Tank crashes

Nick Steele · Aug 2, 2021

So I’m really curious how many people out there have went through some sort of crash with there tanks. I seem to be in the mist of a crash although happening very slowly.

If you could explain what happened and if you were able to stop it that would be great!

Mine has started about a month ago with my montiporas losing flesh. It slowly spread to other sps and I haven’t found the exact cause but I think it has to do with nutrients.

mrlavalamp · Aug 2, 2021

I had a minor crash when I first started reefing.

I moved a tank I bought used and it had a VERY deep sand bed using one of the old techniques in practice at the time.

I forget what it was called but basically the previous owner of the tank had built a rack in the bottom of the tank with eggcrating and screen over it to create a 1" rise above the bottom glass, on top of that went about 8" of sand.

I bought the whole kit and kaboodle from him, livestock and all, and proceeded to move it myself from his place to mine (about 3 hours away).

Drained the water and put the rock in a couple cans with water.

I took great care to preserve the livestock (airpumps, heaters a little flow etc). but I did NOTHING for the sand besides pull it out and dump it into buckets so we could actually pick the tank up and get it out.

The sand STANK but I didnt know better at the time so I just dumped it back in to the tank.

As soon as I put it back together, tests for ammonia and nitrate looked ok, fish swam and seemed ok, but all of the corals went through rapid decline and died. Lost a couple fish over the following days, but most survived.

This was about 10 years ago now, and I was very new to the hobby, hindisight is always 20/20.

Nick Steele · Aug 2, 2021

@mrlavalamp you live and you learn. Specially back then when forums weren’t as prevalent.

vetteguy53081 · Aug 2, 2021

Mine was minor but as with many, due to Dino outbreak.

Ranjib · Aug 2, 2021

It is arguable if a slow crash will be a typical crash or not. Most often the rapid deterioration of the tank either due to die off (sea cukes ), disease (Rtn), contamination (metals), equipment failure or one bad thing rapidly led to other.. but its fast from hours to within days and the end result is melt down, clouded water.
What you are going through is a slow deterioration, it could be termed as a crash, but more importantly theres a lot you can do. Isolate, detect and preventive measures.. because you have time. Start with identifying the reason for coral death. How are the fish? any lps damage? Do you have QT or back up tank? What type of preventive measure you have employed (water change etc)

If you want to learn more about specific types of crash., its best to search R2R for each of those type of failures. We have many. The community has been a god send help for sharing those information and helping each other during those time. You can use reef squad tags for calling in emergency help on identification, prevention methods etc

Jekyl · Aug 2, 2021

mrlavalamp said:
I had a minor crash when I first started reefing.

I moved a tank I bought used and it had a VERY deep sand bed using one of the old techniques in practice at the time.

I forget what it was called but basically the previous owner of the tank had built a rack in the bottom of the tank with eggcrating and screen over it to create a 1" rise above the bottom glass, on top of that went about 8" of sand.

I bought the whole kit and kaboodle from him, livestock and all, and proceeded to move it myself from his place to mine (about 3 hours away).

Drained the water and put the rock in a couple cans with water.

I took great care to preserve the livestock (airpumps, heaters a little flow etc). but I did NOTHING for the sand besides pull it out and dump it into buckets so we could actually pick the tank up and get it out.

The sand STANK but I didnt know better at the time so I just dumped it back in to the tank.

As soon as I put it back together, tests for ammonia and nitrate looked ok, fish swam and seemed ok, but all of the corals went through rapid decline and died. Lost a couple fish over the following days, but most survived.

This was about 10 years ago now, and I was very new to the hobby, hindisight is always 20/20.

Gives tanks like mine and @Paul B 's a bad name. Not sure what he was trying to accomplish unless it was very low flow like @Lasse is doing. Sand would clog up the ports. In my system I used crushed coral and pump water into those plates. Going on 3 years and running like a dream.

dedragon · Aug 2, 2021

Nick Steele said:
Mine has started about a month ago with my montiporas losing flesh. It slowly spread to other sps and I haven’t found the exact cause but I think it has to do with nutrients.

