Some help please!

[Laith]

An aquaintance of mine has a 3,000 liter (795g) reef tank in his office which is currently being maintained by an aquarium maintenance company.

This morning he called me with a problem and the aquarium maintenance company has been "unreachable" for the past two days. I have a lot of experience with freshwater high tech planted tanks as well as African Cichlid tanks but not so much with reef setups.

Apparently the electricity went off during the weekend (doesn't know for how long) and ever since the fish have been listless and hiding.

I went over there and noticed:

- Water temp was at 34.5C (94F)
- Water hazy
- Fish hiding in rock formation, some not moving much.
- I tested Ammonia: 2mg/l.
- NO2 = 0mg/l
- NO3 = 0mg/l
- All the filters (large sump), skimmer, UV system, lighting etc was working.

What I assumed happened is that the electricity cutoff had an impact on the bacteria in the tank/filtration systems. And my friend also mentioned that he thought the ventilation above the lighting system did not come back on until this morning.

(The tank forms a half wall in the office with everything built in above and below it)

Here's what I did:

- Turned off all the lights.
- opened all the hood doors (both sides).
- opened all the cabinet doors (both sides).
- Set up some heavy aeration.
- Added 100ml Seachem AmGuard to neutralize the Ammonia.
- Added 500ml Seachem Stability to help reseed bacteria.

For various reasons, there was no possibility to do a water change.

I will be going back tomorrow to checkup on things.

After leaving, I started wondering whether the heating element could have been stuck "on" after the electriciy came back and this is what caused the high temps. In the short time I had, I didn't find the heating, I assume it's in the sump.

Can anyone suggest anything else that I have overlooked? Any tips that could help me out?

Thanks!

 

[Sk8r]

See if you can bring a fan to bear on that sump. Run carbon. Put a 1 micron filter in, but be sure to take it out after a few cycles through.

 

[BTTRFLYGRL]

Why can't you do a water change? IMO It is needed very badly....I would get to that asap

 

[Laith]

Thanks for the inputs!

- The fan is a good idea, will try that tomorrow depending on how much the temp has dropped already.

- What will the carbon do in this specific situation? As far as I know, carbon doesn't remove Ammonia. Though I guess it can't hurt anything either...

- To help with the Ammonia, a water change would have to be huge (70-80%?) and logistically (mixing sea salts, hoses, etc etc) this will be difficult until the weekend. Which is why I decided to use AmGuard and Stability together to quickly try to improve things at least a bit.

The test kit measures total Ammonia so I don't know how much of the 2mg/l of Ammonia is the toxic stuff. But I assume that at reef tank pHs a lot of it would be? On the other hand, at 2mg/l of toxic Ammonia things would be dying off pretty quick no?

 

[Laith]

Just an update for those that are interested.

- 24 hours later the temp down to 29C; still high but already a big improvement.

- Total ammonia down to 0.5mg/l. I added another 75ml of AmGuard and 250ml of Stability.

- Fish are more active and less of them are hiding.

I must say I'm impressed by what the combination of the AmGuard and the Stability has accomplished.