Tank Crash

[superfirefly]

Last Thursday I woke up two an awful smell. It smelled like a cross between burnt electronics and decaying vegetation. I went straight to the tank which was milky white but the inhabitants looked fine. I assumed my anemones had spawned as has happened before. I was running late for work so I left it as is. I only worked a half day that day because I was leaving town that afternoon.

When I got home the tank looked worse and now the corals were showing signs of distress. My snails were all laying on the ground looking quite dead. Again the fish looked fine. I had enough water to do a 20% change so I did that right before I ran out the door. After I refilled the tank and plugged everything back in, I noticed my heater was bubbling. I immediately unplugged it and pulled it from the tank. I also noticed that my auto feeder which I had filled the previous day was empty. I was running late for my trip so I had to leave at that point.

When I got home late Friday night the tank looked about the same. I started making enough water to do a 50% WC on Saturday. Saturday morning came, I replaced the carbon did a 50% water change and added some prime to neutralize the ammonia that I am sure was in the tank. I have done a 50% WC every day since and the tank is showing no signs of improvement. The tank is still very cloudy. All my zoa's are closed up my leathers all look like wilted flowers and my clam looks nearly dead.

Any suggestions would be welcomed. I assume my tank is going through a cycle. Will it be a month for it to get through this.

I setup my old 30G last night and let it run over night. I plan to add frags of each of my corals and possibly move my clam to this tank since it has not expanded since last week.

I don't have an ammonia test kit but I did have one of those ammonia alert buttons handy. It is showing .05 right now and has not moved from that this whole time.

Why do the fish seem unaffected yet the corals all look like they may not make it?

Thanks for any help.

 

[frenchie]

i would run lots of carbon help pull stuff out of water and do weekly water changes to your back on track, in an emergency situation you can put prime straight in tank like a triple dose to neutralize everything quickly. i would also use a filter sock or hang on filter or something to polish water also.

 

[superfirefly]

Well it looks like I am doing the right things then. I have a ton of carbon running, I have 2 HOB filters with floss in them that I have been changing daily. I have been adding prime daily and I have been doing daily water changes.

Should I back that off to weekly?

Any ideas why the fish seem fine especially my tang? He is usually the first indicator there is a problem with the tank and he seems perfectly fine.

 

[chadscamaro]

Thats what I would do. Carbon, water changes,Prime and test often. You probably dont want to frag any corals and then move them to a newly setup tank as that will just add more stress.

 

[superfirefly]

I have some corals that are on small rocks. What if I moved them rock and all?

 

[breutus]

into a new tank that was just set up it could cause more stress. on another hand I would be willing to hold anything you need for the time being, I have a well established tank. There may be a little stress but at least not as much as fragging them, then dropping them in a unestablished tank! the biggest one I would be worried about is the clam it really may need in something else, in my experiences they do not tolerate change at all

as far as the fish they seem to not be affected by certain things, when I electrocuted everything 2 years ago over the following weeks I lost every single coral but I didn't lose a single fish???

 

[breutus]

BTW if your heater was cracked and still running you may not be to far off from what happened to me when I electrocuted my tank... lots of carbon is essential lots of water changes, and if i was to do it all over again i would have replaced all my rock and started fresh... that's how bad it was for me though. mine also happened due to DC power which left some nasty chemicals in the water...

 

[superfirefly]

Thanks Breutus, I appreciate the offer to hold things for me. I may take you up on that but not just yet. I am more worried there is something in my tank that may get transfered to yours.

I will hold off on moving things to the 30G and will keep up with the water changes.

How long did your corals survive?

 

[bigmayreefer]

What are your water parameters at? SG, Dkh, Ca, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate? Water changes are good, but its nice to know whats going on chemically in the tank too.

 

[breutus]

My clam didn't make it much over two or three days before it was completely gone. Most of my corals died somewhere between 1-3 weeks.a few died the night it happened Even with heavy carbon and water changes... Even stranger was there was nothing wrong with my parameters until about three weeks out other then rising nitrates due to things dying. After about four weeks my ammonia and nitrites started to shoot off the chart. Mainly due to SOO much die off along with so much of the good bacteria dying off along with it...

 

[rbnice1]

When my tank got nuked I had about 140 gallons of water in my system and I did about 250 gallons of water changes over 2 weeks and still got a huge nitrate spike.

If you have any corals left alive I would really suggest finding someone close with a frag tank or free space to hold your stuff for 3-4 weeks. That are start doing 40% water changes every 3 days, like I did.

