Help requested! Tank overheated/corals dying

[monti mike]

Hi everyone - I could really use your help and expertise. My heater broke and cranked the tank temp up to 94 degrees. I turned off the lights and I’ve been floating bags off ice in the tank to bring the temp down. Unfortunately almost all the corals are dying or already gone. I’ve lost some fish too- I only see 2 clownfish alive. At this point Id like your suggestions on what to do next? Should I rescue the two surviving clowns and put them in a bucket with fresh saltwater? I’m wondering if I should just drain the whole tank and throw almost everything away since so much has died already. There’s almost certainly a big ammonia spike coming with all the dead coral.
Not sure what to do, any advice is appreciated.
Thank you!
-Mike

 

[Jbell370]

I recall coming home and wondering what the smell was when I enter the door, yep, heater stuck on and cooked the tank. Since then, smaller heaters, just multiple, an inkbird or similar controller and then plugged in to now Neptune, previously reef keeper. Backup to the backup, I'll never forget that smell.

 

[jhuntstl]

I'm so sorry for your losses. Bumping so hopefully someone with experience can help.

 

[EJReefer]

This happened to me while I was on vacation, and I lost a chalice, and my lobophylia got bleached completely white, and everything else looked extremely mad. It really sucks when something like this happens, and I hope your tank recovers

 

[tehmadreefer]

Sucks, but not much to do besides doing a complete cleaning of the tank including new sand bed or go bare bottom and start over.

 

[Scorpius]

Gonna have to ride it out now. Small daily water changes for a week and stability and see what makes it. Let this be a warning to anyone reading to have redundancies with heaters. I run a dual stage Aqualogic controller with two heaters with their own built in thermostats. This greatly reduces the chance of nuking your tank.

I also advise everyone to change heaters yearly.

 

[monti mike]

Gonna have to ride it out now. Small daily water changes for a week and stability and see what makes it. Let this be a warning to anyone reading to have redundancies with heaters. I run a dual stage Aqualogic controller with two heaters with their own built in thermostats. This greatly reduces the chance of nuking your tank.

I also advise everyone to change heaters yearly.

Thanks, I usually have the heater connected to my controller where it’ll turn it off if it gets too high. I just moved this weekend though so the heater wasn’t connected to the controller yet. Just sucks

 

[Screwgunner]

Sorry bud ,boy those clowns are tough . I had red flat worms . So I used flatworm exit after the alloted time you do a water change and abb alot of carbon and crank up the protein skimmer. Did just that but saltcreep shut off the air to my skimmer and it nuked my tank. Only thing that lived yep you guessed it the two clowns.

 

[monti mike]

Thanks again everyone. Ill do the small frequent water changes and hope for the best

 

[Ross Corbett]

Just experienced this same thing where you able to save anything or did yo have to do a teardow And rebuild? while on vacation this week mine hit 91 and cooked everything but my clowns and a few Zoe’s that still look ticked.

 

[monti mike]

Just experienced this same thing where you able to save anything or did yo have to do a teardow And rebuild? while on vacation this week mine hit 91 and cooked everything but my clowns and a few Zoe’s that still look ticked.

Sorry you went through that too. I had to basically restart. The only corals that survived were the zoas, anacropora and branching porites. My clowns were the only fish that survived.