About 2 weeks ago I changed skimmers as my chinese one was not doing a satisfactory job. The resulting improvement in nutrient extraction was enough to rouse my H. magnifica from it's spot about 5 days ago. I have been in this hobby for 20 years an have successfully kept 2 magnifica during this time. This one was 3 years old and stable at around 20 inches across in my 300 G display tank. In had not moved for 30 months and looked exceptionally healthy with full, fleshy tentacles and a beautiful vibrant body. It was a poster child of H. magnifica and sat in my mixed reef happily.
The movement of the anomone up to the bank glass of the tank was cause for concern but the animal remained looking healthy so I took the opinion that as long as its movement stayed within close proximity of its original resting place, it was unlikely a significant concern and did not justify the risk of trying to peel the foot off the glass which can harm such animals. So I let it do it's thing.
This morning, after the regular 9 am feeding, the anemone was positioned where it normally was, high on the glass, far from other corals and looking healthy. I was hopeful that the disturbance of changing the skimmer was subsiding and i would return to a static position on any of the bare rocks near it.
3 hours later, my fiance asked my what was wrong with the tank. I had been in another room and when I came quickly to look my worst nightmare had happened.
The H. magnifica must have released to wall and had been pulled into an mp 40. It was shredded by the pump and the result was a very macabre scene.
My foxface, hippo and yellow tangs and 2 blennys were on their side taking short desperate breaths. The tank was a thick milky opaque color. I quickly scooped out the troubled fish but they had a nasty deep red tint through their gills. After a desperate 40% water change in a 45G tank I use as a QT tank for new arrivals, I delicately got the sick fish into that tank.
Unfortunately, this was all the water I had on hand. I only keep 40Gs of RO water at a given time and at this particular moment I was low as I had been working on my auto top off system this week to work out some small bugs in the kalkwasser-mixer. I got my blue throat trigger in there as well but no other fish were visible (or remotely accessible) in my DT. None of the fish were looking good; they were quasi-catatonic with no movement except the quick short breaths of very stressed fish and all )except eh bluethroat) had big red stains in their sides which you could see through their skin.
My next move was to run to the store and grab 20 water bottles (18.5L ones for water fountains); these had acceptable impurities given the situation and I rushed home with my 300 litres. I drained my 90G sump completely and filled it again with the store bought water. 15 mins later I had 1.025 fresh water ready to go although only at 68 degrees. Since I had 1200 watts of heaters in my sump (I sometimes let my apartment get cold in the winter), I let the heaters bring the water to 70 degrees and then started circulation with my makeshift QT tank and the fresh sump water. After about 10 mins at 500 gph, I decided that the qt tank had as clean water in it as I could get so isolated it off from the sump (it has it's own canister and heater) and then recirculated the sump with my DT.
So I had basically new water in a qt tank and the fish looking rough but away from the toxins produced by the suicidal H. magnifica.
2 hours later...
All fish in the QT are dead. The desjardins tang, the hippo tang and the yellow tang are dead. MY foxface is dead, the 2 blennys are dead and the bluethroat is dead. I buy my fish young and small and these are all fish except teh foxface that started not much bigger than a dime and that I have fed everyday for 3 years. My hippo had such an enthusiastic and great personality as it frequently would come and display itself to any curious on lookers even after a feeding. I will really miss these fish and I am deeply saddened and remorseful of what has happened to them. My mistakes today were paid for by their lives and I have lost a lot of friends today which is very hard; I am very sad about it.
After 20 years in this hobby I'm finding this to be my worst ever disaster. I am sure that my other 10 or so fish that I couldn't reach in my DT are dead as the ones I managed to get into QT had the best chance of survival.
Even now, I cannot say that H. magnifica are not a reef safe animal because I have kept them for years and years on end, my other one I had for 7 years before a move ended its life.
This recent loss of life is just horrible and I think the purpose of my post is to add to the many horror stories on this site and perhaps the sharing of my experiences will benefit someone.
Fundamentally, I took a risk with an animal that can be risky in an aquarium and the results were the worst case possible.
