So my tank just crashed...

[Cunning_plan]

Today has not been a good day. So far I have lost a yellow tang, a firefish, a lemon damsel, a clownfish and two cleaner shrimps. I would give even odds on the survival of my final clownfish and convice blenny. I have no idea on the rest of my CUC. What corals i have are unhappy, hopefully most will survive. I see now why people just give up after this.

I have been trying to get into the hobby for the past 6 months. My tank has had a lot of the clasical problems with algae etc but more than that, I could never really get any corals to thrive, most simply died. A few weeks back, I realised the reason for this was an uncalibrated (and faulty) refractometer (I had been running salinity at a little north of 50). With that finally fixed, suddenly things started to brighten up - the fish were happy, my corals opened up, I felt confident to add a few nice new zoas which opened within minutes of being in the tank, all was good. My wife even bought me the tang to celebrate (I hadn't had the heart to tell her we couldn't keep it in my 55g yet). Then, suddenly, it wasn't.

This morning I came down and my water was cloudy, everything was unhappy. When I tested the water I found that my nitrates had fallen from 30 to 0, I also found ammonia between 0.25 and 0.5. I turned my skimmer to very wet, did a 20% water change (all I had) and set my powerheads to point up, close to the surface to try and get some oxygen into the water. None of it helped. When I went to add some seachem prime it transpired that the bottle was empty - I was unable to find a way to get any today.

So how precicely did I get here... a few days ago I noticed my nitrates were way too high. I did a 30% water change and added some nopox. As it transpires, I added way too much (I read gallons as litres so about 4.5x a large dose. I also took out my old carbon, cleaned my filters, and took out a bunch of diatom filled sand. From what I can guess, the nopox overdose caused a an algae bloom turning the water cloudy, this killed something, which added amonia to the mix and things spiralled from there.

This whole thing is hearbreaking, and made so much worse by the fact that it is driven by my own stupidity. I consider myself a fairly smart chap, but it has not translated into reefing thus far. I understand more and more why people talk about patience in this hobby and why a propensity to reach for them chemicals is so dangerous. Whilst I'm not quite ready to quit, I don't intend to subject another fish to my husbandary till I have learned a lot more patience and control.

So why am I posting this? Partially because I needed to vent to an audience that understands, but also partially because I need some advice. I feel I have read and watched fairly broadly, but it has not been enough. What can I study, practice or consider so I don't do this again. Or are some people better just leaving this alone...

 

[Hydrored]

Sorry for your loss, chalk it up as a lesson learned and I’m glad to hear you’re not ready to quit. This hobby has a steep learning curve, be patient and good things will happen.

 

[piranhaman00]

Bacterial bloom caused by nopox, which asphyxiated something in the tank which lead to ammonia spike, which lead to deaths is my guess.

You pointed out your mistakes, be careful and go slow is all I can say. Human error mistakes suck but happen and you know for sure what caused the deaths. Move forward!

 

[fishguy242]

sorry to hear this..water changes,lots of carbon,you say corals may make it ,pics?

 

[Fishbird]

I’m so sorry, that sounds heartbreaking.

One thing I’ve found myself doing before making any change to my tank is googling things like “ _____ fish eat coral” and “______ bad”. Basically, I want to see what negative things others have already experienced from whatever I want to do. Of course, you still have to make a decision about whether what you’re reading seems credible but I want to know what problems I might run into so that I can already be prepared to do whatever the solution is. I don’t want to be taken by surprise.

Maybe write down concrete lessons you’ve learned from what has gone wrong? Not as punishment but as a way to figure out how to prevent them from happening again? Like, have a checklist that says something like “before dosing any chemical read the instructions, figure out how much I need, put the bottle down and walk away. Come back and read the instructions again, figure out the dose again, and if the two doses match then proceed.” Good luck! I think you can do this!

 

[Cunning_plan]

sorry to hear this..water changes,lots of carbon,you say corals may make it ,pics?

It's mostly softies with the exception of a hammer frag and a duncan. The duncan and hammer are a little retracted but not that noticable. My zoas are 90% shut. My GSP is 100% shut. Toadstool, and kenya tree are a bit shriveled. Cabbage is ambivilent. My feel is if I get the amonia to 0 tommorow and keep water changing most of them will be OK.

One thing I’ve found myself doing before making any change to my tank is googling things like “ _____ fish eat coral” and “______ bad”. Basically, I want to see what negative things others have already experienced from whatever I want to do. Of course, you still have to make a decision about whether what you’re reading seems credible but I want to know what problems I might run into so that I can already be prepared to do whatever the solution is. I don’t want to be taken by surprise.

