Tank Crash Discussion/Help Thread

[prsnlty]

@brandon429
Yeah that's what I thought. Can't afford to replace 360lbs of sand atm.

@AllSignsPointToFish
I still believe when the tank initially crashed that possibly bacteria in the sb died or something in the sb fouled. My sand sifter also died but no other fish showed any sign of stress. Once I did several water changes then stopped I thought; maybe something happened to the good bacteria? I then began adding mb7 and api stress zyme ( what was immediately available) and the remaining corals got much better. RTN stopped and color came back. They were beautiful again. Then the 2nd crash.

You just mentioned something that may have *something* at least to do with the 2nd crash. I originally used RC and didn't like it. Went to RSCP and didn't like it then to AFPB and had a severe algea issue and finally to Seachem Reef Salt. The tank loved it and so did I. Then Seachem quit making it! I went to order a new box as I was just about out and couldn't so I went to RC. that was right before the 2nd crash. What you said might have some merit to it. The 2nd crash might have been a combo of the RC and alk. I have 2 200g boxes to use up! Ugh

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

@brandon429
Yeah that's what I thought. Can't afford to replace 360lbs of sand atm.

@AllSignsPointToFish
I still believe when the tank initially crashed that possibly bacteria in the sb died or something in the sb fouled. My sand sifter also died but no other fish showed any sign of stress. Once I did several water changes then stopped I thought; maybe something happened to the good bacteria? I then began adding mb7 and api stress zyme ( what was immediately available) and the remaining corals got much better. RTN stopped and color came back. They were beautiful again. Then the 2nd crash.

You just mentioned something that may have *something* at least to do with the 2nd crash. I originally used RC and didn't like it. Went to RSCP and didn't like it then to AFPB and had a severe algea issue and finally to Seachem Reef Salt. The tank loved it and so did I. Then Seachem quit making it! I went to order a new box as I was just about out and couldn't so I went to RC. that was right before the 2nd crash. What you said might have some merit to it. The 2nd crash might have been a combo of the RC and alk. I have 2 200g boxes to use up! Ugh

I didn't even think about it until my buddy told me he had the same thing happen to his tank when he swapped to RC. I did it because I thought it might be better than Instant Ocean, but in hindsight everything was doing well so I should've just left it alone.

I'm not sure high alkalinity is a big deal as long as you don't have high light levels. My corals do fine on IO with a dKH 9-11 and about 125-200 PAR max.

Use up your RC on quarantining new fish That's what I plan to do, and I don't think the fish really care!

 

[prsnlty]

I didn't even think about it until my buddy told me he had the same thing happen to his tank when he swapped to RC. I did it because I thought it might be better than Instant Ocean, but in hindsight everything was doing well so I should've just left it alone.

I'm not sure high alkalinity is a big deal as long as you don't have high light levels. My corals do fine on IO with a dKH 9-11 and about 125-200 PAR max.

Use up your RC on quarantining new fish That's what I plan to do, and I don't think the fish really care!

Acros don't respond well at all to sudden alk changes. In the 1st crash I lost 41 acros and most were colonies. I had 2 big slimer colonies, lemonade and a few others plus half a dozen Acro Frags at the time of the second crash. All other non SPS corals and fish were fine. I normally keep alk between 9.5-10. It was at 13dkh 24 hrs after I unclogged the tube. My montis, setosa, Spongodes, BN and cyphstrea are still struggling after 2 months. All acros are gone

I have no plans for new fish as I have plenty of good size healthy fish. I have a 6+" powder blue who doesn't like new tank mates anyway. 3 of the tangs are 6" or better and the rest are pretty big as well for what they are. 24 in all in a 180g. Some of my fish I've had for over 6 years.

I want the seachem reef salt back! I can't believe they replaced it with such an awful salt. Bad business move on their part.

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

I agree that large changes in alkalinity are not desirable.

 

[tankstudy]

I'll start.

If you had a power outage immediately get air into the dt and sump. If this did not happen your good bacteria will die.

The bacteria strains we use will rarely die off in a matter of hours because of a lack of air or flow. They are pretty hardy and that is why we can sell them in bottles, which can last for a long time, many many months, if kept in optimal conditions. Keep in mind that they can survive at elevated levels of Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate.Unless you were throwing in antibiotics before the power outage or cooked them its highly unlikely for them to die.

In my situation the power was out 2 hours before I knew it was. I added air bubblers and 5 hrs in I got a generator to run the return.

