After the storm: What's next for your reef?
- QUESTION OF THE DAY
- Thread starter Peace River
- Start date
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Where you are close to the ocean with mandatory evacuation and can't back for a minimum of 3 days plus 18' tall waves 150 mph winds roofs flying trees down etc
Probably needs more than a equipment to a reef tank to survive ...
Different scenarios but same reefer persons. Quit the hobby no an option
Probably needs more than a equipment to a reef tank to survive ...
Different scenarios but same reefer persons. Quit the hobby no an option
Last edited:
Ive been very lucky and have never had to deal with being cut off for days at at time. I feel for those who had or have to deal with this
Charles Zinn
Active Member
Will of God. Heard of one tank that had been flooded by surge and everything had survived.Where you are close to the ocean with mandatory evacuation and can't back for a minimum of 3 days plus 18' tall waves 150 mph winds roofs flying trees down etc
Probably needs more than a equipment to a reef tank to survive ...
Different scenarios but same reefer persons. Quit the hobby no an option
Charles Zinn
Active Member
O e step at a time. Clean tank if needed. Start with water and flow
Charles Zinn
Active Member
Depends on si?e of generator and what you are powering
My tank is at my office for a number of reasons, one of which is that it rarely loses power. And even when it does, it's minutes not hours or days.
Not this time unfortunately. The tank went down for 18 hours during Ian. I knew it was out because I lost Apex connectivity, but it was too dangerous to drive during the storm or afterwards to try and do something about it.
The next morning was heartbreaking. I lost a ton of fish and more than half of my coral (it's all SPS).
I did 7 ten percent water changes over 7 days. Obviously removed any dead inverts, fish, and corals... Put in fresh carbon, lightened the feeding, etc.
Alk and Ca consumption went to zero, then it skyrocketed to higher than normal levels, and it's finally settled on about 25% less than it was before the storm. Which makes sense with significantly less corals.
I found it odd that some fish and inverts survived and some didn't. Especially in the cases where there were duplicates of the same thing. I was really surprised that the largest fish in the tank was just fine. Annoyed, but fine.
I ended up putting my Trident into overdrive and testing every 2 hours to get my Alk and Ca back in line, and as mentioned above, it seems to have stabilized so I'm going to back that off.
Checked my phosphate and nitrates yesterday, surprisingly good. .08 and 5. Not ideal, but not bad either. It was .05 and 10 before the storm which everything in my tank was quite pleased with.
I already had an appointment last week for an estimate to put a propane powered "whole house" generator that will give me 7 days of run time. I'm 100% going to put that in. We have one at home (it's natural gas though) and we lost power for 7 days this time. The generator was invaluable and we basically had a pretty normal home life while we were waiting for the grid to get restored. They're expensive but totally worth it. A simple portable gasoline powered generator would cheaper and simpler, but after these storms, it's almost impossible to get fuel and the little portable generators need to be fed constantly. So unless you've stockpiled a 55 gallon drum of stabilized gasoline somewhere, it just doesn't work for scenarios where you're out for days or weeks.
This sucked. Aside from the finances and time... As caretakers for these things, it feels awful to lose them in such a cruel way.
Not this time unfortunately. The tank went down for 18 hours during Ian. I knew it was out because I lost Apex connectivity, but it was too dangerous to drive during the storm or afterwards to try and do something about it.
The next morning was heartbreaking. I lost a ton of fish and more than half of my coral (it's all SPS).
I did 7 ten percent water changes over 7 days. Obviously removed any dead inverts, fish, and corals... Put in fresh carbon, lightened the feeding, etc.
Alk and Ca consumption went to zero, then it skyrocketed to higher than normal levels, and it's finally settled on about 25% less than it was before the storm. Which makes sense with significantly less corals.
I found it odd that some fish and inverts survived and some didn't. Especially in the cases where there were duplicates of the same thing. I was really surprised that the largest fish in the tank was just fine. Annoyed, but fine.
I ended up putting my Trident into overdrive and testing every 2 hours to get my Alk and Ca back in line, and as mentioned above, it seems to have stabilized so I'm going to back that off.
