12 hours later when I was able to get home the following day. I figured there would be mass die off in the sump, so I performed a water change on the sump and kept the tanks separated for some time. An important note is that the same week I started a new job and got completely distracted from what was happening with the tank. So much so that I didn't think about testing the water in the sump. I know, I know, you're all saying how can you not do that?! Well, I made the bonehead decision to start the return pump. Everything was going great, and to be honest, the tank had never looked better. For example, my pearlberry that had been brown for the last 3 years, got all of its color back within a 2-week span. I thought I had dodged a bullet. Well, that proved to be short lived.
After a couple of weeks, I returned from work one day to the smell of the ocean. Never a good thing...for some reason (and I still have no clue how this happened), my controller thought it'd be a great idea to spike the tank's temp to 85 F in less than two hours. The result was the start to the tank's demise. The ocean smell was from my bleached plate coral (1st pic), which turned the tank a milky white (2nd pic). Turns out the temp spike only accelerated the tank's death as its ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate were off the charts...in 2 hours, I watched 6+ years of growth die before my eyes.
Now for some decent news...I haven't given up! And I didn't lose everything. I managed to save the platygyra and brain corals as well as the fish (2 clowns, hippo tang, and Lantern Bass) and (surprisingly) the anemone, all of which are currently in my old biocube waiting for the live rock to cycle. I intend to slowly but surely make a number of improvements to the system before "setting" it back up. 1) The aquascape was too boring. Instead of two singular rocks, I want to go with the more traditional aquascape. I can already cross this off the list because I'm pretty happy with how I stacked all the rocks in the display for them to cycle, despite me not being able to see what I was doing at all. Funny how that works sometime! 2) Plumbing. I want to improve the function and look of the drain and return. 3) Hide the wires! Not only do I want to reduce the equipment that I'm using, but I want to hide all of their wires in a cabinet next to the tank that will also hold the ATO.
I'm sure there are other improvements I will think of, but 2 and 3 will keep me busy for the time being. For now that's it. I'm super bummed that I lost the tank, but I do have some new-found excitement for re-vamping the inner-workings and overall look to the system!
Now for some of pics I took before and after the loss:
After:
While (thankfully) Hurricane Matthew had little effect on my house and the surrounding area, it had a significant impact on my tank. The night the storm hit, we had a power surge that resulted in my controller being reset to the factory default settings and screwed up my heaters. My saving grace (at the time) was that my return pump also seized up (always seems to do this after a surge) leaving the display and sump separated. Within a few hours, my sump was at 91 F, while my display was at 71 F (both are normally around 79-80 F). I caught this about 12 hours later when I was able to get home the following day. I figured there would be mass die off in the sump, so I performed a water change on the sump and kept the tanks separated for some time. An important note is that the same week I started a new job and got completely distracted from what was happening with the tank. So much so that I didn't think about testing the water in the sump. I know, I know, you're all saying how can you not do that?! Well, I made the bonehead decision to start the return pump. Everything was going great, and to be honest, the tank had never looked better. For example, my pearlberry that had been brown for the last 3 years, got all of its color back within a 2-week span. I thought I had dodged a bullet. Well, that proved to be short lived.
After a couple of weeks, I returned from work one day to the smell of the ocean. Never a good thing...for some reason (and I still have no clue how this happened), my controller thought it'd be a great idea to spike the tank's temp to 85 F in less than two hours. The result was the start to the tank's demise. The ocean smell was from my bleached plate coral (1st pic), which turned the tank a milky white (2nd pic). Turns out the temp spike only accelerated the tank's death as its ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate were off the charts...in 2 hours, I watched 6+ years of growth die before my eyes.
Now for some decent news...I haven't given up! And I didn't lose everything. I managed to save the platygyra and brain corals as well as the fish (2 clowns, hippo tang, and Lantern Bass) and (surprisingly) the anemone, all of which are currently in my old biocube waiting for the live rock to cycle. I intend to slowly but surely make a number of improvements to the system before "setting" it back up. 1) The aquascape was too boring. Instead of two singular rocks, I want to go with the more traditional aquascape. I can already cross this off the list because I'm pretty happy with how I stacked all the rocks in the display for them to cycle, despite me not being able to see what I was doing at all. Funny how that works sometime! 2) Plumbing. I want to improve the function and look of the drain and return. 3) Hide the wires! Not only do I want to reduce the equipment that I'm using, but I want to hide all of their wires in a cabinet next to the tank that will also hold the ATO.
I'm sure there are other improvements I will think of, but 2 and 3 will keep me busy for the time being. For now that's it. I'm super bummed that I lost the tank, but I do have some new-found excitement for re-vamping the inner-workings and overall look to the system!
Now for some of pics I took before and after the loss:
After:
