Tank crash........

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phishcrazee

Member
Came home to a tank of dead fish, what an awful way to end Thanksgiving :( Not sure what exactly happened, but the circuit was tripped to the fish room. I think most of the corals will pull through and I see there are some industructible bristle worms foraging about, even though the ammonia was 3+ppm.......... I'm so sad my fish are gone though. If you saw my beautiful tang who was 5"+ you'd know how hard it was to see him and all the others dead :( I'm thinking about getting out, we'll see, but this is such a depressing thing to have to deal with. I'm was making saltwater in the wee hours of the morning last night and trying to get the ammonia levels down so I can put what's left back. I see the heaters are not working, so I'm using the halides to try and get the water temps back......... I hardly know what to do/where to go from here!? Any suggestions or encourage ment would be welcome right now or they may soon be another tank tear down :(
 
Sorry to here about your loss. One thing I do is keep at least one pump on a different circut incase one trips.

Looks like you know what needs to be done to get back to where you were.
 
Wow, I am really sorry to hear about your crash. I would run some carbon if you arent allready. I am guessing maybe a heater broke & shocked all fish? I know it is very discouraging but hang in there.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11250635#post11250635 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by xroads
Wow, I am really sorry to hear about your crash. I would run some carbon if you arent allready. I am guessing maybe a heater broke & shocked all fish? I know it is very discouraging but hang in there.
Click to expand...

Thanks, I will do that.... I'm so tired and not maybe thinking so clearly. We drove all the way from Michigan last night with a 5 month old and then came home to the tank disaster............:sad2:
 
Fawn, sorry to hear about what happened. If you can, I would make up new saltwater and keep anything that might survive in another tank or container. I think brand new water is better than what is currently in your tank.
 
Sorry to hear about the tank crash! :( We all know how devistated we would be to come home to that.

Keep doing some big water changes to try and dilute all the bad stuff out!

One way to get your water up to temp is to fill some 1 gal. zip lock bags full of hot water out of the tap and just float them in the tank and sump. That's what I was doing during the ice storm last year to keep the temps up. It actually works quite well. Keep the pumps going to cycle the warm water around.

Good luck!
 
It's happened to all of us. Brad used it as an excuse to upgrade tanksize. I just left my tank running and ignored it for 6 months. Deal with the loss in the way you need to and make sure you come back!

Marcus
 
I feel your pain Fawn. When my tank crashed, most of my fish lived but nearly all my corals died. I decided to upgrade because the corals being ripped off the rocks was no longer a concern, as it would have been if they were alive. I probably would have stuck with the same tank if my corals had lived and the fish had died. I took the opportunity to think through all of the weak points of my system and try to eliminate as many of them as I could. No system is fail safe, and there is always the chance for catastrophic loss. In the end we just try to do the best we can for our ecosystem with the knowledge and resources we have available.

I hope that you stick with it and bounce back better than ever.



Brad
 
I have some hope now that I have the ammonia levels down somewhat........ I'm surprised what has pulled through. So far, my 3 clams are still alive, go figure. maybe the stress will cause them to die too, but as of right now, they are about half open and responsive. The zoos, palys, softies/leathers, shrooms, ricordia, seem to be hanging in there. The LPS, not so hot looking :( I'm pretty sure my beautiful brain is a goner, but I'll keep the skeleton in there, just in case. My orange cap and pink mystery sps are sliming quite a bit, but I have hope that they may pull through, eventually. I guess it is a good opportunity to rearrange and take stock of my system like Brad said, although I get teary just thinking about all my beautiful fish dead. That horrible scene of all the fish dead in various spots throughout the tank will always be burned into my brain I think..........we buried the fish in the back yard by our apple tree; maybe some apples will grow because of them :)
 
Sorry to hear, You had a lot of very mature and healthy fish. I wonder if it was lack of oxygen that did them in.

Hope you stick with it!
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=11252402#post11252402 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by leeweber85
Sorry to hear, You had a lot of very mature and healthy fish. I wonder if it was lack of oxygen that did them in.

Hope you stick with it!
Click to expand...

Yes, we're thinking that was it and then the dead fish jacked up the ammonia level, along with all the other dying life. The fish looked all remarkably good for being dead though...........just found the mandarin, poor little guy still so beautiful :(
 
I am so sad to hear that you lost your livestock.

Start running some carbon and do the water changes.

It sure is a bummer. Been there several years ago. I lost many corals due to heat. DH thought he would save on electricity and turned the air conditioning off when we were gone the 4th of July weekend.

Hang in there.
 
I have lost fish due to return failure before also. The problem is that all algae uses oxygen at night when they are not performing photosynthesis. The pump being off stops most surface turbulance and decreases diffused oxygen in the tank water. So, you are left with lower oxygen content in the water and tons of items fighting for air from fish all the way down to bacteria. The only way to safeguard against this is with a battery backup hooked to a airpump with an airstone placed in the MAIN TANK. The sump will not help. Battery backups, like those used for computers, are set to turn on as soon as power goes off. Unfortunatly they too only last so long. GFI outlets are a life saver for us, but can be found as the culprit many times in situations like this so another safe guard would be to run a powerhead off a second circuit that is aimed at the water surface for aggitation. Sorry for the rambling, I hope that helps and I am very sorry for your loss. If you need any orange cap, let me know. I will also throw in a few of anything else I have to help get you restarted.
 
Thanks for all the kind words :)

Atticus- No, you're not rambling, I need to do something to better safegaurd my tank, so you've given me some ideas. There is a teensy tiny spot of my orange cap that is still orange, so it'll be interesting to see if it comes back, although I'm sure it'll be slow if it does. I may take you up on your offer :)

The clams did end up dying too, unfortunately :( Some of the stuff like the green palys are open and acting like nothing ever happened, amazing creatures! I have a handful of snails that are still cruising the glass, also amazing.
 
Fawn,

Sorry to hear about your tank crash.

If your sure that all the dead stuff is out of the tank, you may want to try the following along with water changes.

Have to tryed reseeding the bacterial population using products like Cycle, StressZyme, etc.. The re-addition of these bacteria may help lower the ammonia and nitrite faster.

You could use Kordon's AmQuel Plus, it helps lower Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrates (but I'm not sure how it will effect the accuracy of some test kits).

How about the use of Chemi-Pure?

Best of luck on your tank recovery.

Jeff
 
After massive water changes the best thing you can do is just let it finish the new cycle it is on. This will re-establish the bacteria balance on its own. Chemicals will only mask or slow the cycle that needs to happen to balance the tank. If you are worried about anything not making it through the stress, just move them to a bare tank with fresh saltwater, heater, and carbon filter.
 
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