If you have tested everything already and checked all equipment i would move onto an ICP test.
Man i think everyone has at least had one tank crash, i had a small one recently with some new acros, they came in an all started to rtn then a pump failed and it let the spread happen faster. Only lost the new acros and a miyagi tort colony but man that was a pain, think brightwell koralrecover stopped it somehow

mrlavalamp · Aug 2, 2021

Jekyl said:
Gives tanks like mine and @Paul B 's a bad name. Not sure what he was trying to accomplish unless it was very low flow like @Lasse is doing. Sand would clog up the ports. In my system I used crushed coral and pump water into those plates. Going on 3 years and running like a dream.

no way, you guys are pros in comparison to me, especially back then.

The deep sand bed+plenum idea was new to me and the previous owner told me that's what he was running when I bought it in 2010. in retrospect, he definitely didnt set it up correctly at all (just a frame with eggcrate and window screen on top then sand piled 8" deep) there was no flow in or out of the plenum at all.

When I re-assembled the tank after the move I really should have cleaned all the sand really well before putting it back into the tank considering how much I disturbed it in the move (and how anaerobic the plenum system had become over the several years it was running prior). I didn't though so It crashed.

Jekyl · Aug 2, 2021

mrlavalamp said:
no way, you guys are pros in comparison to me, especially back then.

The deep sand bed+plenum idea was new to me and the previous owner told me that's what he was running when I bought it in 2010. He definitely didnt set it up correctly at all (just a frame with eggcrate and window screen on top then sand piled 8" deep) there was no flow in or out of the plenum at all.

When I re-assembled the tank after the move I really should have cleaned all the sand really well before putting it back into the tank considering how much I disturbed it in the move (and how anaerobic the plenum system had become over the several years it was running prior). I didn't though so It crashed.

I misunderstood the original post. That was just a typical DSB. Which for some still works well. However stirring it up is a really bad thing as I understand.

Aquachristik · Aug 2, 2021

Rusty screws in the water change pump and oddly rust in the carbon I was using (Deep Blue brand).

Used Brightwell Purit and Seachem Prime daily to combat it.

DeniseAndy · Aug 2, 2021

I had a minor one when my montis all died of an alk spike leading to a bacterial infection. Lost all montis, nothing else. Then, when I moved my tank over to my new one, all thatcould have gone wrong did and my animals did not make it. Lost tons including all my fish, most gorgs, etc. One coral was fragged and kept. The gorgs fragged were sold. Couple others made it, but not much. Very sad months.

DeniseAndy · Aug 2, 2021

Forgot, I did have a heater malfunction in a 6g and the water was 97 degress F. Lost almost everything. My pistol shrimp survived and one clown baby. Not much else that I remember.

DeniseAndy · Aug 2, 2021

I guess only one is concidered a tank crash as the others were malfunctions and a result of a poor move. I still see them as crashes though.

Nick Steele · Aug 2, 2021

Ranjib said:
It is arguable if a slow crash will be a typical crash or not. Most often the rapid deterioration of the tank either due to die off (sea cukes ), disease (Rtn), contamination (metals), equipment failure or one bad thing rapidly led to other.. but its fast from hours to within days and the end result is melt down, clouded water.
What you are going through is a slow deterioration, it could be termed as a crash, but more importantly theres a lot you can do. Isolate, detect and preventive measures.. because you have time. Start with identifying the reason for coral death. How are the fish? any lps damage? Do you have QT or back up tank? What type of preventive measure you have employed (water change etc)

If you want to learn more about specific types of crash., its best to search R2R for each of those type of failures. We have many. The community has been a god send help for sharing those information and helping each other during those time. You can use reef squad tags for calling in emergency help on identification, prevention methods etc

dedragon said:
If you have tested everything already and checked all equipment i would move onto an ICP test.
Man i think everyone has at least had one tank crash, i had a small one recently with some new acros, they came in an all started to rtn then a pump failed and it let the spread happen faster. Only lost the new acros and a miyagi tort colony but man that was a pain, think brightwell koralrecover stopped it somehow

Fish are doing great. Lps are doing great as well. Even some of the acros/sps(Walt Disney/pink lemonade and a monti spongodes) are doing good and growing still.

I do not have a qt tank that can sustain corals at all. I have kept up with my water changes. I did also send out an icp right before this happened and everything came back almost spot on to what I would have thought. Only two things that was slightly off was I had an all spike from 8.3-9.5 out of nowhere of two weeks that has since been fixed about two weeks ago. I also had phosphate bottom out and nitrates dropped to 2ppm or so. I have since upped it slowly to .08 phos and 7 nitrate.

