Share your tank crash story

[The Saltman]

Hi guys,

I'm starting this thread to make other reefers aware of things that can go wrong and crash an entire tank. Please share your experience of "what went wrong" The more aware we are about possible problems the better off we are of maintaining a long successful reef.

I appreciate your insights

[Paintbug]

recently, i bought a new Maxi Jet 1200. i didnt have time to build a mounting bracket like i did with my others the day i got it. well i just figured i would use the sucKtion cups that come with them for a day or so. that night the maxi fell into the sandbed, and of course made a mess, and stirred up the DSB, and im sure releasing hydrogen sulfide into the water. well i mounted the maxi, added some fresh carbon, and hoped for the best. then the power goes out in the neighborhood for about 4 hours. tank is still cloudy, the fish are breathing hard, and theres no filtration or circulation in the tank. power comes back on, and off a few times that day. fish are looking bad, my Powder Blue Tang has some ich spots, and is breath extremely heavy. did a 20g water change, and everything is working fine at this point. i also made a bracket for the maxi that day. then one by one i lost 4 of my 6 fish, including the PBT that i had for almost 2 years. didnt loose any corals or other inverts though oddly.

i guess my point is make sure your powerheads are secure, and dont rely on sucKtion cups to hold them!

[davidryder]

I fried a FW tank when a heater got stuck on... killed hundreds of guppies.

[xtm]

way back in the day, I had a Rio 800 pump feeding a hang on skimmer. I came home and the tank is full of black tar stuff. Never again..

[ACBlinky]

The closest I've come to a full-on crash was with my old 5.5g pico. I kept an open brain and a few other LPS frags, along with some softies, snails and a little mantis. I dosed with Ca and buffer on alternating days, but it wasn't enough - I WAY underestimated the calcium uptake and didn't test levels often enough. One day I came home to find everything looking VERY poorly. Tested and found that levels were so far off I was lucky to have anything left at all. I did a HUGE water change to correct things immediately - I figured if Ca and alk were that far off, other things like Mg and the micronutrients must be just as depleted. The shock of such a large water change upset things a bit, but luckily within a day or two the tank was back to normal. I dismantled the tank shortly after because I just couldn't keep up with its needs.

When I kept a 65g FW planted tank I lost a lot of fish in the big blackout - we were the last neighborhood in our city to get power back; we were without power or water (living in an apartment building we need the electric pumps to get water up to our units) for 80+ hours. It was summer and very hot, the temperature shot up and circulation stopped, the plants were creating CO2 because they were in the dark, and frankly I'm surprised anything lived at all.

A friend of mine has recently gone through a crash with his 40g reef. There was a dreadful hair algae outbreak, and he bought a few algae-eaters - first a blenny that died, then a tang (which nearly died, I managed to save it), then a handful of turbos. None were quarantined. One of them brought ich and a bacterial infection into the tank, which spread and killed all the fish (which were left to their own devices, not medicated). Luckily the softies made it, but his LPS bit the dust. I think he learned his lesson, but it's sad; in this case, the crash was totally preventable.

[flyyyguy]

I recently(less than one month ago) lost both my 90 and my 225 sps tanks when i left for 5 days. Didnt leave clear enough directions to the person who stopped by while i was gone. He didnt understand that the house AC was KEY to my tanks truly running themselves. Chillers couldnt handle the ambient room temps of 110 degrees.

Moral to the story: Make absolutley sure that anyone chekcing up on your house clearly understands the basics of what needs to be happening

A picture says a thousand words. This is the bulk of the pain. A few fish and most zoanthids survived

(

[areze]

oh my...

well I was gonna come in and ***** about my 3 SPS frags I lost when my jager stuck on and took the temp to 95degrees...

but ummm, well ya know what? I suddenly dont even care! jeez, I cant stop looking at that retardely huge birds nest in the upper left corner.

[flyyyguy]

thats a blue staghorn......or ummmm....I mean white stag

[lavith]

He thought he was doing you a favor by shuting off the AC.

[magdelan]

flyyyguy- unbelievable. I just lost a blue stag frag on a tank move... not bad considdering...

[Mr James]

by flyyyguy
...Moral to the story: Make absolutley sure that anyone chekcing up on your house clearly understands the basics of what needs to be happening...

(

This is why I stress how important it is to have a local reef club. I live way up in "Nowhere'sville Minnesota" and we have a reef club going already. Had a meeting last week. The idea is to have fellow enthusiasts watch the tanks instead of neighbors who would rather drink the beer from your refridgerator.

I left my house for a couple hours a while back to go to an LFS a few hours away. Of course something had to happen while I was gone. My wife, the true supporter of this crazy hobby, couldn't reach me and did her best to contain the situation. When I returned home, half the water in my tank was missing, the wet/dry vac was setting outside like it had been used, and my wife looked frazzled. YET, the kids were asleep, the floor was NOT wet and I didn't lose a single coral or fish. Made me rethink how involved I was with this nutty obsession of mine.

Flyyguy, I just tore down a 180g and sold everything. But if I had some corals at this present time, I'd send them to you, to get you back on your feet again. I can't say I feel your pain, but I can say with experience, that it really forces you look at how much time, energy and money one spends on their systems. My new one is going to be a 40g.

[WharfRat]

I woke one night to hear the sound of running water and thought that it was probably one of my sons in the bathroom..but as I came awake a bit more I realized the sound was way closer than the bathroom down the hall. Thats when I snapped awake to the sound of my old meta frame 55 blowing a vertical seal. I jumped up and started barking orders to my wife to get towels blankets...anything to sop up water. I got the lights on and found that the seal was the one against the wall in the back and the hardest to get to. But..like any good fish keeper...I had a 5 gallon bucket and a piece of siphon hose in my bedroom from a previous water change and started dropping the water level to get below the seal breaks. When it was all said and done I had lost the better part of 15 gallons of water on the floor, down the wall, and into my living room ceiling and wall. I didn't lose any fish as I was able to transfer to breeding tanks that were in the basement.
Then there was the home built 45 gallon that housed a blackbelt cichlid. One day while watching tv in the living room I heard the glass snap down in the basement and by the time I got down there 43.5 gallons of water had soaked the floor. I had one very upset blackbelt. I put her in my 135 oscar tank and to show her ire she beat up just about everything in that tank. After 30+ years of fish keeping I've had a few minor and major accidents..but they have all been lessons on how to better manage my fish keeping skills. And thats just a dang shame about all that coral !

[clavery]

Flyguy, that just stinks, but bleached corals have become quite the decorator's accessory these days - I've seen corals put into large glass bowls with some sand on the bottom as a centerpiece, or put around the base of a candle in a hurricane lamp. Pottery Barn was selling fake ones for tons of money. You might be able to recoup some money by selling them on ebay or craigs list. I actually have some larger bleached corals on my mantle in the LR, and I get lots of compliments on them - they also remind me of how much money we've poured into our tanks!

We went on vacation one weekend and hubby forgot to keep the doors to his canopy open. When we came home, his tank was up to 90+ degrees. He lost all his corals and a few of his fish. Needless to say, many of his dead corals are now on our mantle!

[flyyyguy]

Originally posted by clavery
Flyguy, that just stinks, but bleached corals have become quite the decorator's accessory these days - I've seen corals put into large glass bowls with some sand on the bottom as a centerpiece, or put around the base of a candle in a hurricane lamp. Pottery Barn was selling fake ones for tons of money. You might be able to recoup some money by selling them on ebay or craigs list.

I actually have this elevated rock garden in front of my yard........I mounted the larger ones up. They look kinda cool...or at least do to me anyway......