Tank Disaster!! Coral Gone! (PICS)

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revhtree

Aquarium Advice Addict
Joined
Apr 13, 2004
Messages
4,500
Location
Rossville. Ga
Hi all. Its with a heavy heart that I write this. After almost 2yrs in the hobby, I have had a tank crash. Saturday morning I noticed that corals looking bad and not coming out like normal. The water was hazy, but there was no Ammonia, Trite, ect..... The day before I had added Tech CB 2 part for calcium as I have done many, many times before. That was the only thing I had done, and nothing else had been added. I check PH and it was 7.8 so I slowly begin adding a very little bit of kalk to bring it up, but it was no good. The PH stabilized at around 8.1, temp fine, no Ammonia, Trite, Low Trate, and all the fish were doing great. Did a water change last night hoping all would be better in the morning...it was worse.

Lost many, if not all coral, looks like I have one cleaner shrimp left out of 5 and I see no crabs or pepp shrimp. Snails are fine. All fish are fine and doing great, eating swimming, ect....

Found out that Fri evening a breaker had flipped and shut my tank down for a while. How long? I do not know, but all looked good Fri night.

I know it could be probably a 1000 things, but I will probably never know. I cant help but think that something took place, killed all the xenia and started a chain reaction before I knew it. The xenia, HUGE spahgetti leather, finger leather and sps turned Stark white in a matter of hours. I just got through pulling a bunch of it out. Cut it off rocks and the xenia covered rocks that had over 200-300 heads on each rock is baking in the sun...

All zoos are closed but a few that you can see trying to come out, and shrooms look decent. Two candy corals look bad, my huge toadstool is slumped over and kinda white. I have it in the prop tank with, the bubble coral that has tiny bubbles out. House reaks of dead xenia!

I have heard of xenia crashing a tank, and I think it did. The water smells just like it..

I listed all the corals and livestock that is gone, and will be talking to my insurance company tomorrow. I had it insured for power outages and things of that nature, but i do not know if they will cover it. It i State Farm so well see...

Sorry for the long post.. Here are some before and after shots from today..

Before
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After
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Before
img_501450_2_9a18da91cfebcf8de00b5b0a287df808.jpg
 
I had just gotten 3 new nice SPS peices not shown, that are gone as well....

My wife is trying to talk me into not giving up. I dont want a pity party, I just want you all to help me figure out whats next. You are the people that can understand what I am feeling right now.
 
1) Did any large fish die that could have caused an ammonia spike? With the large amount of live rock that you have, an ammonia spike could have been processed fairly quickly, yet could have been deadly.
2) Anything else get into the tank-- cleaning solvent, etc? Any kids playing near it the day before?
3) Have you done any large "emergency" water changes? Are you running carbon?

This happened to me very recently. I did five 30% water changes in five days and ran heavy carbon (Kent's Reef) and changed it every day for two weeks straight. Try it... it worked for me. I saved a lot of my corals, but also lossed a lot. DO NOT GIVE-UP. Your tank will recover. I lost all of my SPS and many LPS, but many LPS made it. My toadstool looked just like yours in your "after" picture and now 3 months later, it has recovered and looks better than it ever has. It will take a few weeks, but your tank will clear up and look just like it did in the "before" pictures. I hope that you can save some... I know what you're going thru.
 
I have done a water change, and have one ready that I will do tonight. No dead fish.

My canopy, cannont be acessed by my 6yr old, not to emtion she has the utmost respect for daddys tank.

I really dont know, but we'll see.

Depending on the insurance verdict and a few other things, I will give the Large Naso to a friend that has a 125 to hold foe me, as well as the other fish. I will put the rock in a rubbermaid, drain the tank, clean it, drill the back for a closed loop, and set it up again bigger and better than ever.

I'm feeling like giving up, but I dont think my heart will let me do that...

PS. Bright side, no more XENIA!
 
Revhtree-- Please recheck my posting above before you go to that extreme (I added some observations). You may not need to tear it apart. See if it recovers with water changes and carbon first. Your "after" pictures look EXACTLY like mine did. I thought about tearing it down too, but on the advice of others on AA, I gave it some time to recover on its own. It did! It took a few weeks, but my tank looks better than it ever has and has been restocked with SPS and others and everything is great. Just give it a chance. If it still has problems after three weeks, then tear it down and clean it.
 
I went through the same thing 2 years ago. I also lost all the fish. As heartbreaking as it is, things will get better. You have the support of many friends here and we will NOT let you give up!
 
Man I feel your pain........ My tank did the same thing last year and I was ready to pack it in. Woke up to a cloudy tank and it got worse as the days went by. I borrowed a diatom filter as a last ditch effort and ran that and the tank was better in a hour and was crystal clear in the morning. Anyone near you have a diatom filter or magnum filter. Get the diatom powder and run it for 24 hours to start. I lost a lot of nice corals and one fish right away and eventually my Naso because if bacterial infections he could not get ride of.
When I was setting up my 75 as a giant QT for corals and fish I flooded my basement and to make things worse I was sick and so was my wife... I did many water changes and nothing helped until I got the diatom filter.... I had no xenia so that was not the problem, I thought it was my UV light that crashed but after a real close inspection the housing which I though was melted was not. Do you have a UV, if you do shut it down and pull it out and see if you have any salt build up in there.... Mine smelled terrible.
DO not give up!!! You have a great tank, think of it as a new start to try some new things you wanted to......
I'll post a few pics of my disaster and then check my thread with the picks of my tank today a year or so later..... I had 9 heads live on the hammer and the galaxea pulled through with a large bald spot . Lost a hugh colt. Look at my tank shots today.... Hammer now over 25 heads and galagea doubled in size and I have a new hugh colt....
So keep the faith..... And keep on reefing...
 

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Sorry to hear about the disaster. Your tank really looked good.

Just wondering what could have caused the tank to crash like that and especially so fast.....DSB crash maybe? I've heard horror stories about it happening. Not to start any arguements here on the DSB vs bare bottom tank, but it's something you may want to think about.
 
My heart sank when I saw the "after" pictures. It's as though an atom bomb just killed the whole thing. I am sorry. The nice thing about this forum is there are people here who went through what you are going through now. It's the perfect time to make friends with them.

Don't worry, from my readings of other topics, the comeback is always bigger than the original setup. Keep the faith and "if you build it, they will come" :D
 
Oh man... that's awful. The before and after are so drastically different and so drastically sad. Hopefully what ever it was will be over with soon and you'll get through this.

You didn't have any cukes or other odd things that could have released toxins into the water on death...?
 
horrifying Rev..

Any details about changes.. like how you were acclimating the tank to the new lights?
hope you can find a diatom filter or a magnium..
 
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