My tank was crashing this morning....

Moses that sucks! You need to run a few tests. If you don't have the kits your LFS will usually do it for you. Specifically your ammonia and nitrate numbers. I suspect something died and sent your ammonia up. It does not take much ammonia to send things into a tailspin. Could have been the fish. Post them up and we can see what happened. Next is the temp. Do you have a heater in the system that could have run away? My bet is its one of those two, if not then did anyone clean anything around your tanks? These are systems and failures are caused by something.

My worst one was a FO tank. Suddenly the fish all started dying. One by one. Everything tested OK. Then I found it. "Someone" tossed a penny in my fuge. A single penny in a 200 gallon system. It had no color left on it. I checked my copper level and it was through the roof.
 
slapshot said:
Moses that sucks! You need to run a few tests. If you don't have the kits your LFS will usually do it for you. Specifically your ammonia and nitrate numbers. I suspect something died and sent your ammonia up. It does not take much ammonia to send things into a tailspin. Could have been the fish. Post them up and we can see what happened. Next is the temp. Do you have a heater in the system that could have run away? My bet is its one of those two, if not then did anyone clean anything around your tanks? These are systems and failures are caused by something.

My worst one was a FO tank. Suddenly the fish all started dying. One by one. Everything tested OK. Then I found it. "Someone" tossed a penny in my fuge. A single penny in a 200 gallon system. It had no color left on it. I checked my copper level and it was through the roof.
Click to expand...

Yeah. Tested a few of the parameters yesterday:
Ammonia: 0
Nitrate: 0
Nitrite: 0
Salinity: 1.026

Nope, everyone knows not to mess around with/near the tank.

That really sucked.
 
Moses, just thinking about something...when you woke up and saw this, was your skimmer cup overflowing back into the system?
 
uhuru said:
Were you dosing anything? Ca, alk, mg, etc? Vodka?
Click to expand...

I only dose Bionic 2 part, Cal and Alk. It wasn't a Cal or Alk overdose, have been dosing 15ml of each for several month and I've checked my Cal/alk lvls 2 weeks before the tank crashed. Calcium was: 460 and Alkalinity was: 10
 
Moses, the large basket star that died on you a few days before this happened, it was in this tank, correct? Were all the pieces removed when it fell apart? I know it can be difficult to remove the pieces specially if there is little room to work with in the tank. How far between it expiring and your water change?
 
Aquabacs said:
Moses, the large basket star that died on you a few days before this happened, it was in this tank, correct? Were all the pieces removed when it fell apart? I know it can be difficult to remove the pieces specially if there is little room to work with in the tank. How far between it expiring and your water change?
Click to expand...

It died almost a week before the tank crashed. I removed pretty much all of it, only a few arms were left, but I'm pretty sure the Basket Starfish arms didn't cause this crash. I did a water change(25%) a day after it died.
 
IMO, the tank crashing had something to do with me cleaning out the back chambers of the fish poo. Maybe because I removed it all, it removed a bunch of essential bacteria?
 
I think you cleaned too much (changing the parameters too much), had a spawning event and the tank couldn't hold up.
 
Ok, here is a list of the dead things so far:
1 Yellow Coris Wrasse
1 Neon Goby
1 baby Bluehead Wrasses(he was like an inch long, got him cuz he was a freebie that was thrown in)
Spawning Pair of True/False Percula Clownfish(Male was True, Female was a False)

2 some kind of rainbow Acos
Millepora
Large Derasa clam
tank raised Large Golden Tear Drop Maxima ( had is for 2.5 years, raised it from a 1.5 inch baby to 6 inches. )
Mexican Turbo snail
Nass snails



Things that are trying to survive, they are starting to color up again. Some of the SPS below were completely bleached out, now, they are coming from the dead! Pretty amazing at how hardy SPS can be.
Elkhorn coral (Montipora hirsuta)
Ponape Birdsnest
Setosa Montipora
Surf N Turf
ORA Green BirdsNest
 
Western_reefer said:
Possibly... my cleaner shrimp spawned on a weekly basis tho. They are still alive thankfully. :)
Click to expand...

Totally not thinking shrimp given they don't effect DO really as they are little critters. More thinking of the clam and Turbo snails as both are known to spawn after having their conditions changed drastically. Both cast out sperm and eggs, and both break down fairly quickly in tanks dropping DO rather rapidly. Given the temp of 81 your DO was all ready a little low most likely as the hotter the water, the less DO it can hold.
 
GreshamH said:
Totally not thinking shrimp given they don't effect DO really as they are little critters. More thinking of the clam and Turbo snails as both are known to spawn after having their conditions changed drastically. Both cast out sperm and eggs, and both break down fairly quickly in tanks dropping DO rather rapidly. Given the temp of 81 your DO was all ready a little low most likely as the hotter the water, the less DO it can hold.
Click to expand...

Oh, ok.
 
GreshamH said:
Totally not thinking shrimp given they don't effect DO really as they are little critters. More thinking of the clam and Turbo snails as both are known to spawn after having their conditions changed drastically. Both cast out sperm and eggs, and both break down fairly quickly in tanks dropping DO rather rapidly. Given the temp of 81 your DO was all ready a little low most likely as the hotter the water, the less DO it can hold.
Click to expand...

i had a maxima spawn on me after a wc, had to do another one right after it was done. i could see how it would crash a tank
 
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