Got a fun story for you guys... only sharing now since I stopped waking up in night terrors about the whole ordeal.
So Friday, I spent some time installing a ceiling mounted rack for storage in my fish room. Later that day after I finish, I walk by and see a cloudy tank.
Afterwards, I scramble into the fish room to see the floor soaking wet and my ATO pump cavitating after dumping 50 gallons of fully saturated kalk ATO water into my tank.
The alk is reading 12 dKh and the pH is 10.5!
I snag the 2-year old, ran straight to Lowe’s and picked up muriatic acid. Kalk should mostly precipitate out but the bigger danger to livestock is the ridiculously high pH.
I scramble to look up dosing instructions but seeing my naso tang on his side on the floor laboring to breathe, I went for it and just started pouring the muriatic acid in my sump and carefully monitoring pH on my apex as it real time updates. ***Disclaimer... do not just dump muriatic acid in your tanks on my story... please do your research first!!!***
Ph finally drops to an acceptable level... next to tackle is my alk now has precipitated out and dropped it to 4.5 dKh. I slowly start adding 2-part all solution being as careful as I can to not increase the pH too much with it. Finally bring the alk to an acceptable 7dKh whereas normally it’s at 8 dKh.
What next? How about a salinity drop of 1.027 to 1.023? Yay! I mix in super saline mixes of saltwater into my sump and was able to bring it back up to 1.026.
Again, this is not a recommendation to do any of this if you encounter the same problem. I felt it was best for my tank to quickly put the parameters back to prior levels then to slowly bring them back to those levels. Fortunately, everything worked out wonderfully and besides precipitation everywhere and coral slime everywhere, everything made it out perfectly and only lost 2 Frags which were not happy at the moment anyways. The slimer lost color but otherwise... and more oddly, everything else in the tank looked like nothing had occurred.
The whole time I blamed potentially the work I did installing the ceiling rack as the issue... potentially drywall dust made it to the skimmer and made it blow up, and my lack of engineering controls to prevent the ATO from continually refilling the tank prompted it to dump the whole container of kalk into my tank as the skimmer overflowed.
Either way, quick actions probably saved my tank. I restarted everything like normal and called it a day... granted a long day... but a day.
Fast forward to the next morning... same thing! My skimmer blew up and my freshly filled 50 gallon container of fully saturated kalk topoff water went right back into the tank. Rinse and repeat what I did the previous day... minus this time, I overshot the muriatic acid addition being a bit cocky with its use since I just did it yesterday, and the resulting lower pH of 7.4 and higher carbon dioxide level had my fish on their sides and breathing at the top of the water. Nothing makes your heart skip a beat seeing a $1200 bandit angelfish and $1200 black tang floating at the top of the tank! I start dumping in tons of 2-part all solution to bring up the pH and turn on the skimmer and add bubblers to the system. I open the garage door for fresh air to come into the room. Luckily, pH came back up quickly to normal ranges and all my fish returned to normal and started to give me the stink eye for putting them through all that. Add to it, my Apex 2016 head unit is not functioning anymore. I hook up the classic head unit I have as backup and start reprogramming everything. I couldn’t use it with the newer EB832 power bar so I had to use an old power bar and reprogram everything on that. All my wires were nicely organized so didn’t give me much room to add the old power bar so I just laid it on the ground instead of elevating it. Again, most of my corals didn’t lose color but a couple did this go around since they were subjected to 2 kalk overdoses in two days.
Fast forward to the next morning... my ATO hose somehow during all the craziness was submerged lower than usual and blocked the siphon break. I wake up the next morning to a fried classic EB8 strip, another 50 gallons of topoff water in my tank and another long day of correcting my tank. The tank looks a bit more beat up after the 3rd incident but luckily no more deaths and just a little loss of color on some acros.
So there you have it... 2 kalk overdoses of 50 gallons a piece, and 1 topoff overdose of 50 gallons... all within 3 days. 150 gallons of water on the floor in my fish room... luckily it just drains out the garage floor... my one saving grace.
I am exhausted... but truly thankful I only made it out with 2 dead frags, only a slight loss of color, no livestock deaths though they are truly ticked at me and probably planning to get me back in the near future... paying for repairs for an Apex head unit, and buying a new power bar.
Phew, that was a lot! Tired just from reliving it by telling you guys! Happy reefing... don’t be dumb like me... program your failsafes folks. Enjoy your weekend.