Checked my phosphate and nitrates yesterday, surprisingly good. .08 and 5. Not ideal, but not bad either. It was .05 and 10 before the storm which everything in my tank was quite pleased with.
I already had an appointment last week for an estimate to put a propane powered "whole house" generator that will give me 7 days of run time. I'm 100% going to put that in. We have one at home (it's natural gas though) and we lost power for 7 days this time. The generator was invaluable and we basically had a pretty normal home life while we were waiting for the grid to get restored. They're expensive but totally worth it. A simple portable gasoline powered generator would cheaper and simpler, but after these storms, it's almost impossible to get fuel and the little portable generators need to be fed constantly. So unless you've stockpiled a 55 gallon drum of stabilized gasoline somewhere, it just doesn't work for scenarios where you're out for days or weeks.
This sucked. Aside from the finances and time... As caretakers for these things, it feels awful to lose them in such a cruel way.
akau
Community Member
For me, storms are great because I can go for a snorkel as soon as the waves die down and look for some nice coral frags and sometimes even whole colonies that have been broken off by the heavy storm waves.
I've got some beautiful acros immediately following storms.
I've got some beautiful acros immediately following storms.
CMMorgan
Counting my blessings...
Checking in from Punta Gorda FL... Charlotte County. Just got power back night before last. I can only get internet for brief windows at weird hours otherwise it's just enough to read a headline or email title but not open it. Cell service is still hit and miss. We can text.
Recover is slow, Walmart has no frozen and scant fresh food. Publix is charging $6.50 for a box of eggs. The house across the street was just condemned.
At this point, I'm having a version of survivors guilt I was scrambling to keep bubblers going on D batteries and my neighbor was getting ripped off by a carpet bagger. It's surreal.
I haven't even begun to assess the tank health fully..The wifi is down and my power strips are all off line, so any programming or controls are shot to heck. One of four Kessil ,360x is operating.
My only obvious casualty after a weeksl ong battle to prevent a crash looks to be my favorite, very old bubble coral. I do not think it will survive. One toadstool is damages.
Everything else is hanging on... Clinging to the 1/3 of the tank with a light.
As we finish removing the downed trees, picking up shingles and what's left of the neighborhood... I'll do a deeper dive to find the new normal for the tanks. Until then, the paja cardinals will continue lurking alone on the dark side of the tank. (Sitting in judgement, I'm sure of how many meals we ate from a can in the last week... They must have had friends that were Tuna.)
UNtil my next window of internet...
everyone be well.
Recover is slow, Walmart has no frozen and scant fresh food. Publix is charging $6.50 for a box of eggs. The house across the street was just condemned.
At this point, I'm having a version of survivors guilt I was scrambling to keep bubblers going on D batteries and my neighbor was getting ripped off by a carpet bagger. It's surreal.
I haven't even begun to assess the tank health fully..The wifi is down and my power strips are all off line, so any programming or controls are shot to heck. One of four Kessil ,360x is operating.
My only obvious casualty after a weeksl ong battle to prevent a crash looks to be my favorite, very old bubble coral. I do not think it will survive. One toadstool is damages.
Everything else is hanging on... Clinging to the 1/3 of the tank with a light.
As we finish removing the downed trees, picking up shingles and what's left of the neighborhood... I'll do a deeper dive to find the new normal for the tanks. Until then, the paja cardinals will continue lurking alone on the dark side of the tank. (Sitting in judgement, I'm sure of how many meals we ate from a can in the last week... They must have had friends that were Tuna.)
UNtil my next window of internet...
everyone be well.
I think you're the one and only person in this thread that enjoys a big storm. You better find some wood to knock on immediately! LoL
All kidding aside, jealous you live somewhere where you can collect locally. While I'm in SW FL, there really is not much to speak of where we live that would be interesting enough to add to my tank.
Ugggh, that sucks.
Have you considered checking in with any of the LFS in our area (Sarasota)? The power is back online for all us finally and I bet someone would be willing to warehouse what you have until things get sorted.
