How to nuke a 300g SPS tank
 

Back in November I bought Dave's (Acepumping) 200g tank (+ 100g sump). Over the course of the next few months I slowly moved everything in got all the equipment installed and finally got my doser dialed in.
Now after 8 years of reef keeping, I know how to keep them looking good, and know whats required to keep them healthy. My problem is, I'm a bit lazy with the small stuff. Water changes? once a month or two...or three. No problem as I dose like a machine. Carbon? do you change it after 3 months or 6? Whatever. Testing? YES, looking at my logs I last tested...2 months ago.
With the new tank and the doser now hooked up I was testing weekly until I got it dialed in. Then I forgot about it. Fill the canisters when their empty and let everything grow.
Tank was looking good, polyps were huge, Acans big, extended and growing. There were a few issues. Some SPS not holding color. A couple fading, bleaching or browning out. Now this is a new setup and there are always issues that come up. Too much light? not enough? flow? water quality? It all can cause these issues.
So one day I did a water change. Next day, acans are closed up tight and polyp extension on the SPS is about half. This had me scratching my head. How does BETTER water make a GOOD tank go sideways? Things get marginally better over the next couple weeks. The acans though are still PO'ed, so I transfer them to another tank. They slowly return to normal.
With the SPS not really perking up too much, last Thursday I decide to do another 10% water change. When I walk into the fish room on friday the tank looks like a bomb went off. Bright green slimers are now brown, actually ALL SPS are now brown with zero polyp extension. Prized corals are fading. Strange though, Zoas and most LPS look PO'ed, but OK. I quickly transfer as much SPS out of the tank as I can.
Spent saturday freaking out, trying to figure out what happened. Everything is working like a charm. Eventually I decided I had a look at my saltwater changes (but I'm adding good water to a good tank! Salt is from buckets 2/3rds used! All other tanks are fine! It can't be the new SW, can it? Turns out I had another bucket of SW mixing. Test were coming out fine. Ca was a little low and Alk was a little high at 9.9. So that wasn't it. Had the test kits out and thought I should test the tank. Tested Alk first - whatthe heck? its coming in at 3 Dkh! Test again. 3 again. I checked the doser and it initially looked good. Then touched the hoses and it basically came apart.
What seems to have happened is, the hose connector (joining the hose from the canister to the hose for the doser) cracked. It started drawing air instead of liquid, but still enough liquid that I saw the canister emptying, but much slower then usual. Over the course of a couple weeks the Alk level would go down to around 3 then I would hit it with a 10% water change with 9.9 Alk. Things would go into shock. The first time maybe the Alk was a little higher in the tank and the shock not as much, but the second time was huge.
I have now bumped the Alk up to the 6-7 range, but the damage is done. my Red Dragon colony melted away, a few others may go too. All my SPS from that tank is brown. On the bright side is Zoas look fine, LPS is 60-40 to the good and I think a lot of the SPS will recover (eventually).

Has anyone else done something similar? What do you think recovery time will be? Do you think they will recover at all?

You have my sympathies, Kelly, for sure. I had a similar problem last summer with my alk doser plugging at the sump end. Because I was away a lot then, didn't have time to closely monitor everything, and by the time I discovered the problem the damage was done. Doesn't sound as bad as yours though, as my alk just went below 6 (normally at 8 or 9). But I still lost some prized SPS.

Surprisingly, some corals (incl some SPS) were not affected at all. However, it took about 3 months to recover from that before my SPS was happy again, with good color and growth returning. And I should have known better, too, as I have to regularly watch that alk return line so it doesn't plug.

Sorry to hear the news. I had a similar issue and things did recover. It took a long time though.

Sorry to hear that Kelly.

That's why up to now, I'm still having a second thought installing my doser. I purchased it last December, calibrated and ready to go but opted to do the dosing manually. I will probably used it only when I'm going away. :redface:

O well my tank is not big as yours and I don't have much corals as you have. I think automating the process would take away my personal touch to my humble reef. :biggrin:

I hope your corals recover soon. Best of luck.

So sorry for the loss Kelly.. Tank crashes are the worst! I hope you can recover most of your stuff that you didnt loose off the bat. Good luck man, keep your head up!

This is my second tank with a doser and the first one has worked flawlessly for years. This one was working fine too if not for the broken connector. It was a used doser and I would have found the issue out if I had kept up with the testing. Even if I had found it down around 3, I could have slowly raised it up over time and everything would have been fine.

Thanks Andrew.

Thanks Walter. That was the biggest surprise for me. As the Alk was going down, corals continued to look great, it was only after the Alk spikes in the water change did anything happen. I can handle brown coral knowing things are good now and they will return to normal soon enough.

Yeah, thanks. Good to know they will recover. Corals lost will be replaced by new, brighter corals! :mrgreen:

Actually mine got worse too after I corrected the alk, and then took 3 months to fully recover. Having said that I also had some other tank issues (high nitrates after I had disconnected my bio pellet reactor) just before this, and the low alk was the just final tipping point. But again, some SPS were never affected, and none of my LPS or soft corals even noticed anything amiss.

I think you are right, though, alk spikes make it worse. That's what did mine in, too, I think, when I raised it too quickly (didn't have time to fool around as I was not home a lot at that time).

Hi Kelly,

That's the joy of dosing. Too easy to forget about the hoses. I learned the hardway too but only had my alk drop to 6dkh as I test every 3 days. That was enough to **** off my 18" chalice and I lost over half the colony. What got me was that the hose from the doser to the tank plugged on the tank end and then when the pump went on the pressure blew the hose off the dosing pump. Now every 3 months I replace all hoses.

I have found that recovery is long and slow.

Cheers,
Tim

Sorry to hear that Kelly. :sad:
Been there done that. A year ago I was playing with my doser and messed up the timing. Almost one gallon of Ca water dumped into my tank and kill most of SPS. Fortunately my tank didn't have any super expensive SPS.