My speculation is that the bridge link between your bacteria and your bioload's biological waste was broken/disturbed, which was water flow. Without a flow rate of 5-20 times your entire water volume, your bacteria will convert the biological wastes at a much slower rate because the wastes will have to diffuse their way to the bacteria. Diffusion may suffice in low bioload systems but not for heavy bioload systems. Systems with really heavy bioloads may produce in total very high toxic levels everyday but because of your water flow and bacteria, its kept to safe levels constantly. The instant you break or disturb that link between those dangerous bioload levels produced everyday and the bacteria, your going to crash in a very short time frame in such heavy bioload systems.

In fishless cycling, we can see how much our bacteria actually converts. Most individuals will start fishless cycling with about 2 ppm ammonia. At first it takes a couple days or weeks depending on your initial bacterial load but eventually, we'll grow enough bacteria to convert 2 ppm ammonia in under 24 hours. If you split that up into 6 hour periods, every 6 hours you could produce ~0.50 ppm ammonia. At 0.25 ppm ammonia that's already enough to start causing problems in our systems. In heavy bioload systems, you can produce way more than 2 ppm ammonia daily. If your bioload produces 4 ppm ammonia in a day, in 6 hours your going to have ~1.0 ppm ammonia and if your bacteria are only converting it at a rate of 75% efficiency due to lack of flow and numbers, your still going to have 0.25 ppm ammonia present in the water and that is going to be enough to start your snowball of doom.

This is just my hypothesis, if I was there at the time to test the water more thoroughly, I'd be able to get a much better idea of what happened.

 

[prsnlty]

The bacteria strains we use will rarely die off in a matter of hours because of a lack of air or flow. They are pretty hardy and that is why we can sell them in bottles, which can last for a long time, many many months, if kept in optimal conditions. Keep in mind that they can survive at elevated levels of Ammonia, Nitrite and Nitrate.Unless you were throwing in antibiotics before the power outage or cooked them its highly unlikely for them to die.



My speculation is that the bridge link between your bacteria and your bioload's biological waste was broken/disturbed, which was water flow. Without a flow rate of 5-20 times your entire water volume, your bacteria will convert the biological wastes at a much slower rate because the wastes will have to diffuse their way to the bacteria. Diffusion may suffice in low bioload systems but not for heavy bioload systems. Systems with really heavy bioloads may produce in total very high toxic levels everyday but because of your water flow and bacteria, its kept to safe levels constantly. The instant you break or disturb that link between those dangerous bioload levels produced everyday and the bacteria, your going to crash in a very short time frame in such heavy bioload systems.

In fishless cycling, we can see how much our bacteria actually converts. Most individuals will start fishless cycling with about 2 ppm ammonia. At first it takes a couple days or weeks depending on your initial bacterial load but eventually, we'll grow enough bacteria to convert 2 ppm ammonia in under 24 hours. If you split that up into 6 hour periods, every 6 hours you could produce ~0.50 ppm ammonia. At 0.25 ppm ammonia that's already enough to start causing problems in our systems. In heavy bioload systems, you can produce way more than 2 ppm ammonia daily. If your bioload produces 4 ppm ammonia in a day, in 6 hours your going to have ~1.0 ppm ammonia and if your bacteria are only converting it at a rate of 75% efficiency due to lack of flow and numbers, your still going to have 0.25 ppm ammonia present in the water and that is going to be enough to start your snowball of doom.

This is just my hypothesis, if I was there at the time to test the water more thoroughly, I'd be able to get a much better idea of what happened.

I agree and that's why I stopped the water changes and began adding good bacteria back into the tank when it dawned on me that my established bacteria might have died. My tank did stabilize then the salt change came about and the alk spike. With already stressed acros it wasn't a good thing... causing the 2nd crash.

Other than routine water changes and maintenance I have been leaving the tank alone. Some montis are getting color back but I now have a po4 and no3 issue. Most likely due to the sb being stirred up. When I had a tank full of coral my sb didn't blow around at all but now it does due to wide open areas.

