Disaster.....

[biecacka]

Well it has happened to me.....after years and years of having an anemone and getting lucky with the splits just staying all next to one another and easy to trade or sell to my LFS the worst hung happened. Last month I leave town for a weekend with everything looking good. Come home and the tank is cloudy white like it had milk in it....heart drops and a try to peer into the tank and can’t see at all. Do a 50 gallon water change immediately and another the next day, tank is clearer and I see the damage.....6 fish dead, 2 anemones melted to who knows what and every single coral dead. Even those annoying polyps I’ve wanted to get rid of for the last 4 years. Softy, lps, and sps, all dead and some coraline on the rocks. Coralline on the pane of the tank is still going strong, fish that survived are fine and now parameters are back in line.
I didn’t check parameters when I got home, I just went to panic mode and did water changes so I’m not sure what the culprit could have been or if it was anything other than the anemones just died. But if that’s the case, I would imagine they needed a reason to die. It is sad, my clownfish hang out by the rock like they don’t know what happened to Their home.
I guess, if there is one positive in this, it got rid of some softy’s and polyps that I wanted to get rid of but had no way without taking the tank apart to get to The rock. Real bummer honestly.
I will run the tank as it is for a few months and slowly add a few sps pieces back into the system.

corey

 

[Gablami]

Man that is heartbreaking. I can’t even imagine. And happening while away for the weekend? Horrible luck.

At least you’re able to look to the positives at a time like this and you’re not quitting. It’s a good time to take it easy and cruise. Maybe go fish only for awhile until you’ve got the itch again and the sting of today wears off...

 

[ZoWhat]

My heart goes out to you....

Did you have an Apex monitoring the during your absence?

Temp could have got super hot or super cold (power outage)

Your tipoff could have flooded the system drastically driving down salinity
.

 

[biecacka]

I do have an apex and nothing was out of whack per it and my top off appeared to be working fine when I left and got home. But that doesn’t mean 100% that the salinity couldn’t have gotten out of whack. It definitely could have and since I didn’t check at first I can’t say “yes or no”. I can only say it worked fine before I left and still is working fine.
who knows really. i hate to lose anything in the tank and this is by far my biggest loss in all the years I’ve done this. Slow and steady on the reboot...
thank you for your kind words though. Where in cincy are you?

corey

 

[esther]

So sorry! That's terrible.

 

[ZoWhat]

.Milford

 

[ZoWhat]

Hate to put this in your mind.... but sabotage (?)

Apex should have showed smthg

 

[Fernthereefer]

Sorry to hear that. Hope you can reboot soon.

I would look no further for the culprit howver: Isn't that the classic anemone stuck in the water pump ? Only the clowns survived?

I don't think the Apex would have picked it. Unless a sudden pH drop, but even then.....

 

[Big E]

Very sorry to hear about this.

 

[najer]

Sorry to read this, as above it could have been a nem in the powerhead?

 

[Paul31733]

Geeze that's horrible... Sorry.

 

[Billdogg]

Well that just SUCKS!

Whenever you're ready, I'll be happy to cut you fresh frags from whatever you want in mt DT.

My best guess would be an anemone in a powerhead. Especially if you are well stocked, that can easily make things go south quickly and once headed that way the problem becomes greater as other creatures who cannot handle the drastic change compound the issue.

If it's any help, I had my then girlfriend watch my tank while I was up at PIB for a long weekend. The first thing she did was turn off my AC to"save me some $$$". It got up to 105 for a few days that weekend. It was a 55g tank that had 54 different creatures in it (yes, I know - way overstocked) 100% loss. It was so hot that after I drained the tank and filled it halfway with tapwater I burned the tips of my fingers when I reached in to stir up the gravel.

Ironically, I had decided that weekend that this particular relationship just wasn't going to work out. That decision was reinforced when she came over, denied any problems over the weekend, and offered to have her Daddy give me some money to restart the tank. Buh-Bye!!!!!!!!!

 

[ZoWhat]

That decision was reinforced when she came over, denied any problems over the weekend, and offered to have her Daddy give me some money to restart the tank. Buh-Bye!!!!!!!!!

@Billdogg
Plzzzzz tell me that you took her offer for her "Well-To-Do-Daddy" to pay for some of the damages. I never turn down money when offered when they clearly did smthg wrong that was not asked of them.

It would be no different than her running over your mailbox while she backed out and accepting to a newly installed mailbox replacement worth hundreds of dollars.

 

[ZoWhat]

@biecacka

I find it hard to wrap my head around an anemone getting liquified thru a powerhead killing fish. Your skimmer should have cleaned out the water column in mere hours.

Liquified anemone tissue should not be toxic unless it had a couple of days to set off a Hard-Cycle.... or some Bacterial-Bloom that drastically depleted the Oxygen in the water.

Is your Skimmer underrated (an underperformer) for your total water volume?

Plz forgive me for being a Monday Morning Quarterback.... but I believe you dont have a powerful enough Skimmer in place to remove organics that could have caused some kind of Bloom that deplete oxygen.

Again... I'm HEARTBROKEN for you. Livestock total losses are just heart wrenching.

Hang in there....


.

 

[nereefpat]

Sorry, Correy

 

[Billdogg]

@Billdogg
Plzzzzz tell me that you took her offer for her "Well-To-Do-Daddy" to pay for some of the damages. I never turn down money when offered when they clearly did smthg wrong that was not asked of them.

It would be no different than her running over your mailbox while she backed out and accepting to a newly installed mailbox replacement worth hundreds of dollars.

Nope. Not a cent. Her daddy bought her whatever she wanted. That was a major part of her problem. Daddy bailing her out of another mess would have just reinforced the issue. I just wanted her gone from my life at that point.

 

[biecacka]

I don’t think the nem got to the power head, I only say that because I could see some of the “gel” from the nem where they were located to begin with. So it looked like they died on the spot.
my skimmer is a BK double cone 200, it’s plenty of skimmer for my tank. I fed 7 times a day with 30 fish at one point with this thing. I honestly don’t know what the culprit was.
thanks Big E.
Bill, I’ll let you know. I’m gonna let things settle for a bit and get it back together and go again!
thanks @nereefpat ! What part of Nebraska are you in?

corey

 

[nereefpat]

@nereefpat ! What part of Nebraska are you in?

South central. A smallish sized town in the Kearney area.

I'd like to get to Columbus to a game at the horseshoe sometime...maybe when kids are older and the world isn't a mess.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Oh NO !!
Electrical surge or loss of power temporarily while you were gone?

 

[Eggs]

Sorry to hear Corey, was this the cube you’ve had up and running for awhile?

Hope you figure out the cause. I’ll see if I can bring a frag or two the next time I’m coming to C-bus.