Coral Connection and Frag Freak both have nice shop owners. I'm fairly certain Frag Freak has some QT systems they could probably store you're stuff for a while. Its worth asking anyway. The owner is Nate and the Manager is Josh.
I'm finally starting to see a ray of hope for my tank and I think (knock on wood), it's taking a turn for the better. It started to look a little better yesterday with some small signs of growth and color. Alk demand even when up a bit over the past couple of days. Towards the end of last week, I was just excited when things stopped dying and established colonies that were RTN'ing from the base, stopped and stabilized where they're at. Still looks like hell with bleached sections, but better than losing the whole thing.
After 7 days of daily 10% water changes, I developed a small bacterial bloom which made the water a bit cloudy. I'm sure I knocked things out of balance a bit. So I've stopped doing water changes and will resume my weekly 10% this Friday. It's getting a little clearer day by day, but the fish and corals don't seem to care either way.
Since I wasn't seeing any ammonia, I also added some fish back in this weekend to get my bio load back up. I lost three very large fish and a number of small ones. Prior to this, I had a very precise feeding schedule and with my refugium running an opposite schedule and the skimmer specifically set, I could replicate .05 PO4 and 10 Nitrates with relative ease and consistency. I'm trying to get that balance back as I prefer to maintain nutrients through fish load/feeding vs dosing them. Besides, who doesn't enjoy a busy reef with fish and inverts running all over the place doing reef stuff?
Hopefully those of us that got smacked with losses can start trading a bit to restock the corals when things get back to normal. I've got a green slimer that seems bulletproof I can frag some pieces off. I swear that thing has been growing through this entire event. We should start planting those around the world where reefs are struggling as they seem to be incredibly resilient and fast growers.
akau
Community Member
haha yeah! we got smashed by big swells during the last king tide. I found an acro plate the size of a dinner plate that had snapped the rock at the base and only had a couple of fingers missing.
I put it in my tank and woke up the next morning to find the tank very very milky with all the other corals covered in bubbles and mucus.
two 35% water changes in 2 days cleared it up a bit but by day 4 water was super clear again. the skimmer pulled out a bit but I don't run any mechanical filtration so just relied on all the live rock in the DT and s sump full of live rock to clear it up.
Had zero loss of coral or fish. The plate has started to change colour in response to the LED lighting after only knowing sun. Seems happy though and started encrusting where it is resting on other rock.
No issues with pests and wild corals? I would think your tank would be loaded with flatworms and red bugs. That being said, even if pests are a problem, I'm still jealous you can go for walk and collect nice SPS for your tank.
akau
Community Member
Haven't had any issues so far. The number of organisms I find that hitched in is great. Much more exciting and natural than clean live rock with glued on frags.
I have a small moray that got in I'll need to pull out at some stage but at the moment he's ok.
Haven't had any issues so far. The number of organisms I find that hitched in is great. Much more exciting and natural than clean live rock with glued on frags.
I have a small moray that got in I'll need to pull out at some stage but at the moment he's ok.
Wow, great looking reef you have going on there! Looks very natural. I've done a lot of diving in a lot of cool spots and it rarely looks like our tanks.
This was many years ago, but I had a friend who had a live rock farm in the FL Keys until one of the hurricanes basically wiped it out. Prior to that, I would always get first dibs on fresh hauls and ended up with some amazing rock that was teeming with life.
You had to be careful though and really pay attention. I was at his warehouse getting ready to close my cooler full of fresh rock up, when I saw something dart between rocks. Turned out it was an octopus which I quickly removed and gave back to him. I'm sure I probably introduced other various pests as well, but it never seemed to be an issue. I lived on the coast and was only using NSW for my water changes at that time. It was amazing watching everything open up after changing out 15-20 gallons of fresh natural sea water. I'm guessing you're probably doing the same living where you live. I'm still in FL and still on the coast in a different area, but no longer have a boat and I don't trust the water quality along the shore line so I'm relegated to making my own.
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