Why did your tank crash?

[fishypets]

I thought it would be helpful for fellow sps keepers to share their experiences with past tank crashes. This thread can be used as a guide for all of those fortunate reefers that have not had to deal with a tank crash before and hopefully prevent a few. I’m looking for what happened, why did it happen, when did it happen and what could have prevented it. Every reefers nightmare is coming home to the smell of dead sps. I’ll start by posting my experience.


Back in 2006 I found out I had the dreaded AEFW and decided the best method of treatment would be an 8 week quarantine in a separate tank dipping the corals in separate buckets once a week with Fluke tabs and also a TMPCC dip. Everything was going smooth until week five I decided to “speed” up the slow tedious process by doing a “group dip” in a 50 gallon vat I had in the garage. This is where I made my mistake. The vat was sitting on the cold kitchen tile floor in the middle of December and I didn’t check the temp of the water before adding the corals. The temp of the qt tank was around 78 but the dip vat was 72. Going from 78 to 72 back to 78 started a RTN reaction and over the next few days I lost every single acro colony and frag. I was sick to my stomach knowing I could’ve prevented it had I paid a little closer attention. Now I make sure temps are within a few degrees of each other when doing water changes.

Thanks for your participation, hopefully this thread will bring save a reef or two.

[mew]

Various crash reasons I've gone through before:
(Some were minor and I was able to recover from again, others totally wiped my tank)

1. Electricity outage while I was out of town for a week.
Solution: Vortech battery backup, UPC (though it won't really help if you're gone more than a day or few)

2. Stupidly plugged everything into a gfci... which then tripped and then never came back on.
Solution: Plug the pump into a non-GFCI plug

3. (JBJ) ATO stopped pumping water when I was out of town for a week. Huge salinity spike.
Solution: Go with the tunze osmolator. Quality ATO really matters.

Ones I've heard about but I haven't experience myself:
1. ATO dumping water in. Huge salinity drop.
SOlution: Again, go with a quality ATO: tunze osmolator. Also, having a small top-off reservoir helps.

[Logzor]

My tank semi-crashed once. The pump on my CSS 125 skimmer melted in the tank.

Since then I have only been buying quality equipment. In high risk areas (ATO) I buy the best I can afford. I have learned that never cheeping out and daily monitoring of equipment can prevent tank crashes.

On a daily basis I make sure my litermeter pumps and ATO system are working properly, check the overflow (to make sure it is draining properly), and various other things.

I live near a bunch of hospitals so the power is never out for more than 4 hours.

At some point I will get a controller that will e-mail and text my phone if there is an outage or other problems.

[E.intheC]

my tank crashed because I was an idiot and didn't leave enough space between the new lighting and left (mh and t5's on a solana) and it raised the temp to 86 degrees in about 2 hours.. that ended up killing/bleaching a good deal of corals and two fish. My next purchase was a Reef Keeper so I could connect lights/fans/heater to the temp controller.

[rtparty]

Added stuff WAY too fast and the bio load was too much for a new tank. Moral of the story...be patient!

[eep013]

My tank was averaging 79 degrees in the summer without heaters. I went on vacation in the fall, a cold front moved in and I came home to a tank that was 68 degrees! I only lost 4 or 5 colonies, but they were nice ones.

[flyyyguy]

took for granted the tanks would run themselves while on vacation, didnt educate the housewatcher well enough about what the most fundamental important items were on the tanks, and came home to two dead systems.

[aquaph8]

my heater turned on and never turned off. Came home and the tank was around 95. Luckily it was pretty empty except rocks and one pigmy angel ( the fish survived ). Moral of the story is that if you live in Tucson, you dont need a heater anyway.

