Lol... no, not really I crashed my tank

#1
After the meeting I was tired and waited to dip my Corals. As they were dipping I checked my main tanks alk ( two weeks ago I let the doser run for 15-20 mins on accident). It was getting low so I swiped my phone to put the doser back online, on auto. Either my delusion of seeing auto or my wet finger changed it to “on” and I dosed over a 1 litter of alk over 8-9 hours. Let’s just say a white Christmas of horror hit my tank a bit early this year.


I spent all Sunday scrubbing pumps, rocks and everything, WC’s and moving Corals to my second tank. At this point I’m only seeing some stn on 2 acros, only time will tell the full devastation.

Just thought I would share my bonehead move with you all and to tell everyone to double check everything when making changes. I won’t be doing anything to any tanks any time soon. Maybe upgrading my second tanks lighting since it has all my nice stuff in it but even that seems iffy at the moment.


If anyone has experience as to what to expect next, please share. I’m thinking a mini crash and cycle from the microfauna.
 

SynDen

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#2
DOH! How high did it get? IME though, most things can take a fairly high alk spike and just be pissed off for awhile till it normalizes again. Series of water changes to help it come down slowly and natuarlly is usually all it takes to get it back to normal
 

TheRealChrisBrown

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#3
I did something similar recently, and for the most part I think everything pulled through. Although I didn't notice any precipitation, my calcium dropped even though it was my Alk that I sent up to 13 dkh. In my case I stopped dosing Alk and let it fall gradually. I'm still working on bringing up my Calcium. I have noticed some SPS are unhappy, but I think that was to be expected since they prefer stability rather than all these fluctuating parameters. Good luck!
 

JuanGutz

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#4
I had an ATO stick on Sunday night and dosed 5gallons of kalk water into my tank an onto the floor. So far nothing has bleached or lost color.
 

MuralReef

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#6
Hope everything works out. I don’t have any experience in this category I usually leave my RO running and just flood the place!
 

jda123

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#7
You are just going to have to wait and see about the livestock. Some of it will probably make it - it is amazing how hardy some of the stuff is. Luckily, I would doubt that the bacterial base will be too upset... you are really hosed when they start to die. Did you have a whole tank of cloudy mess? It is good that you had a second tank.

What are you going to change so that this does not happen again? Tech did not help here and actually was the problem. Is there a CaRx in your future, or less automation? I do like me some CaRx for the balanced input and trace elements that they offer, but I also like them since they cannot crash tanks. I am sure that you have been contemplating for the last few days and others might be able to learn from it. Just curious.

FYI - you can lower alk in your fresh mix with Muratic Acid. It will need to mix until the PH comes back up, so this is not tank-safe, but it works great. Gallons * dKh drop * .123 will tell you the number of MLs of Muratic to use. I would not drop it much past 5, but this can drop tank alk decently quick with water changes.
 
#9
You are just going to have to wait and see about the livestock. Some of it will probably make it - it is amazing how hardy some of the stuff is. Luckily, I would doubt that the bacterial base will be too upset... you are really hosed when they start to die. Did you have a whole tank of cloudy mess? It is good that you had a second tank.

What are you going to change so that this does not happen again? Tech did not help here and actually was the problem. Is there a CaRx in your future, or less automation? I do like me some CaRx for the balanced input and trace elements that they offer, but I also like them since they cannot crash tanks. I am sure that you have been contemplating for the last few days and others might be able to learn from it. Just curious.

FYI - you can lower alk in your fresh mix with Muratic Acid. It will need to mix until the PH comes back up, so this is not tank-safe, but it works great. Gallons * dKh drop * .123 will tell you the number of MLs of Muratic to use. I would not drop it much past 5, but this can drop tank alk decently quick with water changes.
It was a cloudy mess, a precipitation blizzard, if you will. Haha. All of which is dissolved now thankfully. Most everything is looking much much better. I’m going to re calibrate the probes, I suspect they are reading .1 or so higher.

I learned big time!! First to stick to the protocols. I know better and shouldn’t me messing with critical hardware late at night. I usually only mess with it on the computer and then verify on the controller. Second I should have tested the code on apex in a simulation. It worked for everything prior so I was happily complacent. I do agree my tank looked best
when having 30mins to an 1 hour a day to observe and dose, etc.

In my next tank build, I see 10x the amount of water, a Ca reactor, a massive sump and everything else I have learned the last 7 years. I look most forward to having maintence space and Morse stability for acros. Unfortunately with only having permission from the land lord to have a 40 gallon max my RSM 130D is not equipped to have any of this. I think of my current tank as a Bonzi garden and my new tank as the field I’m going to plant everything in to get big.
 
#10
Everything but the sps I moved into the second tank is back to normal. In my tank that crashed about 1/2 my Sps didn’t make it either from the incident, not liking the second tank, snails knocking stuff in sand in the second tank and what not. My WD has grown 1/4 during all this where my awesome Corals like red dragon, torts, Bonzi, stags, all RTNed. Some of the 1/2 are STN but have stopped or at least slowed incredibly. I’m letting everything ride as is since everything has opened back up.
 
#11
Update: I moved everything back in weeks ago and stuff is starting to grow back. The corals are all happy looking. I was surprised that I only lost SPS and not all of them at that.

My second tank is now a Nem only tank. It’s a lot more enjoyable to look at.
 
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