Tank Crash !?!?

[microshaft]

Came home and after mucking around in the garden for a while my wife said, "Oh, BTW, the fish tank looks funny." It looked great last night but something bad happened since then. All my xenia was toast so I took all of it out and nothing else looks very happy. Worst part is that I only have enough salt for about 35g - and not even petco is open this late.

I've done 20g change so far, about to do the other 15g. Running lots of charcoal.

Maybe someone can help rescue me tonight? It'd be a real shame to loose my fish overnight. I'm up in just North of River Rd on Old Redwood Hwy. Need salt and charcoal!

 

[sulcata1619]

I have plenty of charcoal but only about 5 cups of salt. Let me know if you want to come get the charcoal. I'll be up till about 10:30. Mike

 

[microshaft]

Mike came through with some charcoal and salt mix. Hopefully everything with survive the night until I can do another big water change after the stores open in the morning.

Thanks Mike!

 

[crispyreef]

This sounds terrible. What do you think caused the crash? How is the tank doing now?

 

[northbay-reefer]

my prediction is the heat. Xenia doesnt like temp spike and it has been hot the last 3 days

 

[microshaft]

To be honest, I have NO IDEA. I don't think it was heat, at least not due to the absolute temperature. Tank was 79 when I came home, SG was spot on at 1.025-26 and I haven't bothered with any other tests.

The tank is mostly soft corals with only a couple of SPS and LPS and they all look awful but we'll see if they bounce back or not. Keeping an eye on my anemone, last thing I need is something else big dieing in the tank. As far as my fish and inverts, only one cleaner shrimp unaccounted for but he just molted and may be in hiding.

The only other thing I did discovered was that one of my heaters in my sump was leaking current but I don't see how that could have caused the the die off.

Pretty dramatic in any case, just touching the xenia with tongs caused them to 'pop' and release a cloud of brown goo. Really nasty stuff. I honestly was expecting to wake up to everything being slimed over with the fish floating.

 

[jkreefer]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=9911487#post9911487 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by microshaft
To be honest, I have NO IDEA. I don't think it was heat, at least not due to the absolute temperature. Tank was 79 when I came home, SG was spot on at 1.025-26 and I haven't bothered with any other tests.


why would you not "bother" with any other tests?

 

[microshaft]

I didn't bother because after such a large die off I didn't think any tests that I have would be very useful or indicative of the water quality before it crashed.

But, I think I may have found the cause. I thought I'd found the leaky current last night but didn't pull out a tester until this afternoon. There was still lots of voltage between the tank water and ground. I pulled out the other heater and found that the urchin which I had banished to the fuge had eaten right through the cord and that a significant quantity of copper had dissolved in water! Yuck!

Clearly time to buy a grounding probe to trip the GFI in case anything like this happens again.

Another 30g water change tonight, fresh charcoal and a nitrate/phosphate sponge in my canister filter.