[shaggy14]

1. used a hydrometer instead of a refractometer. every sps i would get died in a few days. salinity was reading 1.026 on the swing arm, but was really 1.034
solution- use a refractometer
2. my fan didnt kick on one day while i was at work. temp was maxed out (90F) on my temp strips. killed almost everything. the next day after doing a water change and leaving the lights off the temp was still at 86
solution- put fan on timer instead of having wifey turn it on
3. got a little too cocky with the stability of the tank. everything tested fine for a few months so i slacked off on my testing. added a bunch of new sps and went out of town for easter. came back to a tank that the alk had dropped to 5.4
solution- added a calcium reactor, test everything at least once a week, alk at least 2-3

i have also flooded the tank, flooded the sump, spiked the alk to almost 14(corals seemed to like that better than the 12 i keep it at), and a few other near-crashes.lol
Its all trial and error. when something messes up you figure out how to fix it and go from there till the next disaster

[old salty]

I added corals without putting them through the proper QT process. Four years of growth was decimated in about six months. Back to the beginning...


Nowadays, I only add corals from sources which properly QT their corals. Yes, this increases the price, but it's worth it to me.

[95accord]

because i was stooopid........

[fishypets]

So far it seems like there is a common dominator with crashes or near crashes which is temp issues. I feel a control is a must when keeping a reef-tank, wether it contolls your fans or chiller. It's also nice insurance to have a few fail-safes in place too. On my controller I have it set up were all the lights will cut off if the temp reaches 83 degrees. SPS like stability when it comes to calcium and carbonate hardness therefore it’s equally important to run either a calcium reactor, or another means of supplying calcium and hardness while you’re away.

****Important note if running a CA reactor—Never allow your CO2 to run out, I’ve seen nice sps tanks crash in a matter of days after the CO2 was exhausted*******

[cjilge]

I pretty much made every mistake possible! small 45gl hex tank, no sump. Seaclone skimmer. to much bio load about fish. w/ a tang and several small angels. I even had a lobster in there. I also was using normal fish tank lights t-12 I think. Never checked params other than ph, temp, nitrates. had lots of softies and zoas. The crash was actually caused by my father not following directions, however it was bound to happen with my lack of knowledge on reef keeping at the time. He fed Very heavily for a week while I was on vacation, no water change and he was going to surprise me with a "new fish" another pigmy angel, and the combo sent the tank into a spiral of devastation that I have yet to see again! lol Thank goodness! I cant blame the pops, for my bad set up, but I've been back in and glad to find both RC and my local club COMAS which has educated me to not make the same mistakes.

[skiformance]

i changed sumps. didn't re use the old sponge that was holding all the good bacteria. wiped out everything

[NeveroddoreveN]

I tripped. It broke. They died.

[kvosstra]

A note on Co2 - I have had the Co2 run out while on vacation - I came back and found the ALK dangerously low. A number of corals were pale and bleached out. Luckily, I still was adding Kalk to the tank, but it was not sufficient to meet the tank demands. I now check to see that the Co2 is sufficiently full before leaving for vacation - if its not, I replace it with a spare that I keep at the house.

[stevedola]

I was stupid and changed to many things at once.

[fishypets]

took for granted the tanks would run themselves while on vacation, didnt educate the housewatcher well enough about what the most fundamental important items were on the tanks, and came home to two dead systems.


That sucks! What happened?

[fernandokng]

My imagination took me to a lot of places with those three short sentences. brilliant. :fun4:
I tripped. It broke. They died.

[aquariumclown]

I was out of town almost every weekend and could not do my usual water changes anymore. It was not measured but the NO3 and PO4 were probably high. My sps corals slowly withered away over 3-4 months.

[Haksar]

One of my freind suggested making artifical Co2 out of Sugar and yeast and instead of doing in parts dosed the entire 1.5 litre bottle.Tank crashed with all my fishes and lot of my corals dieing due to excess Co2.Moral of the story BE PATIENT.

[E.intheC]

I tripped. It broke. They died.

Uhm.. details here?

[Hookup]

Took my balling method off-line... brain-farted, never tested, 5 weeks later, ALK at 5.0 was not good... ;)

[Hookup]

I tripped. It broke. They died.