DeniseAndy · Aug 2, 2021

I hope it recovers. My montis did not after one started, it just continued. Weird too becasue this was all over 3 or more months (closer to 4). It only affected montis. I had sps, lps, softies in the tank. I kept the tank clear of montis for 3 years and then, weirdly, one of the originals popped up again.

Now, one thing I did, which I think contributed is I fragged a huge cap because of the deterioration. I could not pull this piece out, it was huge (8"deep with like 6 rings that were maybe 10" wide). I think that began further issues. I tried to not over react and left every thing stable, but things just faded slowly. This was many years ago, but I remember it well. Hated seeing all my montis go.
Here were a few that died.

Ranjib · Aug 2, 2021

Nick Steele said:
Fish are doing great. Lps are doing great as well. Even some of the acros/sps(Walt Disney/pink lemonade and a monti spongodes) are doing good and growing still.

I do not have a qt tank that can sustain corals at all. I have kept up with my water changes. I did also send out an icp right before this happened and everything came back almost spot on to what I would have thought. Only two things that was slightly off was I had an all spike from 8.3-9.5 out of nowhere of two weeks that has since been fixed about two weeks ago. I also had phosphate bottom out and nitrates dropped to 2ppm or so. I have since upped it slowly to .08 phos and 7 nitrate.

I suspect some specific kind of infection or contamination. If Icp results come clean , Check for any specific type of scars or to sue let as that may help in identifying the infection . Check at night and check underneath for Nudi etc. a water change followed by probiotics (like the ones from brightwell or vividaquarium, micro Bacter 7, coral Rx) can alter any existing establish bad microbial population with good, non pathogenic , beneficial ones. It may not help directly , but @AquaBiomics does genomics based mic4 Bike analysis for tank, (not sure if it’s as effective as 16s r rna based Metagenomics ), but it can identify any potential pathogen if present

Gup · Aug 28, 2021

mrlavalamp said:
I had a minor crash when I first started reefing.

I moved a tank I bought used and it had a VERY deep sand bed using one of the old techniques in practice at the time.

I forget what it was called but basically the previous owner of the tank had built a rack in the bottom of the tank with eggcrating and screen over it to create a 1" rise above the bottom glass, on top of that went about 8" of sand.

I bought the whole kit and kaboodle from him, livestock and all, and proceeded to move it myself from his place to mine (about 3 hours away).

Drained the water and put the rock in a couple cans with water.

I took great care to preserve the livestock (airpumps, heaters a little flow etc). but I did NOTHING for the sand besides pull it out and dump it into buckets so we could actually pick the tank up and get it out.

The sand STANK but I didnt know better at the time so I just dumped it back in to the tank.

As soon as I put it back together, tests for ammonia and nitrate looked ok, fish swam and seemed ok, but all of the corals went through rapid decline and died. Lost a couple fish over the following days, but most survived.

This was about 10 years ago now, and I was very new to the hobby, hindisight is always 20/20.

That rack in the bottom, with a screen cover, sounds to me like a DIY undergravel filter. I had a plastic manufactured one in my first FO 55gal tank 40+ years ago. You attach 1 air line each to 2 stand tubes in the back corners. Process work by siphoning water thru the sand and plastic grate to the back tubes. The top of each tube had a charcoal filter attachment

At that time, I never read, heard or saw sump tank filtering process in Aquarium Magazine or my very large LFS. Martin's Aquariums in Jenkintown Pennsylvania

rhostam · Aug 28, 2021

Some times they happen super fast…
Tank crash pt 1

Tank crash pt 2

Nick Steele · Aug 28, 2021

rhostam said:
Some times they happen super fast…
Tank crash pt 1

Tank crash pt 2

I love this channel! Yeah I seen those episodes.

Well so far I think I’ve found out the issue. White bugs crawling in and out of my sps polyps. I’ve been doing interceptor treatments and it seems to be helping. 2/3 treatments done so far and I’ve lost two frags but one has bounced back another has halted all stn and polyps back out although 90% goner and the 3rd ones stn stops until right before the next treatment.

Tank has starting using alk again so that is a good sign as when this all started it wasn’t using any alk over the week.

USCfan · Aug 28, 2021

Yes. Had a heater failure while out of town. Here a thread from RC when it happen. Other people got it worst then me for those heaters. I just lost most my livestock.