 

[Nick Barbier]

The crash of my 125 mixed reef happened last Sunday night. In preparation for putting down new flooring in the living room, my 125 reef was broken down. All fish and corals were put into totes with powerheads. They all did well during the whole floor replacement process which took about two hours. In an attempt to save money, I decided to keep the 2 year, 7 month old live sand in the tank. BIG MISTAKE! While putting live rock back into the tank I accidentally stirred up to sand bed, releasing nitrogen gas and harmful bacteria. After all fish and corals were back in the tank everything looked good. The next morning I noticed my giant orange Montipora Capricorns was completely white. Continuing to look around the aquarium I noticed that all my orange, purple and green Monti Caps were dead. The majority of the SPS corals (Pavona, pacillapora, Stylophora, three birdnest, encrusting Montipora, acropora) LPS (hammers, torch, and frogspawn). Fish: yellow Tang, worm goby, coral beauty, royal Gramma. Roughly 80% of all fish and corals died. Word to the wise, if you have to break down your tank for whatever reason, replace the sand bed.

 

[lariat8099]

I had a sever crash of my 60 gallon reef. I was out of town on business and my wife didn't notice that the breaker had tripped in the room due to a mini fridge failure. She got the power back on to the room about 18 hours after the power loss. she pulled out numerous dead fish from the reef of course the damsels and a File fish survived. This happened early Thursday morning and power restored Thursday night at around 6:00pm. What's the first thing I should do after removing any dead fish when I get home tonight.??? I haven't seen the reef yet shes afraid to send me a picture cause she knows I'm ticked already for not even noticing it Thursday while at home all day>>> UGH The reef is live rock aquascaped TONS of Poly coral/. fuzzy shroons. A few SPS and LPS. white sand bottom HELP HELP. This reef was 18 months old and was thriving. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

 

[prsnlty]

I had a sever crash of my 60 gallon reef. I was out of town on business and my wife didn't notice that the breaker had tripped in the room due to a mini fridge failure. She got the power back on to the room about 18 hours after the power loss. she pulled out numerous dead fish from the reef of course the damsels and a File fish survived. This happened early Thursday morning and power restored Thursday night at around 6:00pm. What's the first thing I should do after removing any dead fish when I get home tonight.??? I haven't seen the reef yet shes afraid to send me a picture cause she knows I'm ****** already for not even noticing it Thursday while at home all day>>> UGH The reef is live rock aquascaped TONS of Poly coral/. fuzzy shroons. A few SPS and LPS. white sand bottom HELP HELP. This reef was 18 months old and was thriving. Any help would be GREATLY appreciated.

I feel you

1st thing to do is start making saltwater, as much as you can. Look for and remove anything dead. And keep a close eye on those SPS because they're upset and I can guarantee you they're spewing off lots of toxins. Water changes are your best friend right now. If you have a skimmer be sure that it's running and change out your carbon to Fresh carbon after you do a couple of water changes.

Keep a very watchful eye of it and remove anything that's dying on a daily basis or as you come across it.

Do your very very best to keep your parameters from having heavy swings as much as possible.



Best of luck and keep us posted.

 

[prsnlty]

The crash of my 125 mixed reef happened last Sunday night. In preparation for putting down new flooring in the living room, my 125 reef was broken down. All fish and corals were put into totes with powerheads. They all did well during the whole floor replacement process which took about two hours. In an attempt to save money, I decided to keep the 2 year, 7 month old live sand in the tank. BIG MISTAKE! While putting live rock back into the tank I accidentally stirred up to sand bed, releasing nitrogen gas and harmful bacteria. After all fish and corals were back in the tank everything looked good. The next morning I noticed my giant orange Montipora Capricorns was completely white. Continuing to look around the aquarium I noticed that all my orange, purple and green Monti Caps were dead. The majority of the SPS corals (Pavona, pacillapora, Stylophora, three birdnest, encrusting Montipora, acropora) LPS (hammers, torch, and frogspawn). Fish: yellow Tang, worm goby, coral beauty, royal Gramma. Roughly 80% of all fish and corals died. Word to the wise, if you have to break down your tank for whatever reason, replace the sand bed.

Oh man [emoji45] There really are no words....

Great advice though! You *could reuse it but it would have to be thoroughly cleaned first. Not such an easy task and most people don't find that it's worth it.

When my tank crashed I actually didn't break it down and just kept doing massive water changes. However even though I didn't disturb the sand bed I believe it is the reason that my tank is still struggling 10 months later. I am considering a total breakdown and restart in a couple of months at the one-year mark of the crash. My issue is that it's a 180 gallon tank and I have no place to put all of my coral and large fish while waiting for it to cycle.

 

[prsnlty]

@lariat8099 and @Nick Barbier
Be sure to add a healthy amount of microbacter 7 or similar so that the addition of lots of good bacteria can outnumber the bad.