Tank Crash Discussion/Help Thread

[jsker]

Thank you :) I probably won't give it up... I'm just in a low spot I think. The tank was growing beautifully. I actually had large SPS colonies (3 years ago I couldn't keep an acro alive). The tank was stable and then the hammer falls... ugh. I guess the only people who really understand this are we who have been through a major crash. And partly why I started this thread ;)

What?! Another one??? I haven't turned the tv on since the power went out from IRMA. Ugh... guess I better take a look.

Fish storm after Puerto Rico:)

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

Fish storm after Puerto Rico:)

Not for my friends in the Turks and Caicos islands :(

 

[jsker]

Jackie, I get my generators here link, I get the propane generators.

 

[prsnlty]

Transfer switch is the correct term as you used it :)

Have you considered this item?
POWER FAIL LIGHT W/ALARM by RELIANCE CONTROLS MfrPartNo THP207M https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018A30T8Q/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_o5hWzbA10VKK2

I am going to go look at that right now! I think this is a wonderful idea not just for people of Apex they can't hear at night but for anybody whether they have an apex or not. I absolutely love this idea and thank you for sharing it!

I knew it was something like that but I'm getting old and lately I'm not always too sure if I remembered it correctly [emoji23]

 

[prsnlty]

Transfer switch is the correct term as you used it :)

Have you considered this item?
POWER FAIL LIGHT W/ALARM by RELIANCE CONTROLS MfrPartNo THP207M https://www.amazon.com/dp/B018A30T8Q/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_o5hWzbA10VKK2

Less than $14 too! I just ordered it woohoo!

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

I second the propane generator if you can manage the propane supply adequately. They will not have issues with gasoline fouling like conventional single-fuel generators.

With respect to that alarm, it only has to work once to pay for itself!

 

[prsnlty]

Jackie, I get my generators here link, I get the propane generators.

We looked at them and for this year those are out of our budget. Got a major reroof and partial reconstruction to do over this winter. The way they build houses here in FL just boggles the mind sometimes [emoji19]

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

We looked at them and for this year those are out of our budget. Got a major reroof and partial reconstruction to do over this winter. The way they build houses here in FL just boggles the mind sometimes [emoji19]

How old is your house because mine is built pretty well compared to other areas of the gulf coast?

 

[prsnlty]

How old is your house because mine is built pretty well compared to other areas of the gulf coast?

1983. When my house was built there was no building inspector in Citrus County. They have no building records before 1994 either. It's like real back-woods here. We have two trusses over the garage they were never actually attached and laying over. To look at the roof from the outside you can't see it but it's a bad thing. It's starting to cause the roof to bow. Our house was built on a slight downgrade and the property was correctly filled when they built this house but then the house lower to us which is a new-build they never filled the lot and no retaining wall was put in so our house is undermining into that property. We've been looking for the Builder for the past 5 years as is the owner of that property. Because when it rains that house floods. We are in a no flood zone. I could go on and on but I'm not going to LOL

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

Wow. That's definitely not consistent with post-Andrew building practices :(

 

[prsnlty]

Wow. That's definitely not consistent with post-Andrew building practices :(

Nope.... there is a lot of pocket lining going on around here and it has been since I moved here in 2005.

 

[prsnlty]

About five years ago we had to have our septic redone because of the land erosion from underneath shifted the tank and detached it from the leach field. The county not only forced us to add on to our leach field, which it was within guidelines in my opinion but when the septic guy did the job and he did a very crappy job and I was clearly not happy, I saw him hand the building inspector a wad of cash, the building inspector sign the paper and left. I brought this up and was told he was giving him back money that he borrowed for lunch! Within just over a year my septic is right back to where it was. So the county is protecting the Builder that we can't find and my neighbor and I are going to have to go in halves and build a retaining wall and drainage system between our houses. That's another expense we have to come up with this winter. Everybody in the city government and builders around here protects each other. I could tell you hundreds of stories like mine but I think mine's enough.

 

[prsnlty]

Anyway I 100% agree with you as far as propane generators go. If for no other reason but running out of gas. That was a monster issue here with this last hurricane. People were traveling from one County to another trying to find the only gas station open with gas and lined up all the way down the roads and sitting there all day only to reach the pump and it be out of gas again. Crazy stuff! Luckily for us we had already filled up all of our gas cans more than a week ahead of time. So I not only had gas for anything I might need it for but for my car as well ahead of the game. But when running a generator you go through quite a lot of it. We will eventually get a propane generator but for now the price point difference is Major with all of the other expenses we have to come up with.

