I think i'm going to be sick...flat worm exit might have just nuked my entire 300G tank.

[becks]

Sorry for your loss,

Instead of leaving the hobby, why not consider a tank like a reefer 170/250 Or equivalent?

 

[Antlrman]

I feel your pain. I had a complete crash in November. Except when i finally caught mine my tank looked like pea soup! Literally. And foul as could be. Lost thousands upon thousands in corals and fish. But jumped on the massive water changes on the spot. 220 gal tank i changed 70 gal every 2 days for a week. On day one and two i took everything i thought was dead and discarded. Kept up with skimming and water changes. Things actually settled down after two days. Then took about 2 months of just chilling and balancing out the tank again. I was devistated at first. But noe i look forward to restocking with new corals and it gave me a reason to shape my live rock and rebuild my reef. I was able to get rid of the nuisance corals i had and start fresh. It took me about 2 weeks to have a positive outlook on it but eventually i did. Stay consistant with it and it will work out.

 

[Mark Gray]

Man hope it works out Good Luck

 

[2Wheelsonly]

I feel your pain. I had a complete crash in November. Except when i finally caught mine my tank looked like pea soup! Literally. And foul as could be. Lost thousands upon thousands in corals and fish. But jumped on the massive water changes on the spot. 220 gal tank i changed 70 gal every 2 days for a week. On day one and two i took everything i thought was dead and discarded. Kept up with skimming and water changes. Things actually settled down after two days. Then took about 2 months of just chilling and balancing out the tank again. I was devistated at first. But noe i look forward to restocking with new corals and it gave me a reason to shape my live rock and rebuild my reef. I was able to get rid of the nuisance corals i had and start fresh. It took me about 2 weeks to have a positive outlook on it but eventually i did. Stay consistant with it and it will work out.

Thanks for this post! This is the path I am mentally planning out in my head right now.

Using this time to focus on saving up for a real QT system and then i'm going to start the slow rebuild process.

 

[FishGuyBri]

Thank you for sharing this difficult experience :-/ but it's helpful to us new reefers who are silently watching. I hope you stay in the game and look forward to seeing what you come up with in the future

 

[dodgerblew]

I'm very sorry to read this and I know how this feels. I haven't even mentioned this to anyone including folks in my local clubs because I couldn't bear to write and have to reply but after reading your trials I feel the need to chime and believe it when I say I'm writing this with my eyes watering up but right now it's about you and not me and maybe this is what I need to do to start my recovery as well

A week ago I lost pretty much every coral I have. I woke up last Monday morning to cloudy water, skeletons and tissue peeling before my very eyes. It wasn't a flatworm issue but my error which makes it worse. A couple months ago I noticed some stn on some encrusted tissue of a a very large red planet colony. I figured it was from coral encrustations growing to close so didn't pay much attention and everything in tank including that colony looked great, beautiful color and polyp extension. When it continued I got a little more investigative and realized my Alk container was empty and test showed Alk in the 5's. I slowly raised Alk manually and also raised my dosing amount. As things looked better I left alone and relaxed. BAD MISTAKE. I forgot I upped the Alk in doser and left it going. I have no idea where the Alk was when my disaster happened but on my salifert test I emptied the entire syringe of reagent and color hadn't even started to change. That 0 number is 15.7 on the table. After taking doser offline, heavy water changes it was still over 12.5 after three days. I took everything out of the tank I thought had any chance of survival and (believe it or not a few frags hadn't shown any signs of recession) put them in buckets and ran them to a friend's where we worked as quickly as possible to cut colonies with living tissue and glued over recession areas, dipped what looked healthy in revive and iodine in case of any pathogens and got them in a healthy environment. Still to soon to tell what will stabilize and make it but I've lost quite a bit that I took over there. These colonies were high end pieces like Orange Passion and many other sought after pieces. It was a gut punch to be sure and I feel your pain. My fish, inverts, LPS and softies look ok in my tank but it's definitely not anything it was a week ago. I said the same thing about quitting but this hobby is all about the risk. When you're rewarded for the risk, it's awesome and we all know how we feel when things are good. But when it crashes we immediately forget about how much success we experienced to get to this point. I'm not quitting and I hope you won't either. Get tank going again, get some reef safe fish swimming around for a while until you are ready to jump into coral again would be my suggestion. Again, I'm sorry for your situation and losses and I definitely empathize with you.

Here's my tank in better days and right now

Hang in there brother, you're not alone.

 

[Maritimer]

I'm glad you posted, Dodgerblew - as devastating as that must have been, it's important for other folks - like myself - to read of things like this, and it's important to know that the courage exists to pick one's self up and address the challenge.

Thank you.

~Bruce

 

[2Wheelsonly]

The biggest thing I learned here is that if you notice red flatworms then you NEED to get rid of them before they turn into a plague. I have used flatworm exit in the past on previous tanks without ANY issues. This current tank was one of the first tanks where i struggled to keep nutrients IN. I assumed I was immune to them; I let them get out of hand and by the time I noticed them on the sand bed they were deep in my rock work giving me a false sense of security thinking I had them under control. Once they reach plague levels I feel they are worse than red bugs, AEFW AND monitpora nudibranch because of their ability to destroy ALL livestock in your tank upon death.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

I'm very sorry to read this and I know how this feels. I haven't even mentioned this to anyone including folks in my local clubs because I couldn't bear to write and have to reply but after reading your trials I feel the need to chime and believe it when I say I'm writing this with my eyes watering up but right now it's about you and not me and maybe this is what I need to do to start my recovery as well

