So this post is really hard to write but I need to update everyone.
I just got back last night from a 3 week vacation in Europe. While I was away, my brother was staying at my house and watching the tank and my dogs. He always has done this over the past 8 years and maybe we have one or two dead corals, nothing crazy ever happened. He knows how to do water changes, etc. Unfortunately around 1 week in out of nowhere, some of my corals started to RTN so we did some things to try to stop that, really only water changes and dose some cipro at lights out as I have done that plenty of times before. It seemed to have stopped it, but 3 days later he sent me a video saying the tank was cloudy.
The tank was so cloudy you could barely see in but I saw enough to see the tissue just flying off of my corals. Long story short, I lost every single coral I had overnight. In 24 hours, I lost every frag and colony. I had over 50 massive colonies and 100s of frags, literally probably close to $100k-$150,000 in corals.
The weird thing is the fish were not impacted at all, never were breathing hard or anything. The anemones also were not hurt at all, it was just all my SPS corals. This may be one of the worst RTN events ever, I could not find one worse when looking online.
I am beyond devasting mostly emotionally as I spent SOOO much time and passion into this hobby but honestly financially too, I invested a lot in my tank and now to lose it all is beyond hard.
I am really just writing this because I have a ton of people message me about buying my frags, I post a lot of WYSIWYG and also because I wanted to tell everyone to enjoy their tank while everything is going good.
Here is a pile of all the dead corals I could get out so far, there is still a good amount in my DT and also my growout.
Here is a video of frags I was selling just a month ago.
Here is my main cut order thread when I sell corals, I have lost every single one of these colonies.
Pennsylvania - Live Goods - SPS Cut to Order - Lost everything 9/5/2025
Update as of 11/30 New build :) Again thanks everyone for the kind words, the tanks have been running for 2 months and I made a new post going over it and plan to document a lot more going forward :) https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/coralwealths-rebuild-sps-dominated.1139003/ I have...www.reef2reef.com
Here are some videos of my tank now, completely dead DT and my growout is now completely empty.
I was really debating if I just completely get out of the hobby or what I do next. I think I made up my mind that I am going to restart, I am going to keep my 180g display but get rid of my 600g growout and go much smaller with the growout, thinking a fiberglass tank that is around 8x2x1.
I will not be on R2R much over the next couple of weeks as honestly it really hurts me to look at nice SPS when I just lost everything and don't want to get anymore sad. I will probably be reaching out to some of the people who bought frags from me in the past to get started again, but that will not be till mid October most likely.
Yes, big losses happen. In my case, they are smaller, but more regular, because I'm still new to this. It would be a much easier hobby if people helped each other in a more specific way, providing comprehensive information about the steps that need to be taken, without omitting important details. There is also a huge amount of misinformation. In my case, I learned the hard way what a huge mistake it was to replace the water when fighting with Dino.Those water changes just enraged the Dino. Things have been getting much better ever since I stopped the water changes, stocked the tank (which increased the nutrients), and started siphoning out the algae.
Thanks a lot man and sorry to hear about your hard times in the past, glad you moved past them too. I will definitely reach out when I am ready to start adding frags, thank you.
I really do appreciate that. The people in this hobby truly are amazing.
No idea what caused it besides that it was a RTN event that went insane in 36 hours, than it must’ve caused a huge bacteria bloom that made the tank so cloudy and the PH dropped from a low of 8 to a low of 7.4. Everything happened so fast and with the major time difference of me in Europe to my brother here, we tried everything we could but it just went so fast.
, I'm so sorry you're going through this. I'm rooting for you to get back on your feet.
