Hair-raising, Horrendous, Horrifying Tales -- Tank Crashes

[Greg Gdowski]

My crash happened in 2013. We had floors refinished on the other side of the house. I thought it was ok because of the distance... Tank functioned as a sponge and absorbed all of the formaldehyde in the air. Everything in the tank died a slow death despite my efforts to save it. The only thing that managed to grow was Kenya Tree --- something I had been trying to kill anyway.

 

[Stephers]

I had my 75 gallon mixed reef crash in 2012 mostly due to ignorance. I was finishing up college and was having an algae problem I was ignoring. Turns out it was a dino problem. Unfortunately, seems to have been a toxic kind. Woke up one morning to a massive tank of death. Tank tested at greater than 8.0 ppm of ammonia. The four fish I had in there (2 clowns, leopard wrasse, blotched anthias) all survived somehow as well as a BTA and some mushrooms and kenya trees.... All snails, shrimp, clams, crabs, and thousands of dollars of corals dead. Oh man, I cried so hard.

Kept the tank up but never added anything else and left it with my parents because I lived out of the country for several years. But now I'm happy to be back and I still have those same two clownfish.

 

[erk]

I'll give the short version of my crash since you can find read about the details on my tank thread. It happened in mid 2018. I cracked a pH probe and had no idea. I noticed all my corals started to decline. 3 months after it started and trying to find the reason, I found the pH probe. It had a large black spot on the crack, like it had shorted out. Also had two small Hydor powerheads die at the same time. I lost all my SPS and almost all my LPS. Also lost several fish, including a blenny and sand goby.

 

[Bob Escher]

I’ve only had aquariums for six years have not had a full tank crash yet. Had six fish die one time from we think a heater failure
So I’m knocking on wood

 

[pdcatania]

I'm dealing with one right now. Came home from work 2 days ago and my tank was cloudy. Discovered that the heater had failed and that the tank temp was 92. Was at least like that all day and may have been a little longer. All of the fish survived.
All of my hammers and frogspawns have lost their polyps. Only a fleshy head remains. A rock that was covered with GSP looks barren now. Candy Canes are shriveled looking.

Any chance these will come back or should I remove the remains now to keep them from decaying in the tank?

 

[CTNiner]

I’ve had two tank crashes and still at it. The first was a 90 gallon acrylic reef tank in 1995. It was 3 years old at the time. While living in San Francisco we visited relatives in Maine over Thanksgiving. The night after Thanksgiving we received a call at 3 am. Fire Department. “Your house is on fire”. Apparent short in a lighting ballast. Melted the tank and 18 months before we were back in the house. The second was December. A 5 year old 120 gallon reef (glass this time) sprung a leak 1/3 up from the bottom. It was small but steady. By the time I found it I’d lost about 5 gallons. I used aluminum foil to rig a gutter to return water from the leak back to the sump. That kept the water level until my local store came and broke it down into holding tanks. One month later (at the insistence of the wife and kids) about 2/3 of the livestock and corals are adjusting to a new red sea reefer 350. I lost coral and fish but only the rare and expensive stuff . I must be a masochist...

 

[Ezrunner23]

I just finished reading everyone’s story and probably at the worst time, I’m out of town for the weekend! I’m definitely going to have nightmares tonight!

 

[Ezrunner23]

double post sorry

 

[Salty Lemon]

In the early days of LED, I switched out my halide/T5 combo for a sub-par (pun intended) LED fixture. I did this assuming I would have the same or better results with the LED I chose. Needless to say I chose wrong. Just before the lighting switch I started dosing phytoplankton to the tank to feed my already well-established reef. Everything was great up until those two changes. My nitrates went through the roof, I suspect it was do to me overdosing the tank with the plankton (random additions vs. the instructed 1 or 2 drops every few days (as I think it was)). Anyway, by the time I did enough water changes to get parameters stable again, the corals were already suffering, and because of the poor lighting (didn't know HOW poor until years later), I ended up losing everything but the fish, and believe it or not, an anemone. Amazingly, through all that, my two original cinnamon clowns I've had since my first tank over 12 years ago are still with me today, they are hosted by that anemone (which has since split about 10 times), and I'm in the process of a re-boot to get my tank back to its glory days.