Maybe anyone reading this will remind themselves to take the time to fix those small tanks issues, and complete the redundancies in their systems so this doesn't happen to them. Maybe I'm just trying to give a reminder to be careful with their tanks. These systems we keep are so delicate and accidents like this are too easy to let happen through neglect, carelessness or even perhaps arrogance. After having a H. magnifica for so many years, I never thought one would decide to walk into an MP40 and kill my tank. I really never thought that would happen.
The movement of the anomone up to the bank glass of the tank was cause for concern but the animal remained looking healthy so I took the opinion that as long as its movement stayed within close proximity of its original resting place, it was unlikely a significant concern and did not justify the risk of trying to peel the foot off the glass which can harm such animals. So I let it do it's thing.
This morning, after the regular 9 am feeding, the anemone was positioned where it normally was, high on the glass, far from other corals and looking healthy. I was hopeful that the disturbance of changing the skimmer was subsiding and i would return to a static position on any of the bare rocks near it.
3 hours later, my fiance asked my what was wrong with the tank. I had been in another room and when I came quickly to look my worst nightmare had happened.
The H. magnifica must have released to wall and had been pulled into an mp 40. It was shredded by the pump and the result was a very macabre scene.
My foxface, hippo and yellow tangs and 2 blennys were on their side taking short desperate breaths. The tank was a thick milky opaque color. I quickly scooped out the troubled fish but they had a nasty deep red tint through their gills. After a desperate 40% water change in a 45G tank I use as a QT tank for new arrivals, I delicately got the sick fish into that tank.
Unfortunately, this was all the water I had on hand. I only keep 40Gs of RO water at a given time and at this particular moment I was low as I had been working on my auto top off system this week to work out some small bugs in the kalkwasser-mixer. I got my blue throat trigger in there as well but no other fish were visible (or remotely accessible) in my DT. None of the fish were looking good; they were quasi-catatonic with no movement except the quick short breaths of very stressed fish and all )except eh bluethroat) had big red stains in their sides which you could see through their skin.
My next move was to run to the store and grab 20 water bottles (18.5L ones for water fountains); these had acceptable impurities given the situation and I rushed home with my 300 litres. I drained my 90G sump completely and filled it again with the store bought water. 15 mins later I had 1.025 fresh water ready to go although only at 68 degrees. Since I had 1200 watts of heaters in my sump (I sometimes let my apartment get cold in the winter), I let the heaters bring the water to 70 degrees and then started circulation with my makeshift QT tank and the fresh sump water. After about 10 mins at 500 gph, I decided that the qt tank had as clean water in it as I could get so isolated it off from the sump (it has it's own canister and heater) and then recirculated the sump with my DT.
So I had basically new water in a qt tank and the fish looking rough but away from the toxins produced by the suicidal H. magnifica.
2 hours later...
All fish in the QT are dead. The desjardins tang, the hippo tang and the yellow tang are dead. MY foxface is dead, the 2 blennys are dead and the bluethroat is dead. I buy my fish young and small and these are all fish except teh foxface that started not much bigger than a dime and that I have fed everyday for 3 years. My hippo had such an enthusiastic and great personality as it frequently would come and display itself to any curious on lookers even after a feeding. I will really miss these fish and I am deeply saddened and remorseful of what has happened to them. My mistakes today were paid for by their lives and I have lost a lot of friends today which is very hard; I am very sad about it.
After 20 years in this hobby I'm finding this to be my worst ever disaster. I am sure that my other 10 or so fish that I couldn't reach in my DT are dead as the ones I managed to get into QT had the best chance of survival.
Even now, I cannot say that H. magnifica are not a reef safe animal because I have kept them for years and years on end, my other one I had for 7 years before a move ended its life.
This recent loss of life is just horrible and I think the purpose of my post is to add to the many horror stories on this site and perhaps the sharing of my experiences will benefit someone.
Fundamentally, I took a risk with an animal that can be risky in an aquarium and the results were the worst case possible.
Maybe anyone reading this will remind themselves to take the time to fix those small tanks issues, and complete the redundancies in their systems so this doesn't happen to them. Maybe I'm just trying to give a reminder to be careful with their tanks. These systems we keep are so delicate and accidents like this are too easy to let happen through neglect, carelessness or even perhaps arrogance. After having a H. magnifica for so many years, I never thought one would decide to walk into an MP40 and kill my tank. I really never thought that would happen.