A week ago I lost pretty much every coral I have. I woke up last Monday morning to cloudy water, skeletons and tissue peeling before my very eyes. It wasn't a flatworm issue but my error which makes it worse. A couple months ago I noticed some stn on some encrusted tissue of a a very large red planet colony. I figured it was from coral encrustations growing to close so didn't pay much attention and everything in tank including that colony looked great, beautiful color and polyp extension. When it continued I got a little more investigative and realized my Alk container was empty and test showed Alk in the 5's. I slowly raised Alk manually and also raised my dosing amount. As things looked better I left alone and relaxed. BAD MISTAKE. I forgot I upped the Alk in doser and left it going. I have no idea where the Alk was when my disaster happened but on my salifert test I emptied the entire syringe of reagent and color hadn't even started to change. That 0 number is 15.7 on the table. After taking doser offline, heavy water changes it was still over 12.5 after three days. I took everything out of the tank I thought had any chance of survival and (believe it or not a few frags hadn't shown any signs of recession) put them in buckets and ran them to a friend's where we worked as quickly as possible to cut colonies with living tissue and glued over recession areas, dipped what looked healthy in revive and iodine in case of any pathogens and got them in a healthy environment. Still to soon to tell what will stabilize and make it but I've lost quite a bit that I took over there. These colonies were high end pieces like Orange Passion and many other sought after pieces. It was a gut punch to be sure and I feel your pain. My fish, inverts, LPS and softies look ok in my tank but it's definitely not anything it was a week ago. I said the same thing about quitting but this hobby is all about the risk. When you're rewarded for the risk, it's awesome and we all know how we feel when things are good. But when it crashes we immediately forget about how much success we experienced to get to this point. I'm not quitting and I hope you won't either. Get tank going again, get some reef safe fish swimming around for a while until you are ready to jump into coral again would be my suggestion. Again, I'm sorry for your situation and losses and I definitely empathize with you.

Here's my tank in better days and right now

Hang in there brother, you're not alone.

Thanks, looking at your nice colonies it's hard to even think about.

I think this hurts so badly is because all the time invested and not to mention money. I have sacrificed so much for this tank; I even sold off a motorcycle to put more $$ into my system. To be back at square one really sucks.

On to the future, now I just gotta get this tank past the "nuclear fallout" stage; I am unsure of when I can put new livestock in.

After ALL this carbon and ALL these water changes my last fish just died.

 

[drawman]

So sorry for your loss that absolutely sucks!

 

[Lionfish Lair]

Were your montis returned back to the display? Did they get nuked too?

 

[Rick.45cal]

Oh man

 

[TonapahNorth]

So much heartbreak in this thread. My heart goes out to all of you. Thank you for sharing. I hate to have this feeling but I feel it's a matter of "when and not if" it happens to me. There is so much juggling to this hobby. And one false move and it all comes tumbling down. So sorry it happened to you.

 

[dodgerblew]

Thanks, looking at your nice colonies it's hard to even think about.

I think this hurts so badly is because all the time invested and not to mention money. I have sacrificed so much for this tank; I even sold off a motorcycle to put more $$ into my system. To be back at square one really sucks.

On to the future, now I just gotta get this tank past the "nuclear fallout" stage; I am unsure of when I can put new livestock in.

After ALL this carbon and ALL these water changes my last fish just died.

Yes, the sweat equity invested is immense and my losses are in the thousands. Good thing for me is hopefully I'll have some recovered pieces and I have some great local people who want to step up to help out. Quite a few of my cuttings are growing in others tanks. Really good to hear you're moving forward.

 

[dodgerblew]

So much heartbreak in this thread. My heart goes out to all of you. Thank you for sharing. I hate to have this feeling but I feel it's a matter of "when and not if" it happens to me. There is so much juggling to this hobby. And one false move and it all comes tumbling down. So sorry it happened to you.

That's always been my thoughts as well.

 

[Rick.45cal]

Having been through a total loss before many many years ago, the reality of this hobby is somewhat like riding a motorcycle. It's not a matter of if you crash, it's a matter of when and how bad. This is unfortunately probably more the "norm" than the exception, it's like death, there is a certain inevitability in it and most systems will end in a terminal/total failure of some sort. (You don't see people breaking down perfect reef tanks on Craigslist). I think it is very easy for us to take for granted the amazing set of circumstances that all have to be working together for this to go right, when it is going right!

I hope you decide to continue on. Take your time getting back into it. Do some of the things that you wouldn't be able to do with a 300 gallon tank attached to you with an umbillical cord. Then get going in a new direction with a new fervor!

 

[dodgerblew]

I know this doesn't seem like something you'd want to do after what you've been through but I'd do another or a couple more flatworm exit treatment a couple weeks apart and finish those suckers off. You can move rocks around now without harming anything and allow you to get what you might not have gotten as well as any eggs that might hatch out. This is my recommendation to you before you move forward with livestock.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

Were your montis returned back to the display? Did they get nuked too?

Yes

 

[2Wheelsonly]

I know this doesn't seem like something you'd want to do after what you've been through but I'd do another or a couple more flatworm exit treatment a couple weeks apart and finish those suckers off. You can move rocks around now without harming anything and allow you to get what you might not have gotten as well as any eggs that might hatch out. This is my recommendation to you before you move forward with livestock.

I agree, and i'll be on the lookout.

It's hard to believe anything survived though, everything looks so white even my coralline algae. I see large bristle worms laying dead in the sand bed.

 

[Lionfish Lair]

Yes

Do you think it could have had anything to do with them being recently being returned from having dipped in Bayer and then the Flatworm exit?