Geez...that had to make you feel helpless and ticked off. I can't wait to see your tank reboot!

 

[Salty Lemon]

Nothing as dramatic as these but in early 2018 I had a battle with dinoflagellates which I eventually won. Not, however before almost every coral in my tank was wiped out. The last few months I've finally started to like looking at my tank again.

Love the tank shots. I've recently come back to reefing and had to look up "dinoflaellates" and I just learned all about them. Thanks for sharing. I learned something today.

 

[Salty Lemon]

Hirricane Sandy happened to me. Beautiful 75 G dead ..nothing I could have done, had evacuate family. Now it is generac! Beautiful generator in hopes to never lose a tank again. Not at least to a blackout .
Also had ich to almost do the same. Once you start treating you turn off your skimmer and all off, parameters go heywire, then you lose fish, and half of your coral with it.

I was telling my husband about having a generator on hand. We live in AZ so we are free of hurricanes, but we do have occasional black outs or storms (we call them haboobs here). If I lived along hurricane alley I'd always have that worry in the back of my head.

 

[Salty Lemon]

Had a 55 gallon that had an under gravel filter. t had been running for about 2 or 3 years I think like 1986. We where watching TV and the front bottom seam blew, water hit the celling and drained in less than a minute

That's a literal "crash". Wow!

 

[Salty Lemon]

I just finished reading everyone’s story and probably at the worst time, I’m out of town for the weekend! I’m definitely going to have nightmares tonight!

 

[BestMomEver]

I’ve had two. In spring of last year I lost 8 fish to velvet.

In 2006, I had a 300 gallon mixed reef. We had bought an urchin but over the next few weeks he pushed over or broke a bunch of SPS colonies so I pulled him out and tossed him in the refugium. A bit later, the temps outside began to rise (we lived in south Louisiana) so I unplugged the heater but left it in the sump. One day I noticed a basketball size monti cap starting to bleach and in the space of 72 hours lost 300 gallons of coral, inverts and fish. Everything. Turns out the urchin had made his way into the sump from the refugium and climbed up on the heater cord where he ate through the plastic coating. From there, the copper in the cord leached into the tank and killed everything.

I ended up scrapping the tank and actually gave an entire 300 gallon setup to whoever got to my house first with enough people to haul it out. I was so upset, I couldn’t even stand to look at it any longer. I was out of the hobby from then until about 18 months ago.

 

[oldfishman]

In the early 80's I had a 50 gal fish only tank that was located in the rec room in the basement. After I went to work one day my daughter dumped a whole super large can of fish food into the tank. When I got home the tank was soup and the fish were belly up.

 

[Ardeus]

In 2005 I was living on Madeira Island and I was contacted by the townhall because they wanted a creative way to commemorate the 5 years of an art contest.

I came up with the idea of setting up a 2 meter african cichlid tank with a holographic system behind it showing holograms of the past contest winners and virtual fish. I tried to explain the concept for over an hour, they didn't understand it, but they decided to go ahead just the same.

I didn't have a fish tank at the time and this was an excuse to get one (I was going to keep the 2 meter tank for mysef after the exhibition.

The problem was that I had to order the tank, equipment and fish from mainland and it all arrived just a few days before the event. So no time to cycle and in went 23 adult cichlids.

The tank was setup in a museum. I still remember the fish scattering in all directions when I turned the holographic system on.

To keep ammonia and nitrites from spiking I was doing daily waterchanges of 50-60%. This meant that everyday after the museum closed, I would go in and carry around 500 liters of water to and from the bathroom over a long path with stairs up and down.

This went on for over 3 weeks until I could finally bring the tank to my office.

It was around 5am when I finished setting up the tank. I stayed for some more time watching the tank and went home to sleep. I was living in the same building (office on then 1st floor, apartment on the 4th).

At around 10am I woke up in panic. I immediately got up and began dressing. A colleague bursts into my bedroom (I had keys in the office) and shouted "The tank exploded!". I said "I know" and we ran down.

There was enough water on the ground for the fish to keep breathing.

There were 20+ computers on the floor and when the water rushed out everybody picked up the computers.

