Tank crash triage

[fonduecat]

Had my tank crash this weekend and it was a near total loss. Near loss because magically the duncans and leathers survived. Also my scarlet skunk shrimp. Still no sign of goby and his shrimp, not much hope for them. Thankfully only the one fish, 2 shrimp, and tons of snails in terms of livestock.

Thing is is parameters are still out of whack. My question is what steps you took to triage your crashed tank once you had that, "why is my tank foggy? Is that all dead!?!?!?" moment?

Any hints besides lots of water changes and positive thoughts?

How long did it take your tank to recover?

 

[timnem70]

Sorry bout that. How long params been out and what are they. Calcium, Dkh, Mag,SG? All of a sudden or been battling? How big is tank? What are you using for filtration? Sump? Fuge? Protein skimmer? Picture would help alot.

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[Firedawg56]

Any idea of what caused it to crash? power outage, live current in the tank, heater or dosing pump malfunction???

 

[Fitz19d]

Unless you know the source of the problem, I'd kinda side on put survivors in a tank of new water and the cleanest best looking liverock (least dead stuff).

What is out of whack? Do you have children that may put stuff in. Was temp normal? No electric tingle?

 

[fonduecat]

Thanks for all the replies. I hate to admit it, but the crash was mostly neglect. The tank is a 28 gallon cube in the basement and often gets forgotten about since it only houses one fish who disappears for days at a time. Last parameters check and water change was 3/25. All was okay and perfect. I think it may have been a mix of evaporation, with the high salinity, mixing with a protein skimmer that stopped skimming. I dosed it sometime last week for calcium and alkalinity and everything was hopping. Only thing odd is the ever growing hair algae.

Last night i notoced it was it was foggy and when looking closer saw all the hammers and my frogspawn were skeletons. Freaked and did a 25% water change (it was nearly midnight and that was all the water I had prepped) salinity was at a whopping 1.03ppt, too much evaporated. pH was 8.4, Ammonia was over 2ppm and nitrite was over 5ppm. Once I saw that I stopped testing because I got a little teary eyed. (I was a mess). Just tested again with the following results-

PH- 8.0
Ammonia- .25
Nitrite- 0
Nitrate- 10
Calcium - 21 drops/ 420mg/L
KH- 8 drops/ dKH 8
Phosphate- .25ppm
Salinity - 1.026ppt

Here's a picture from earlier this month-

and from today-

 

[fonduecat]

Let me try those pics again-

Before

After

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[aquarius]

I run tanks at 1.029 as do many others I really doubt salinity alone was the cause of your crash especially seeing as how the change to 1.03 was gradually done through evaporation. In a tank that size losing just one coral can cause a large ammonia spike that then causes a chain reaction and things start to spiral out of control. With 2ppm nitrite it would seem that it had crashed fairly soon before you noticed it, I'd say within a day. The one parameter that would worry me that you listed was your ph at 8.4. 8.4 itself isn't bad and I have tanks that hit that daily but only at the end of the daylight cycle and I have failsafes to keep it from going higher such as shutting my lights off, turning on an air stone and vinegar dosing. The ph scale is logarithmic so a change from 8.0 to 8.4 isn't just a small increase, 8.4 is 4x more alkaline than 8.0. Depending on when your tank hit 8.4 could tell us a lot for example whether 8.4 was the peak or possibly 8.4 was the ph after it had fallen from a higher number say 8.5 or higher which I've personally experienced when dosing alk. I've experienced tissue loss on acros at ph levels above 8.6 so it's not to big of a leap to imagine losing one coral to ph which then starts a chain reaction, just something to think about. I think you did the right thing with the water change and I would keep doing water changes for a few days of between 25-50%. Adding carbon for a few days wont hurt either and can suck up some of the toxins released by dying animals that water changes don't get out. hth

 

[aquarius]

Oh and your tank should come back around pretty quickly once all of the dead animals have been removed and you can keep the ammonia and nitrite in check. The cloudiness should clear up in a few days with water changes. As long as your tank is cloudy you should add an airstone for safety. The cloudiness is from a bacterial bloom that has the potential to suck all of the oxygen out of the water causing more problems.

 

[Fitz19d]

Given the neglect answer, I would consider relocating the tank to somewhere more in daily sight. Otherwise I would fear you may fall into same bad habits again? (Not an attack, just saying people follow patterns.)

 

[fonduecat]

Given the neglect answer, I would consider relocating the tank to somewhere more in daily sight. Otherwise I would fear you may fall into same bad habits again? (Not an attack, just saying people follow patterns.)

I totally agree, I'm going to look at possibly moving it upstairs. I need to pay more attention to it. The tank in the foyer gets all the love. The out of sight out of mind saying is completely true. My husband mentioned getting me a Neptune system to keep an eye on it.

 

[fonduecat]

I run tanks at 1.029 as do many others I really doubt salinity alone was the cause of your crash especially seeing as how the change to 1.03 was gradually done through evaporation. In a tank that size losing just one coral can cause a large ammonia spike that then causes a chain reaction and things start to spiral out of control. With 2ppm nitrite it would seem that it had crashed fairly soon before you noticed it, I'd say within a day. The one parameter that would worry me that you listed was your ph at 8.4. 8.4 itself isn't bad and I have tanks that hit that daily but only at the end of the daylight cycle and I have failsafes to keep it from going higher such as shutting my lights off, turning on an air stone and vinegar dosing. The ph scale is logarithmic so a change from 8.0 to 8.4 isn't just a small increase, 8.4 is 4x more alkaline than 8.0. Depending on when your tank hit 8.4 could tell us a lot for example whether 8.4 was the peak or possibly 8.4 was the ph after it had fallen from a higher number say 8.5 or higher which I've personally experienced when dosing alk. I've experienced tissue loss on acros at ph levels above 8.6 so it's not to big of a leap to imagine losing one coral to ph which then starts a chain reaction, just something to think about. I think you did the right thing with the water change and I would keep doing water changes for a few days of between 25-50%. Adding carbon for a few days wont hurt either and can suck up some of the toxins released by dying animals that water changes don't get out. hth

Thanks for the help! I'm going to keep a closer eye on the pH, I have a feeling that may have been the contributing party. Not sure, but just read an article about some alkalinity doses causing pH spikes, I had just dosed it, I wonder if it spiked, killed something, and caused a chain reaction? I use the same dosing in my display tank upstairs, I'll have to test that tank more closely after dosing.

 

[just_tim]

Sorry about your loss. Are you overloading carbon yet? That would be the first thing I'd do.

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[fonduecat]

Sorry about your loss. Are you overloading carbon yet? That would be the first thing I'd do.

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I actually don't have any carbon. But I'm looking into buying a carbon reactor. While this has really sucked, it's actually getting me more into the hobby and appreciating the tools out there. I'm prepping for a shopping spree to help the tank recover and thrive.


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[fonduecat]

The goby lives!!!! He's the lone fish in the tank and I'm glad to see he's still rocking. He was one of the first fish I ever got.

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