 

[prsnlty]

With respect to that alarm, it only has to work once to pay for itself!

Absolutely and for so little money and effort, it's a no brainer :D I feel like there's no excuse for someone not to have one unless they didn't have knowledge of its existence. I wish I had known about it before!
Heartbeat with Fusion is a wonderful thing it truly is! It has on more than one occasion helped me out. However at night when I'm asleep I am not checking my messages. So having an alarm like this when the power goes out is wonderful! I think it should be part of the mandatory must haves with any Reef tank.

 

[erk]

In the 4+ years I've been a part of the reef hobby, I've had a lot of crashes. Most because of my stupidity/curiosity and some because bad luck.

First big crash I ever had was due to not adequately dosing magnesium. I dosed two part and that was it. This eventually led to a very low magnesium situation, ~ 1000ppm or less. Corals didn't survive that one. Now I check magnesium levels about once a month and record the dosage needed to replenish the 3ppm/day uptake.

Second one was GFO related. GFO isn't cheap and I am cheap. So I tried to push it for as long as I possibly could. Turns out when GFO saturates, it can actually start feeding bacteria. The bacteria bloom was so great that water was just beige and opaque. Lost some fish and a couple corals. The dying animals only fed the bloom. I took off the GFO reactor and overnight the bloom stopped. Tried GFO again about a week later and bacteria bloom came back. Now I run only a skimmer and a zeolite reactor. The zeolite reactor is more for increased surface area for bacteria growth. Just something to keep in mind if you have a bacteria bloom and run GFO.

Third crash was a complete mystery. I used one of those cheap Chinese acrylic dosing containers, the ones with the orange lid. Not sure if something leached out of the acrylic, but my alk solution became contaminated. Turned a light brown. During this time, my corals all started dying together. Lost a large setosa colony, almost every SPS frag, almost every LPS, and even some zoas. Only things that survived without a scratch were the gorgs. I learned from this event to periodically check the dosing containers. If possible, use the original containers the solutions came in. And if issues start to rise, check all equipment first before chasing parameters. That was a major mistake I made and only compounded the issues.

Several other smaller crashes I've had were due to going too fast. Trying to compensate for alk/calc mismatches. I purchased the Hanna calc checker and made the mistake of trusting it. Don't trust a checker until you have verified its accuracy against your usual test kit. I had calc over 600ppm and I thought it was under 400ppm. Whoops!

As I said above, all were my mistake. I overlooked things and made conclusions without the full picture or ignoring facts. I didn't prepare myself or lacked experience to make the right decision. The main lesson I've learned is take it slow and employ redundancies/checks and balances to reduce the chances for mistakes. I view my setup as a life support system and if it was me in that tank, I'd want to know that even if everything fails, at least the bare minimum will keep functioning and keep me alive.

 

[prsnlty]

In the 4+ years I've been a part of the reef hobby, I've had a lot of crashes. Most because of my stupidity/curiosity and some because bad luck.

First big crash I ever had was due to not adequately dosing magnesium. I dosed two part and that was it. This eventually led to a very low magnesium situation, ~ 1000ppm or less. Corals didn't survive that one. Now I check magnesium levels about once a month and record the dosage needed to replenish the 3ppm/day uptake.

Second one was GFO related. GFO isn't cheap and I am cheap. So I tried to push it for as long as I possibly could. Turns out when GFO saturates, it can actually start feeding bacteria. The bacteria bloom was so great that water was just beige and opaque. Lost some fish and a couple corals. The dying animals only fed the bloom. I took off the GFO reactor and overnight the bloom stopped. Tried GFO again about a week later and bacteria bloom came back. Now I run only a skimmer and a zeolite reactor. The zeolite reactor is more for increased surface area for bacteria growth. Just something to keep in mind if you have a bacteria bloom and run GFO.

Third crash was a complete mystery. I used one of those cheap Chinese acrylic dosing containers, the ones with the orange lid. Not sure if something leached out of the acrylic, but my alk solution became contaminated. Turned a light brown. During this time, my corals all started dying together. Lost a large setosa colony, almost every SPS frag, almost every LPS, and even some zoas. Only things that survived without a scratch were the gorgs. I learned from this event to periodically check the dosing containers. If possible, use the original containers the solutions came in. And if issues start to rise, check all equipment first before chasing parameters. That was a major mistake I made and only compounded the issues.

