What percentage of reefers have experienced disasters?

[ColoredRock]

I must have walked in front of my tank wearing my Speedo

no.. not before my morning cup of carbon..to much

 

[Floyd-]

Tell me about it. I'm going away for four days next weekend which is what prompted me to start this thread. I IMMEDIATELY regret it.

Should be fine. I can setup my tanks to run 7 days straight before it needs attention for vacations.

 

[ColoredRock]

Tell me about it. I'm going away for four days next weekend which is what prompted me to start this thread. I IMMEDIATELY regre

if I were in your shoes.. if it worries you for a 13.5.. run to a store grab a peice of plex and put it on top.. hold evaporation to a minimum and keep anything from jumping out.

and enjoy your 4 days away from home!

 

[dennis romano]

I've been in the hobby since 1968. Sooner or later, disaster strikes. I have had a 125 and a 29 split a seam during the night. Heater malfunctions cooked fish and coral chowder. Two (3 and 2) days long blackouts. Not to mention disease outbreaks.

 

[jfoahs04]

Should be fine. I can setup my tanks to run 7 days straight before it needs attention for vacations.

if I were in your shoes.. if it worries you for a 13.5.. run to a store grab a peice of plex and put it on top.. hold evaporation to a minimum and keep anything from jumping out.

and enjoy your 4 days away from home!

Thanks, I'm not too worried. I've been away for up to a week with this setup. The ATO is good for about 2 weeks when full and I have an auto fish feeder that does the trick. 4 days should be fine. It's just reading through all of these scenario has me thinking of every possible thing that could happen.

 

[Indeva]

I'm just recovering from a disaster with my office tank. A coworker was helping me by feeding the LPS on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving as I was out sick that week. I came back to the office on Monday morning and realized the coworker left the filter and powerheads off for the four and a half days. It was heartbreaking to say the least.

 

[SHINYSuccubus]

As a long time member of reefing forums (though relatively new to R2R), I see a ton of "Emergency!", "Help!", "All of my fish/coral is dying!", etc. threads and it's got me wondering what do you think is the percentage of reefers who have experienced disasters? When I say "disaster," I don't mean a single fish dying, or a coral that didn't make it, but rather major issues with their system - anything from huge equipment failures, to tank crashes, to diseases wiping out populations.

I miraculously dodged bullets in my first SW (FOWLR) tank - I was 17, no clue what I was doing, and I overstocked my cheap 20g with HOB filter with incompatible fish (and a snowflake eel) and kept them all alive for 2 years before giving them away and shutting the tank down because college was taking up too much time. I didn't lose a fish - not even the blue damsel I used to cycle the tank. I was 25 when I started my first reef and while I took precautions and had better equipment, I did have a velvet issue that killed all of my fish. I also lost several LPS colonies. It cost me a lot of money, a ton of stress, and had me second guessing myself at every turn. In hindsight, better QT protocols and better element management (testing/dosing, etc.) would have likely minimized the risks, but in my experience, there's certainly also an element of pure, dumb luck.

So, while full blown disasters are generally avoidable, do most people experience them anyway?

i’ve had the obligatory heater disaster, and even though i now run tandem heaters thru my neptune controller i almost had another just a couple of weeks ago - fortunately i caught it quickly and “only” lost our ginormous hermit crab, of whom we were very fond.

 

[juarec0201]

No equipment failures …. Yet. However I have crashed my tank several times by bottoming out po4. Didn’t realize what I was doing wrong then. But easily lost 80% of my lps and quickly too. Finally things are growing

 

[Lbrdsoxfan]

Let's See: Heater failures (on and off) multiple times, bad seam on a FOWLER 150gal in a apartment, forgot to turn back on return pump remotely when on vacation (crashed my 50 gal cube). Not checking tds on rodi which caused a hard nutrient spike & tank crash. Small garage fire on attached home setup which caused oxygen deprivation of the tank due to smoke.

That's about it since 2005.