TANK CRASH! Have you ever had one?

[revhtree Verified Admin]

Just wondering how many of you have ever experienced a tank crash to do any reason?

I had a heater bust in my 125g way back when and wiped out about everything I had! Didn't realize it was busted for over a week.

 

[stewart1019]

I've had two.....busted heater as well, that wipes everything out. The first was an upside down jelly caught in a powerhead, learned that lesson the hard way. Chopped jellyfish in the water is bad new to all your fish. Not a total loss, over half my fish, though.

 

[Troylee]

i crashed my frag tank with a alk spike...:(

 

[macawmagic]

Calcium reactor probe went wacko and even though it read 6.6 in the reactor...with the new probe it was 7.8...aka no media was being broken down...I noticed something was wrong when my 8" tall Garf Bonsai was white in the morning...When I got home from work...2 more things were white...next morning...2 or 3 more...Lost pretty much everything except my setosa, oregon tort, and green slimer. Go figure.

 

[DBarsotti]

Mg overdose

 

[sexycorals]

chiller caught fire and crash the whole house.. =)

 

[KLR]

My new 90 gal tank was set up for a while and then i cam home one night around 11 and the tank was pouring water out of the bottom,I did know what the problem was at first..........this tank is on hard wood floor.......then I took all of the livestock out of the tank and put them in buckets...

I finally found out the whole left side's seal broke so it bottomed out.. Then i took all of the livestock to the lfs at 1 am to be held until i got a new tank and cleaned the floor, and all of the fish died of shock and a random outbreak of ich..... But the floor was saved!

 

[mnat]

Lost power for 2 days in a snow storm. Lost power at 10:30 pm at the height of the storm and when we woke up at 7 am the tanks were 55 degrees. Lost several fish and about 3/4 of our coral.

 

[sprinklerdudes]

hey my aptasia is still alive and well, after my last heater malfunction,

 

[seth&angelle]

Had a crash about 5 months ago. I have my tank plumbed to where I can do a water change by turning two valves. My drain valve in the sump is at the same level as the water in the sump. I have it like that so that I can't accidentally drain it too low and burn up the return pump, but it also tricked me. My wife and I were going out of town for a week, and I did a water change. Well, I left the drain open which the water level in the sump looks normal, but it was slowly draining and toping off with freshwater the entire week we were gone. My salinity plummeted, and killed every coral in my 300gal and 150gal frag tank.

 

[jledon4]

when I was starting in the hobby, I had a 65 gallon cube with a 250w MH. As a rookie mistake, I placed the timer for this lamp above the sump with velcro. The glue on the velcro didnt hold too good and one day dealing with the lamp pulled the cable and caused the timer to drop into the water. Within seconds my complete tank was wiped out. I had never seen RTN happen that fast on acros!!!

 

[sprinklerdudes]

was on the computer one night, cat went screaming by, a few minuted later I head the pump running dry, the cat had tried to climb the return line and pulled it lose and the salt water ran all over the floor flooding, everything, was not a fun evening.

 

[snipersps]

Only 2 in 10 years the most recently last December 2010

 

[Troylee]

Only 2 in 10 years the most recently last December 2010

That sucks... Is that why your taking a break???

 

[underwaterfirefighter]

Had one last summer that wiped out all of our fish. Only coral we lost was a nice Duncan colony.

 

[CJO]

I came very close the first week after setting up the tank. Here's the post right after it happened:

"I purchased a 65 gal aquarium just before Christmas from someone moving out of the area. He has had it stable for the past year and a half and had it professionally maintained by someone at the local fish store. At lunch today I met the person who maintained it so that I could make sure that I was maintaining it correctly and to get some pointers on upkeep. When I arrived home this evening, I went to feed the fish (7-year-old ocellaris clown and 1-year-old neon dottyback) and found the clown floating at the top, barely moving, and the neon dottyback was nowhere to be seen. A quick test of the levels showed that the pH had dropped from 8.4 to 6.5!

He had adjusted the calcium reactor when he was here and I'm guessing that he did it incorrectly."

Luckily I was able to get the pH up by opening the windows and airing it out. Didn't lose anything except a hermit crab, but I had to refill the CO2 tank the next day.

CJ

 

[FiReBReTHa]

had a partial crash earlier this year.

went down for the memorial and then the house caretakers were doing a good job refilling RO into a small tank and the doser would then fill the DT. Well the doser spun out and stripped the rotor and then it stopped topping off. they werent around for the last two days so the return ran dry, It was Feb in IL so the tanks temp dropped since the heaters in the sump and I lost some of the best pieces in my tank, really busted me up because I didnt wanna deal with it. Almost left the hobby but instead I stepped back and carried the tank till recently and for the past couple months I have been getting back into it fully :)

 

[Soups]

Hi all
this is my first post, not a nice way to start!!
Two years ago went on vacation came home with ALL dead SPS & fish. Had my skimmer cup hooked to a drain pipe "rookie".
The skimmer started to react like a wild can of pop. So my top up water keeped filling my tank with RO water.
Salinity dropped down to fresh water.:sad:

 

[MimicOcto8]

Great thread...learning a lot.

I have a job where I work for 7days on and off for 7. So i'm gone every other week. I guess you could say i'm an expert at taking vacation in this hobby. I've setup 3 different system so that I can leave them un touched every other week. My 160gallon frag tank in the garage was the one to crash. A few months back we had an extremely cold week hit our county. I had 2 150w heaters in the sump and long story short they just couldnt keep up with the cold week we had. once As soon as I got home i noticed 1 white coral and I knew something was wrong. I checked the Temp and it was at 62F. I quickly moved several high end frags to the tank in the house (very limited space)and those were the only frags that lived. Luckily no fish were in the frag tank.

 

[Kbra]

Thankfully no. I try to use my APEX controller as a watchful eye on my tank for anomalies