Several other smaller crashes I've had were due to going too fast. Trying to compensate for alk/calc mismatches. I purchased the Hanna calc checker and made the mistake of trusting it. Don't trust a checker until you have verified its accuracy against your usual test kit. I had calc over 600ppm and I thought it was under 400ppm. Whoops!

As I said above, all were my mistake. I overlooked things and made conclusions without the full picture or ignoring facts. I didn't prepare myself or lacked experience to make the right decision. The main lesson I've learned is take it slow and employ redundancies/checks and balances to reduce the chances for mistakes. I view my setup as a life support system and if it was me in that tank, I'd want to know that even if everything fails, at least the bare minimum will keep functioning and keep me alive.

Excellent point and I agree we all make similar mistakes when we're new to reefing and even when we're not. Sometimes we're so used to the way our system runs or otherwise too busy with other things we don't notice certain things that are off and it doesn't click like you might think it would. Like me with the clogged alkalinity line and I had already lost all those acro's that would have soaked up the difference. Since they weren't there I had a spike which killed the rest of the SPS off that were recovering from the first crash. I should have known better to lower the dosage or for that matter shut the doser down and start it again like new. Ie; checking actual usage before dosing.... That was definitely my mistake!

 

[brandon429]

How to take apart any living reef tank, clean or replace the sand, remove invaders completely without causing a cycle upon re setup:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

How to skip the initial cycle of a reeftank sensibly using biology and microbiology. Myriad examples, it's not rushing its skip cycle biology for specific cases and benefits (like how huge marine convention setups are made without waiting a month)
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-microbiology-of-reef-tank-cycling.214618/


Neither of those threads could exist nor the $$ we put right on the line if cycles were not 100% controllable. Dealing with tank cycles is my favorite reefing subject.

Since the history of reefkeeping, the number one hardware device that has misled the masses about microbiology and cycle science is the misreading .25 API ammonia test kit. It's done literal damage to the masses regarding the ability to exert control over a cycle. The impact of a million false .25 readings will never fully be undone and google will keep it documented, and continuing we see.

 

[prsnlty]

How to take apart any living reef tank, clean or replace the sand, remove invaders completely without causing a cycle upon re setup:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/t...ead-aka-one-against-many.230281/#post-2681445

How to skip the initial cycle of a reeftank sensibly using biology and microbiology. Myriad examples, it's not rushing its skip cycle biology for specific cases and benefits (like how huge marine convention setups are made without waiting a month)
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/the-microbiology-of-reef-tank-cycling.214618/


Neither of those threads could exist nor the $$ we put right on the line if cycles were not 100% controllable. Dealing with tank cycles is my favorite reefing subject.

Since the history of reefkeeping, the number one hardware device that has misled the masses about microbiology and cycle science is the misreading .25 API ammonia test kit. It's done literal damage to the masses regarding the ability to exert control over a cycle. The impact of a million false .25 readings will never fully be undone and google will keep it documented, and continuing we see.

Thank you for sharing the thread! Interesting read :D

What about rinsing out about 360 lbs of 3 year old sand bed? Without breaking down the tank and/or causing a cycle that is. I know my sb is aged and surely full of detritus etc... I have a rusty aglae or something plus cyano that began after the power outage crash. Had a ph blow up a large section of sb and no3 went form 5 to 10 ppm, po4 went from .04 to .12.

 

[AllSignsPointToFish]

I had a miniature crash, well rough spot really, recently, and I couldn't tell what was going on. All of my water parameters were well within limits. One of my reefing buddies was having the same issue, and he convinced me to try switching back to Instant Ocean from Reef Crystals. I didn't believe him and let things linger for another couple of weeks. My montis stopped growing, most of my corals looked like crap, and I finally decided to give it a try since I had some IO on hand. Man, what a difference! Everything started coloring back up and my montis were growing like weeds again.

I know people will discount this, but my buddy and I have both had the same results. I don't fully understand it, but I suspect there is some trace impurity in the RC salt mix that causes this issue. The point is that things were going well, and I don't know what initially made me decide to try RC...maybe curiosity, but I shouldn't have messed with something that wasn't broken!

 

[brandon429]

We would take apart the tank to rip clean something that big prsnlty. It's not that we can't slowly clean it in portions, it's that the nutrient upwelling caused by that extended practice might seat algae into every nook and cranny. I personally would just change it all out for new sand using skip cycle order of ops