 

[superfirefly]

Well I think just about everything minus the fish is gone. The clam was dead when I got home and the corals looked bad. There was sponges disintegrating all over the rocks so I decided to take 3/4 of my rock out piece by piece and rinse them off in several buckets of old tank water. Then with the rock out I siphoned all the junk on the sand then put the rock back in the tank.

As I was swishing the rocks around most of the corals were just disintegrating. When Kenya trees start dieing you know you have a major issue.

To top it all off, as I was doing this my son decided to throw my IPhone in one of the buckets of water. Needless to say it is a goner.

The crazy thing is, on top of all this my clowns decided to spawn. I didn't touch their rocks in hopes not to disturb them. I am not going to try to save the eggs but I didn't want to add any more stress on them.

As far as my parameters go, I have no idea where everything is. my SG is 1.025 that is all I know. Right now I don't even want to look at the tank so I won't be getting any more numbers until tomorrow.

I am not sure where I will go from here

Thanks for all the advice everyone.

 

[breutus]

I feel really bad for you especially since I have been in the same position... It just sucks so bad.

I want you to call me if there's anything at all I can do for you!!!

I'll Pm ya my number in case you don't have it anymore..

 

[Wile E Coyote]

This almost sound like the same thing that happened to my tank minus the cloudy water. Everything started dying, but the fish were great. I took the corals and everything that had any sign of life and put it in my 150. All of that survived. Every parameter was good. I have no idea what killed it. The anemones made it, but it took the tank a few weeks to recover. with 55 gallon water changes every three days from the good 150 tank. This made sure I had good established water with lots of bugs in it to help bring the tank around a little quicker. I also added a little Biozime every few days. It was not pretty and, like I said, it took three to four weeks for things to come around. It was almost two before I saw any improvement, but things stopped getting worse with the water changes.

 

[superfirefly]

Does anyone have any idea why my tank would still be cloudy? It is a cloudy white. I thought that was a bacterial bloom which I thought would have cleared by now.

 

[superfirefly]

Just wanted to give an update.

It took a little over 2 weeks for my water to finally clear. I think taking the rock out and scrubing all the decaying corals helped quite a bit. I wished I would have done that sooner.

I lost a lot of corals but to my amazement I still have a few zoanthids, a few Palys, my tube anemone, all four of my BTA's and a few polyps of blastos left (The blastos were the biggest surprise). So not a complete loss.

Algae has taken over but I am not at all surprised. My nitrates are through the roof with all the die off I had. I am doing frequent water changes still to get them down.

What has surprised me is in the last week or 2 I have lost 4 fish. A bicolor blenny jumped, my blue jaw trigger jumped, my Powder brown was dead when I got home and my hectors goby is missing. The fish all seemed to be doing fine until about 1-2 weeks ago then the ich set in. My clowns are not looking too good as well but I do expect them to recover. They have stopped spawning which should help with stress.

While the tank was at it's worst the clowns managed to lay one last batch of eggs which I tried to raise. I lost all but one. I am sure it was lack of rotifers that caused that. They ate them faster then I was producing them. The one that I have left is looking good and has two of his three stripes.

For some reason I am getting aiptasia all over the place now which I never had before. I am not sure where they came from. I picked up some peppermint shrimp to combat that issue.

Thanks for all the suggestions. Now the hard part begins. Resisting the temptation to purchase new corals/fish until the tank is ready.

 

[Angler02]

I just read this and I am sorry to hear. I am finding out what its like to start from scratch now as well, and I know exactly how you feel. My tank will sit for at least 2-3 months before I add anything.

 

[superfirefly]

Thanks Angler, I feel much worse for you though. First off yours was not an accident which is just a horrible thing. Secondly, from what I could tell you have a much nicer tank then I could dream of having.

I must admit, now that the trauma of the whole thing happening is over I am some what excited to get a second chance to fix some of my stupid mistakes that I made the first time.

This is an older picture but the last good one I have of the tank.

 

[Nanook]

Wow! Tank looked beautiful....sorry for your disaster. Hopefully things will be better going forward. I wish they made heaters that were more reliable. I have five 500w titanium heaters controlled with Medusa controllers, but they are one of the weakest links in my system.

 

[superfirefly]

Thanks Nook, how are the titaniums working for you. I bought the visatherm stealths so I didn't have to worry about breakage. I never though I would have to worry about them splitting open. I would assume you wouldn't have to worry about that with titanium.