Ohh that's a great point. Thanks PBnJ1. Major travel anxiety, two crashes both times. Enough money lost to drive a new car off a cliff for no reason ;Meh
2. Having somebody KNOWLEDGEABLE on standby helps, personally I use a neptune system with trident and a 24/7 camera to keep my eyes on things when I’m out now. Take no chances folks.
3. I went off on a vacation for a month and came back home for a day before having to leave for a business trip within that same day.
Had my ato pump stop working... (kalkwasser+water) the kalkwasser is basically a Ca and alk solution. Anyway I get back the pH is way off the charts because my pumps are spinning air water, (because my ato pump failed) I notice my corals are practically dead, people at home didn’t think anything was wrong... they just heard “weird noises”...... anyway.... So forgetting I had kalkwasser I kick on a new ATO and dump kalkwasser back into my tank. Couple hours later I go back down and BOOM I see everything is even worse, kH and Ca are way off now with the pH skyrocketing now. In a rush I dump vinegar in there to fix the pH because it’s way off AGAIN and in the rush I add too much.... so now my pH has tanked and I can’t get it up (Nice going). I go grab baking soda or powder whichever it was and try forcing that in there.
I couldn’t do a water change because I didn’t have any water and I didn’t have time to sit and wait to make some.
Anyway so I start adding the baking soda/powder I can’t remember which and I can’t raise the pH. Then being that I had a business trip I left promptly thereafter about 3 AM on a 9 hour drive LOL!!! After that while I was away things started to settle more and I had my friend come take all of my half-dead corals out to his frag tank. They did okay in there but most didn’t make it. RIP to all the lives lost ;Blackeye;Dead;Nailbiting;Blackeye
That was the worse of the two... that one was partial user error but it all started with that one pump, which IMO put all the corals and fish down in the first place, I just helped finish the job. And no more kalkwasser.... ever...
encouraging pictures ~>