Maybe write down concrete lessons you’ve learned from what has gone wrong? Not as punishment but as a way to figure out how to prevent them from happening again? Like, have a checklist that says something like “before dosing any chemical read the instructions, figure out how much I need, put the bottle down and walk away. Come back and read the instructions again, figure out the dose again, and if the two doses match then proceed.” Good luck! I think you can do this!

Thanks. Yes, this post is the start of that. I think at this point I'm leaning towards adding a refugium and not adding any chemicals if I can help it. I just don't want to risk a mistake like this again.

I'd thought about setting up a propper aquarium log and tracking it so starting with what happened is probably a good shout.

 

[proxy001]

Sorry for your losses. I'll tell you what I learned over the years: the less you mess with it the better. dont get discouraged, and my 2 cents: Dont add too much chemicals. A bit of nitrate if fine. I just realized by tank was running 1ppm phosphates for years, granted corals didn't make it but fish are fine. As soon as we start messing with stuff, there is usually a cascade of events. I made the same mistake with the salinity once, almost lost everything.

 

[Dragon174]

I can relate as I recently had a tank crash. It sucks. I had a huge algae bloom after which I tried everything to get under control and ended up accidentally nuking my entire tank. I was pretty down for a few days but have just started the process of tearing it all down to start again. I love this hobby and this will not get the best of my. My lessons learned are that chemicals are not the way to go. At least not for me. Learn from mistakes. Good luck.

 

[ReefGrammie]

I'm so sorry you're having to go through this. :confused: This hobby requires patience, patience, and more patience. I hope things turn around for you!

 

[Sebastiancrab]

So sorry for the heartbreak. I don't know where you live but a suggestion is to make some connections to other nearby reefers. In the event of an emergency, hopefully, someone who have the backup chemicals such as prime. It's also another reinforcement to have a backup quarantine tank ready to roll. Hang in there!

 

[fishguy242]

agree w no chemical" easy fix":(

 

[xaflatoonx]

I am so sorry to hear your experience. But I say this as a supportive narrative and not being critical. Everyone goes through this. Don’t worry.

everyone is right. Using chemicals to make a change is what gets us. We wanna believe it works because it just sounds great.

You are great for recognizing and knowing where you messed up. That’s the biggest thing people miss when they make a mistake. You have essentially gained from this and your tank and pets will be happier for it.

Make it happen bud. We gotchu!

 

[Fishbird]

I have never used nopox or vibrant or anything that usually gets lumped under the umbrella of “chemicals”. That said, in this case the problems I see were

1) not double checking the dosage
2) leaving empty bottles on your shelf (prime) and/or not replacing a bottle when you used it last and realized that it was almost empty

Not double checking the dosage could get you in all kinds of ways whether you’re talking about running carbon, medicating a sick fish, or dosing two part. I don’t think “chemicals” were the whole problem here.

One thing I often think about is: if my tank sprung a leak at midnight on a federal holiday do I have a place I could put all fish and corals immediately? (Yes)

I have a backup heater and a backup circulation pump.

I’m working on acquiring equipment so that if I had a five day power outage that coincided with a velvet outbreak I could still treat my fish.

I think/hope that planning and researching around all the things that could go wrong will prove life saving should something actually go wrong. I definitely realize that having a 20 gallon tank makes it relatively easy for me to have all the backups that I do, but I think there’s a lot to be said in general for thinking about what could go wrong and planning in advance.

And to reiterate what was said above, I think you can do this and I think this specifically because you obviously did knew what to do when you suspected hypoxia and you can clearly think clearly and act quickly in an emergency.

 

[Cunning_plan]

...
That said, in this case the problems I see were

1) not double checking the dosage
2) leaving empty bottles on your shelf (prime) and/or not replacing a bottle when you used it last and realized that it was almost empty

Not double checking the dosage could get you in all kinds of ways whether you’re talking about running carbon, medicating a sick fish, or dosing two part. I don’t think “chemicals” were the whole problem here.
...

I think that's fair. I don't blame anything I put into the tank for what went wrong here, I blame myself. I guess my point was that my eagerness for a quick solution, twinned with momentary carelessness were to blame here. That's why I like the idea of taking a slower, more considered approach and trying to ballance the system more naturally.

I hadn't logged the putting back an empty bottle as a cause here but you are right, it's a massive one. You're also right about ressiliance and back up. It's something I need to plan for.

And to reiterate what was said above, I think you can do this and I think this specifically because you obviously did knew what to do when you suspected hypoxia and you can clearly think clearly and act quickly in an emergency.

Thanks, that means a lot right now.