I told my wife I decorated my green slimer for Halloween!
So Friday, I spent some time installing a ceiling mounted rack for storage in my fish room. Later that day after I finish, I walk by and see a cloudy tank.
Afterwards, I scramble into the fish room to see the floor soaking wet and my ATO pump cavitating after dumping 50 gallons of fully saturated kalk ATO water into my tank.
The alk is reading 12 dKh and the pH is 10.5!
I snag the 2-year old, ran straight to Lowe’s and picked up muriatic acid. Kalk should mostly precipitate out but the bigger danger to livestock is the ridiculously high pH.
I scramble to look up dosing instructions but seeing my naso tang on his side on the floor laboring to breathe, I went for it and just started pouring the muriatic acid in my sump and carefully monitoring pH on my apex as it real time updates. ***Disclaimer... do not just dump muriatic acid in your tanks on my story... please do your research first!!!***
Ph finally drops to an acceptable level... next to tackle is my alk now has precipitated out and dropped it to 4.5 dKh. I slowly start adding 2-part all solution being as careful as I can to not increase the pH too much with it. Finally bring the alk to an acceptable 7dKh whereas normally it’s at 8 dKh.
What next? How about a salinity drop of 1.027 to 1.023? Yay! I mix in super saline mixes of saltwater into my sump and was able to bring it back up to 1.026.
Again, this is not a recommendation to do any of this if you encounter the same problem. I felt it was best for my tank to quickly put the parameters back to prior levels then to slowly bring them back to those levels. Fortunately, everything worked out wonderfully and besides precipitation everywhere and coral slime everywhere, everything made it out perfectly and only lost 2 Frags which were not happy at the moment anyways. The slimer lost color but otherwise... and more oddly, everything else in the tank looked like nothing had occurred.
The whole time I blamed potentially the work I did installing the ceiling rack as the issue... potentially drywall dust made it to the skimmer and made it blow up, and my lack of engineering controls to prevent the ATO from continually refilling the tank prompted it to dump the whole container of kalk into my tank as the skimmer overflowed.
Either way, quick actions probably saved my tank. I restarted everything like normal and called it a day... granted a long day... but a day.
Fast forward to the next morning... same thing! My skimmer blew up and my freshly filled 50 gallon container of fully saturated kalk topoff water went right back into the tank. Rinse and repeat what I did the previous day... minus this time, I overshot the muriatic acid addition being a bit cocky with its use since I just did it yesterday, and the resulting lower pH of 7.4 and higher carbon dioxide level had my fish on their sides and breathing at the top of the water. Nothing makes your heart skip a beat seeing a $1200 bandit angelfish and $1200 black tang floating at the top of the tank! I start dumping in tons of 2-part all solution to bring up the pH and turn on the skimmer and add bubblers to the system. I open the garage door for fresh air to come into the room. Luckily, pH came back up quickly to normal ranges and all my fish returned to normal and started to give me the stink eye for putting them through all that. Add to it, my Apex 2016 head unit is not functioning anymore. I hook up the classic head unit I have as backup and start reprogramming everything. I couldn’t use it with the newer EB832 power bar so I had to use an old power bar and reprogram everything on that. All my wires were nicely organized so didn’t give me much room to add the old power bar so I just laid it on the ground instead of elevating it. Again, most of my corals didn’t lose color but a couple did this go around since they were subjected to 2 kalk overdoses in two days.
Fast forward to the next morning... my ATO hose somehow during all the craziness was submerged lower than usual and blocked the siphon break. I wake up the next morning to a fried classic EB8 strip, another 50 gallons of topoff water in my tank and another long day of correcting my tank. The tank looks a bit more beat up after the 3rd incident but luckily no more deaths and just a little loss of color on some acros.
So there you have it... 2 kalk overdoses of 50 gallons a piece, and 1 topoff overdose of 50 gallons... all within 3 days. 150 gallons of water on the floor in my fish room... luckily it just drains out the garage floor... my one saving grace.
I am exhausted... but truly thankful I only made it out with 2 dead frags, only a slight loss of color, no livestock deaths though they are truly ticked at me and probably planning to get me back in the near future... paying for repairs for an Apex head unit, and buying a new power bar.
Phew, that was a lot! Tired just from reliving it by telling you guys! Happy reefing... don’t be dumb like me... program your failsafes folks. Enjoy your weekend.
I told my wife I decorated my green slimer for Halloween!