I've fraged like that before... ;)

[coolfishy101]

Melted powerhead. (cap 400-don't buy!) Definately use quality equipment.

[Merfin70]

Ca dosing pump (held up with velcro inside the stand) fell off and hose kinked. Only Alk dosed for many weeks (apparently). Came home from 3 day business trip to some very white SPS. Many dead (smelly) snails as well. Alk of 18 + SPS = Death. Still recovering, remarkably my LPS lived.

Cure = Don't get lazy next time, screw the pump to the stand.

[Moebuis]

I moved my tank to my basement while working on an upgrade system a few winters ago. Since it wasn't a finished basement, I only checked on it every few days for feedings. Not sure when it happened, but by the time I figured out that the wife's cat had pulled the heater plug out of the wall, the temperature in the tank was 56 F. Lost most of my corals but all fish pulled through fine.

[flyyyguy]

That sucks! What happened?

vacation during a hot spell.....housewatcher turned off the AC to the house, and my chillers couldnt handle ambient room temps of 110+ degrees for 24-48 hours.

lost everything in a 90 but a tomini tang who survived 100 degrees believe it or not. Still have him but he has only grown 1/2" since then and its been several years. Cooked his growing hormones or something. lol And lost most everything in my 225 that was 94 when I got home. A couple fish survived and most polyps. It was a sps dominated tank. My avatar signature I have kept since the incident. I had more than a few skeletons to show for it.

I actually just searched for my thread O death and couldnt find it.

edit- you made me want to find the thread and for some reason it is gone. i even browsed all of the threads I have ever posted. weird. anyway.....I did dig up a couple of warm fuzzy pics I hadnt looked at in a while. both tanks were fairly young, but just starting to be something. It wasnt all bad, I did once and for all erradicate my monti eating nudis. :D

here is the 225.
http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h181/flyyyguy/frags/deathall.jpg

and the 90.

http://i64.photobucket.com/albums/h181/flyyyguy/frags/deathhh.jpg[/url] :)

[mew]

): Wow, what a sad picture.

[Cereal Killa]

:fun2::blown:I WOULD HAVE KILLED HIM!!!:fun2::blown:

[64Ivy]

I lost mine due to sunburn; a massive increase in PAR that I didn't take into account when I changed my lighting scheme. I thought I'd made allowances for it by ramping the new lights up very slowly but apparently not slowly enough. A few of the uppermost acros went first and when the necrotic tissue was carried throughout the tank, that was pretty much all she wrote. Two weeks later, 500g and 10 years worth of work was reduced to 5 'LPS' corals you could hold in two hands.

[NeveroddoreveN]

Uhm.. details here?

My uncle gave my a 25 gallon acrylic SPS reef. I tripped and hit the corner and it started gushing. I frantically put everything into a bin, but most of it didn't make it. So I upgraded to a 55. :)

[cnaegler]

I decided to start dripping kalk to my finely established 55 SPS tank about 3 years ago. I made the mistake of placing the 5 gallon bucket that held the RO/DI water up above the sump. One day, my dosing pump decided to pop it's cover and spit out it's santoprene hose and 5 gallons of RO water drained through my kalk reactor into the sump. I woke up the next morning to a pure white tank and a PH of 9.8. Needless to say, pretty much everything died. Except for a clam and a pagoda cup. It was the first time my kids saw me cry.

[preef]

Wow. This thread is really depressing. I need to go find some Prozac.

[Hookup]

Wow. This thread is really depressing. I need to go find some Prozac.

There are some basic lessons learned available here that will avoid most of the issues... Not saying you shouldn't hookup the prozac also...

1) test weekly
2) dip corals to avoid many issues

those'd be about top 1 and 2 on the list for me.. ;)

[madkeenreefer]

It was the first time my kids saw me cry.

You've gotta love reefkeeping when you hear stories like this.....sorry to hear