Help please, tank crashing, I'm bawling...

Tabbers920

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Please help, we were away for 5 days, my dad fed the tank and changed filter socks, 3 hours from home and he tells me a fish died.. (fairy wrasse)
I get home and it's a coral graveyard.
My toadstool, hammers, torch, Octospawn, frogspawn, finger leather, ricordea, blasto, acan, the list goes on.
There's small bubbles on the algae on the back wall, so I wonder if I have dinos!?
Then I see the water is 90 degrees!
The thermometer popped out of the water.
I did a 6 gallon water change, floated ice. Temp is now 85. (45 gallon plus sump)

Salt 1.025
TEMP 90 !!
Ph 8.2
Amm .5 (fish died too, so obv)
Phosphate .04
NitRATE 5
Nitrite 0
Alk 8.8
Ca 480

I couldn't change too much water to not shock them by changing temp too fast. Ugh.

Thoughts on dinos? Was the only issue the temp. Also lost Herbie our skunk shrimp :(

What do I do now?

Pics attached. After and before, and curious what's growing under the rock here too??

20210622_000247.jpg 20210622_000224.jpg 20210622_000224.jpg 20210621_213534.jpg 20210621_213528.jpg 20210614_214445.jpg
 

Robertellis30

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Heater controller and with this hot weather get a fan to clip on it to blow cool air helps a lot.
 

Gtinnel

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Sorry for the loss. I don't see anything in the picture that jumps out to me as dinos. Having redundancy for a heater is a must. Using a inkbird with a heater that has a built in thermostat is an easy cheap way to have at least 2 levels of protection.

The only thing to do is to fix it to where it can't happen again and then start restocking the tank. Unless it causes you to leave the hobby, which if you go that route I'd encourage you to wait a few days before making a decision. I had a tank crash and I was about to give up, but I didn't and my tank is more stable and healthy now than it ever was before the crash.

EDIT- I would personally just let the temp of the water fall the rest of the way on its own.
 
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Tabbers920

Tabbers920

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Temp was most likely the culprit. Get yourself a heater controller. I think it's the most important thing you can have.
I have a nice heater controller, the thermometer that goes in the display came out of the water. Causing the heater in the sump to work overtime. I should have had a $2 thermometer stuck to the side of the DT. :(
 
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