TANK CRASH! Have you ever had one?

skinz78 · Jan 18, 2011

I lost over $4000.00 in clams a few years ago when I didn't have a QT set up, over 20 clams all dead within one month. The three in my sig pic were in that loss.

CookieJar · Jan 18, 2011

I accidentally set the house heater on, and it stayed on for 9+ hrs. so when I came home from work my house was around 120 and my tank 103F. About half of the fish & corals didn't make it and the heat also caused a plumbing failure (garden hose connector) of a couple hundred gallons- hello new carpet.

clarky2120 · Jan 18, 2011

sexycorals said:
chiller caught fire and crash the whole house.. =)

My biggest fear in this hobby. I could probably stand losing a tank, but not my house to this hobby. I'm always afraid the wiring will catch fire. There's a lot of stuff that needs plugged in to keep this hobby alive.

Paul_N · Jan 18, 2011

I had one a few years back. I was battling GHA pretty bad and saw a thread about Marine Algaefix so I tried it. Most in the thread where seeing great results in 2 to 3 weeks. I saw nothing so I kept dosing. At about week 6 my coral started to RTN. I didn't have a ton of coral and most were frags in the 2-3" range but I stopped dosing it immediately. I had two that did not have RTN and they survived but lost all my other sps(about 12 frags). I had frogspawn and duncans that also closed up and it took them about 3 weeks to open fully again.

Pizzapro83 · Jan 18, 2011

I had a snail get stuck in the overflow in the middle of the night. It over flowed 30 gallons, all my pumps ran dry. Luckly I woke up early and temp only got down to 68. I refilled tank and the same happened the next night. I gave away all my snails. I got lucky and lost nothing.

Captain Nemo · Jan 18, 2011

I had one about 4-5 months ago. Stealth heater malfunctioned and tank got to 92 deg before i caught it. Lost all my xenia and green slimer. as well as most of my zoas. Not that I had much to begin with but when you have almost nothing and lose it all it sucks. I have since been battling algae, and have gone with a more reliable heater. lost a Regal and a clown and 2 firefish. Sad day.

flipit13 · Jan 18, 2011

I had 2 one was from ESV sand but my mistake not doing more research and then a total crash after my fan that was siliconed to the tank desided to come loose after 3 years. And decided to become a power head with lightning bolts fish lived but all corals died.
i have a saying "it's not how, it's when" lol

Mr.Firemouth · Jan 18, 2011

I have had tank crashes from power outages, lack of water changes, electrical shorts, bad heaters, A/C failure and tank got too hot, poisonous fish and inverts dying, and just trials and tribulations from experimenting with new designs and products without fully understanding how or if they worked. I have had SW tanks since 1985 and have crashed quite a few systems, some big, some small. Nowadays it takes me being too lazy to do proper maintenance or a serious power outage to crash a tank. My current 180g display/300g capacity system has seen 3 partial crashes since 2006. I credit its survival to the extremely large skimmer I run and that I have detected all problems rather quickly to stop or prevent a full crash.

Sea MunnKey · Jan 18, 2011

Mine happened when we had our first heat wave (lasted two weeks) last summer where our home central A/C unit broke down and calling the technicians was pure nightmare as they claimed everybody's A/C's were down and an unexpected high number of emergency calls as well.

The fist technician came a couple days later and replaced the broken unit and left abruptly with the circulating fan on reverse mode ... :ooh: and realizing their "professional" mistake I immediately called them to come back to get it fix ASAP and only to be told that it will take another few more days before they can come back again to rectify the problem and I'm like what the heck !!???!? Temperature was spiking to the upper 30's to almost 40˚ as it was getting really hot at home as well.

By the time they'd acknowledge it was the other technicians fault it was already too late ... I've lost all of my wild Aussie SPS colonies plus two of my largest Duncan colonies as well. Chiller wasn't enough to cool down the intense heat & humidity. I should've packed and brought them over to my local LFS for temporary babysitting ... and yes my LFS buddy had offered this after the fact ... :squigglemouth:

I'm starting all over again ... everything perished from my wild Strawberry Shortcake, Ice & Fire Echinata, the so called Candle Stick acro and lots of unknown never seen before Aussie SPS and I'm counting about 15 wild colonies of prized collections never to be found again :cry:!!

Oddly enough my Rhyzo collections weren't in any way harmed ... I was dumbfounded as I thought they were collected from cold water region?

Now I've got Aiptasia outbreak in my system after the crash ... tried Berghia Nudis to no effect and will attempt Peppermint shrimps and if it still persist then I will attempt to get the aiptasia eating Bristle-Tail Filefish (Acreichthys tomentosus).

Paul

foxhuntr · Jan 18, 2011

Knock on wood......lol

Mr.Firemouth · Jan 19, 2011

Sea MunnKey said:
Mine happened when we had our first heat wave (lasted two weeks) last summer where our home central A/C unit broke down and calling the technicians was pure nightmare as they claimed everybody's A/C's were down and an unexpected high number of emergency calls as well.

The fist technician came a couple days later and replaced the broken unit and left abruptly with the circulating fan on reverse mode ... :ooh: and realizing their "professional" mistake I immediately called them to come back to get it fix ASAP and only to be told that it will take another few more days before they can come back again to rectify the problem and I'm like what the heck !!???!? Temperature was spiking to the upper 30's to almost 40˚ as it was getting really hot at home as well.

By the time they'd acknowledge it was the other technicians fault it was already too late ... I've lost all of my wild Aussie SPS colonies plus two of my largest Duncan colonies as well. Chiller wasn't enough to cool down the intense heat & humidity. I should've packed and brought them over to my local LFS for temporary babysitting ... and yes my LFS buddy had offered this after the fact ... :squigglemouth:

I'm starting all over again ... everything perished from my wild Strawberry Shortcake, Ice & Fire Echinata, the so called Candle Stick acro and lots of unknown never seen before Aussie SPS and I'm counting about 15 wild colonies of prized collections never to be found again :cry:!!

Oddly enough my Rhyzo collections weren't in any way harmed ... I was dumbfounded as I thought they were collected from cold water region?

Now I've got Aiptasia outbreak in my system after the crash ... tried Berghia Nudis to no effect and will attempt Peppermint shrimps and if it still persist then I will attempt to get the aiptasia eating Bristle-Tail Filefish (Acreichthys tomentosus).

Paul

The copperband butterfly works better than the filefish. You can try either one.

Sea MunnKey · Jan 19, 2011

Mr.Firemouth said:
The copperband butterfly works better than the filefish. You can try either one.

The thing with Copperband Butterfly is a Hit 'N Miss scenario so I'm really worried about housing another fish that's not doing what it's supposed to do.

Thanks,
Paul