My tank crashed today, Help

[ReefGeeker]

Sorry to hear this, I hope you have stopped the die-off. I know that this must be painful but do you have a picture of the aftermath? If you have anything worth saving maybe you could frag some of it out and get it back when ur tank stabilizes (if it hasn't already)?

 

[Husker12181]

I FOUND THE CUKE! It’s still alive and fatter than ever!

As of this morning nothing more has died off so now I hope to nurse back to health what is left. And I will now be starting a strict testing regimen.

The first picture is kinda crappy but that is what it looked like a week ago.

And the second one snapped yesterday, it’s a picture of a frag rack with a few frags that I had made over the last few months. The rest of the tank looks about like this. But the coral is larger including two 9in round montiporas.

The white pieces used to be blue with green tips. The 2 light pink pieces used to be a real dark red color, the frag on the rock was a piece of bright green Elkhorn, there was a superman monti, and a couple of other pieces as you can see. On the left there is a part of green frogspawn, at the moment I think it will survive. All the xenia in my tank looked like it literally melted like tar on a hot day.

 

[ReefGeeker]

I had something similar happen due to a heater malfunction looked similar anyways. Sorry!

 

[vlangel]

So sorry for what you are going through. I would leave even the bleach out corals in the tank awhile and see if perhaps they come back. Sometimes there is living tissue that we can't see and they do come back. I have a pink hammer that a Navarchus just decimated but several of the heads that looked totally dead are reviving now that the Navarchus is gone. I know SPS are a bit more fragile though. Still doesn't hurt to wait.

 

[Holygral]

I beg to differ. he has sps and over 100g of water. dosing at least daily is more in order.

I have a 125 with plenty of sps also and have never dosed anything, this tank is 4 years old, only going by my own experiences.

 

[Holygral]

With PH issues, when ever it is possible get some fresh air into your house, this will always help.

Threats to Coral Reefs | Coral Reef Alliance

 

[kpiotrowski]

I have a 125 with plenty of sps also and have never dosed anything, this tank is 4 years old, only going by my own experiences.

thats awesome. would you share your success with us about how you do it! how much water do you change and how often. what salt mix and what are the leves of calcium and alk in it. what dkh of alk do you average and ca levels average. any pic of growth?

I'm with you on the fresh air thing and actullay run some outside air to my skimmer. but O2 and Co2 and their affect on ph is another side of the story as compared to alk and holding a stable ph...no matter what ph it is.

 

[Holygral]

I can give you the basic right now, its a 125 with about a 35 gallon sump. I do a 30 gallon water change every 7-10 days. I have always used Instant Ocean. My PH runs between 7.8 - 8 in the winter and 8-8.3 in the summer. I always have a Pinpoint PH monitor hooked up all the time. Water top offs are all automated at 1.025-26. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME PEOPLE, lol but outside of ph, temp and sg, I really only test every other other month or so.

 

[dnjan]

Water top offs are all automated at 1.025-26.

could you elaborate on this a bit? I don't follow.

thanks!

 

[Holygral]

My top offs are automatic which keeps Sg at 1.025-1.026

 

[dnjan]

OK. Thanks. At first I read that you were doing automatic top-off with 1.026-026 water, which made no sense.

Do you topoff just with RO-DI?

 

[Holygral]

Do you topoff just with RO-DI?[/QUOTE]

Oh yea

 

[Herefishyfishy]

The biggest smoking gun is the smoking pump (sputtering)
I have found the largest cause of tank crashes other than by unneeded dosing, is faulty equipment. Not simply from stray voltage, but more from all the toxins including metals that get dumped into the water. The sps goes first.
WATER CHANGE WATER CHANGE WATER CHANGE WATER CHANGE and CARBON.
Leave the dosing alone. If pH is an issue, look to tank mainanence first

 

[kpiotrowski]

ok, so I would assume that most us use ATO and yes we shoot for 1.026 sg, but undestanding what makes up that sg is another story. without proper calcium, magnesiium and alk levels, if you shoot for an sg of 1.026 all it is is extra salt when it should be a total meaurment of yes sodium cl, but more importantly....and the reason when shoot for 1.026 in the first place is those calcium, mg,alk levels. I am willing to bet your calcium and alk are vey low in relation to sodium. and if you are to raise those levels understand that your sg will go up accordingly. just saying, as you said you don't test I am stating an educted guess.

 

[Holygral]

Didnt say I dont test, I only test every other month or so. The last time I tested my Cal 410 and my Alk was 3.77 and 1290 on the mag. When I first set it up I tested weekly due to high alk. but as It got corrected I started to test less often. I monitor PH and if that gets out of whack, then I test. If I test and there is an imbalance then I will test more often as needed. It works for me and my set up, your milage may very . My whole point was too many people dose when it is not necessary, then they over dose and then dose something else to correct the over dose and it flows down hill after that, and when you dose and there is a problem, it is harder to figure what went wrong............. Dont want to hijack this thread

 

[Husker12181]

For anyone who is still wondering what happened and hopefully to help some other reefkeepers out there I am 90% sure of what happened. I had a marineland MJ1200 that was sputtering in my tank I pulled it out cleaned it and then decided to test it to see if it was in fact the problem. I put it in a bucket of water and plugged it in. Nothing happened, I then wiggled the power wire at the top of the pump and then proceeded to get SHOCKED! So now that pump is in my trash can I can deduce that it was probably stray voltage from the MARINELAND MJ1200 that caused my crash.

In the past I had a grounding wire in my tank and when I moved a year ago I seem to have misplaced it. I am now regretting not replacing it.

Hope this helps anyone else out there, LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE!!

 

[Bosco83]

Sorry to hear about your tank we have been through that with my wife's old tank and it's really upsetting. I hope everything goes better for you now that you figured out the problem.

Brian

 

[vlangel]

So are any of your corals coming back? None of your fish were impacted, right? Equipment malfunctions are a bummer, they can be so random and without warning.

 

[Herefishyfishy]

Exposed shorting wires also dump copper into the tank. Might want to run some copper absorbing resins besides massive water changes.

For anyone who is still wondering what happened and hopefully to help some other reefkeepers out there I am 90% sure of what happened. I had a marineland MJ1200 that was sputtering in my tank I pulled it out cleaned it and then decided to test it to see if it was in fact the problem. I put it in a bucket of water and plugged it in. Nothing happened, I then wiggled the power wire at the top of the pump and then proceeded to get SHOCKED! So now that pump is in my trash can I can deduce that it was probably stray voltage from the MARINELAND MJ1200 that caused my crash.

In the past I had a grounding wire in my tank and when I moved a year ago I seem to have misplaced it. I am now regretting not replacing it.

Hope this helps anyone else out there, LEARN FROM MY MISTAKE!!

 

[Husker12181]

I didn't think about the copper factor I will look into that. I did change about 50gals in total over 2 days. I just couldn't believe a jet that I had for only 2 months could have failed like that.

The fish are fine and my corals are opening up again.