Devastating Post

[D'sreef]

Sorry to hear about your loss. This will probably come across the wrong way, but If you needed to comp some of the money back, you could bleach the skeletons and put them up for sale. People buy those all the time on Etsy.

 

[Beefyreefy]

So sorry man! Been there as well. I had a similar event that unfolded just like this. The culprit was was a frayed power wire in the water. I would check every power wire running into the system. I’m not a chemist but my understanding is that as soon as an electrified copper wire touches the saltwater it can pump copper ions into the water column. I’m not saying this is what did it but it’s worth a check if you are restarting. I actually bought frags from you for my own rebuilding process. You’ve always been one of the best hobbyist sellers here! I guess you ge only good thing I can offer is that it’s fun to restart and go in a different direction!
Good luck man and I’m sending positive vibes your way!

Decided to add this, here’s my 20pounds of Montipora and chalice I lost in my crash!

 

[kynan]

Sorry to hear of your horrible misfortune. In this hobby for 25+ years I’ve been through it all. It’s weird that something always goes wrong when we are away from our tanks. Even though it’s a pain, it’s good to not have everything tied to one system. I’ve had a 400w outer element crack on a halide and cook half the tank in short order( 210g at the time and that didn’t toast the rest of the SPS), a 300g bottom seam failure that resulted in 99% losses and drove me from the hobby for 4 years, and a stray current / contamination issue that toasted most of a 25g frag tank. I forget if that was a pump or heater in the sump, but that had more of the effect you described. I’d check all your equipment and why not do an ICP test if you still have that water to check for heavy metals?

 

[CoralWealth]

Thanks everyone for the kind words. I still have the tanks running since I still have all te fish and anemones. But I will be changing out the massive growout in the basement for a smaller one in the next couple of weeks. I will get everything stable and probably start adding SPS again in mid October

 

[hatfielj]

Yikes man, so devastating! Sorry to hear. At least though you can look at it this way…you got back a lot of your initial investment by selling frags as much as you did. Though you lost a lot of potential future sales, at least the crash didn’t happen early on during the collecting phase.
I just dropped a boat load on a bunch of nice frags to fill up my newest tank. It would kill to lose them all now.

 

[blkcoral]

I am new to the hoppy but learned that vacations and other events beyond your control can crash your tank. I have three tanks and all experienced issues (nothing like yours) while on a short vacation. Took me several days to get them back in order. Some issues were my fault which made it feel worse. But you can always rebuild bigger and better!

 

[FrugalReeferJon]

I have a nano and even though it wasn’t a total crash I did lose a good amount of SPS after fighting dinos for months on end at the beginning of 2024. Took almost all of 2024 off from Reef2Reef because I was just so bummed out about the hobby. I can’t imagine what you must be going through after a lost like that. Best of luck to you moving forward.

 

[dvgyfresh]

Sorry to hear about your loss. This will probably come across the wrong way, but If you needed to comp some of the money back, you could bleach the skeletons and put them up for sale. People buy those all the time on Etsy.

Was thinking the same thing , I hope I’m not insensitive but I know I’d love to be able to scape a tank with dead corals / live rock. I’m an anemone guy so the coral skeletons would be my sps lol. One of those coral skeletons can sell for like 50$ if it’s nice and cleaned

 

[SeaDweller]

Absolutely terrible. Sorry for your losses. It’s easy to forget these are truly animals and it’s heartbreaking. I’ve been through a large crash and set back too. You just gotta get back on the saddle when you’re ready.

A large system wipe out like that makes me think it may be contamination or chemical related, but then again who’d really know?

 

[Ox100]

That really sucks man!!! If you have it in you bounce back better!!! Start slow and build but most importantly find out why that happened. Goodluck Reefer

 

[chasetexas]

So you really have no idea what caused it? That's tough. And for it to happen when you're out of town is the worst.

 

[CoralWealth]

Yeah I have 0 idea what caused it, all the parameters were normal when it RTNed.

I have made the decision that I will 100% be restarting and it starts tomorrow. I am buying a brand new 8x2x2 acrylic tank that will be my tank in the basement. Right now I have my growout that I made out of plywood with sealant, which does not like pretty.

I will be downsizing a little but still a very large tank so I am looking forward to it but not looking forward to the amount of money that it will cost me to restock my tank, I will be doing it slowly and try to find the best deals out there.

I most likely will go with a lot of maricultured tenuis and millis as I love bringing them into the hobby after I acclimated them in my tank, I had a ton before along with of course the other known corals. I will be sticking with high end SPS.

 

[AlyciaMarie]

Wow, I really hate to hear this... Traveling can be a double-edged sword for reefers...

 

[p1u5h13r4m24]

Hey brother.
I know you and many other seasoned reefers in the are have had recent crashes. I have some sps if you want to
Meet up when you get going again I’ll give you some free frags! I’m about an hour away from you!

 

[CoralWealth]

Hey brother.
I know you and many other seasoned reefers in the are have had recent crashes. I have some sps if you want to
Meet up when you get going again I’ll give you some free frags! I’m about an hour away from you!

I greatly appreciate this.

 

[SpSDrew]

So sorry to hear this. This is my nightmare every time I leave for a trip. I have never bought corals off you before but have always seen your thread of amazing pieces you have. Whenever you get back up and running I would be willing to send you a box of sticks free of charge.

 

[dadart2028]

Its so gutting to see every single sps died. So sorry for that expensive lost Money and time.

 

[CoralWealth]

So sorry to hear this. This is my nightmare every time I leave for a trip. I have never bought corals off you before but have always seen your thread of amazing pieces you have. Whenever you get back up and running I would be willing to send you a box of sticks free of charge.

I greatly appreciate that, I look forward to rebooting and having some corals to look at. Not a completely empty tank

 

[CBonito]

Man, there is like no consolation...I'm really sorry man. This happened to me a year ago.
It's a horrible feeling and no matter what you think happened you always feel like a dummy for it.
It's the worst part of the hobby.

Here's to new beginnings.

 

[vetteguy53081]

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.

Oh my goodness.... Just saw this now and i as i'm sure many on this site would be devastated to say the least. Often, many will ask, what could I have done and often there is nothing as it takes one big change to cause a chain reaction.
Very sorry to see and often circumstances such as this allows a rebuild and action plan