We picked up the fish and put them in styro boxes. Only one died that day, because it was behind a piece of furniture.

Don't ask me to explain how I knew what happened, I just woke up in panic and knew exactly what had happened. The situation was so horrible that it didn't even ocurred to me to ask myself how I knew.

I like to think that I built a strong connection with the fish through those weeks of carrying water at night at the musem.

 

[Oliver d]

My tank was wiped out last year when the guy next door decided to fumigate his garden against roaches without warning us.Went to work in the morning with a beautiful reef tank in the lounge came back to everything dead ,fish and coral.The only thing that survived were a few Zoas.The tank stood empty for 6 weeks and was restarted.

 

[Salty Lemon]

Two of note. Only one marine, and both a long time ago.

I had a literal "crash" with a 30 long SW tank when I was a teenager. The combination of a crowded bedroom and being young had me lean a fully loaded barbell against a wall so I could slide my bench out. The barbell fell sideways and went right through the side of the aquarium. The ensuing tidal wave washed most of the water and livestock into the closet. It was a total loss. I thought my parents were going to ban aquariums after that one..

I also kept a Discus tank back then, and at the time Discus were extremely expensive. I had to pull my little cousin away from the tank at a holiday party one evening, and did not notice that he had been playing with the heater knob. This was back in the days before submersibles were popular. It was a hang on back type with a clear plastic cap that just lifted off to expose an adjustment knob. I woke up the next morning and the fish were actually partially cooked. My room smelled like seafood soup. My uncle wrote me a check, but I was heartbroken. There were fish that I had for years in that tank....

Holy cow! A salt tank and Discus when you were a teenager? I'm impressed. Both stories are heartbreaking. Glad you see you are still in the hobby after all of that.

 

[Salty Lemon]

About 8 years ago I had a 150 g reef that’d I’d been running for more than 8 years. I didn’t have kids during that time, had a good job, and was really into fish collecting. I even had a “friend” collector in Hawaii that sent me stuff. In fact, he had sent me three golden dwarf eels for $99 each, 3 flame wrasses for $49 each. Those fish are many many times that now. I also had a true long nose black tang (amazing beauty, picked it up small at an LFS for $250, most expensive thing I bought, but they are over a grand now mostly at retail), I had a female bellus Petco sold to me as a Lemark’s, my 8 year old purple tang, 8 year old big hippo tang, a peppermint hog, and some other nice wrasses. Tank had always had low level ick, the hippo would get spots if stressed then they’d clear. One day a friend broke down his tank, and gave me a few things. Velvet (and I imagine the ick flared too) hit like an absolute monster. I didn’t have a qt, had coral, and didn’t want to rip out the rock and didn’t know where to put the fish anyway at that time. I used kick ick, not recognizing it was velvet at first (or that it’s snake oil). Things began dying within a day of visible symptoms. Day 2 most everything was dying or dead. Morning of day 3 all dead but one dwarf eel, the sole survivor. I was so disgusted by my losses I quit the hobby until I finally jumped back in last spring. Much of what I lost is now prohibitively expensive, I have to be more responsible now, and the collector I knew died of the bends in 09. It still bothers me, and I absolutely QT everything but coral now (financial constraints on doing it well). Which has worked so far.

I get the whole "financial constraints" thing. I have a family too. Braces, lacrosse gear, etc -- all adds up. But it is still fun. It seems many of these crashes made people give up the hobby for awhile. Big losses. I've never had velvet -- it sounds like a monster.

 

[Salty Lemon]

My semi-crash happened last June...had a Merten's Anemone(S.Mertensii) that had been with me about a year and decided to move while we were on vacation at Disney(Why do these things happen when we're away) into a Vortech. Nem was liquefied and sent nemocysts throughout tank killing 15 fish, all except my pair of clowns. Tank sitter called me to let me know that fish were floating/dead. She removed what she could and I expected to come home to a complete crash. All other nems(S. Gignatea, S.Haddoni) and corals all looked great and survived. Have had major algae issues since and my reef fire still hasn't returned to this point. Just don't like seeing that much loss of life on an accident. Hopefully I'm get the bug back soon and restock as the clowns have the tank all to themselves.

I hope the fire comes back soon too. But I understand why it is stifled a bit.