End of a reef

[dsaundry]

Very sad....Did anything make it?? Fish??

[fishoholic]

OMG that's awful!

[steve fedyk]

Sad to read that your tank past a way. I had friends that that had it happen to. I takes time to rebuild. Wish you the best of luck with new tank.

[fkshiu]

Murphy's Law seems to apply to reefs more than any other hobby I know of.

It's like the gremlins are waiting to strike as soon as you go away on vacation.

[jpdutton]

Been there brother, it sucks.
I went away for the long weekend about two years ago, while I was gone my return pump died. I lost all my fish, inverts, everything except for my LTA, a Green brain and a green Pagoda. I lost some hard to find pieces, Red Frogspawn, a crazy 30 head crazy frogspawn arg... I hate to even think about it.

I walked in saw the tank, turned around walked outside and did a chevy Chase in the drive way. (like he did when all those christmas lights didn't work)

I almost packed it in.

[fishytime]

Sorry for the loss. If I were in your neck of the woods I would offer to help stock back up when you are ready. Think of it this way....is there anything that you would have done differently with the tank setup or aquascaping? This is your chance to improve (if you can) on the tank.

[LeeR]

i would have smashed my face into the glass with anger.

[Dale]

Thanks all for the kind thoughts.
On one level I feel sorry for the livestock that I felt a sense of stewardship towards (a mandarin goby, pipefish and seahorse that all ate frozen food, a rescued unicorn and tang etc...) but these things do happen in the hobby. We think we can plan for every problem but sometimes sh_t just happens. In this case it was a perfect storm of sorts.
First a power outage that somehow tripped off the main powerbar (still haven't figured that out). That shut down my fluval FX-5, powerheads and evaporative cooling fan. Next, three days of hot weather where my tank would have probably gone beyond 90*F. I think this probably caused a drop in oxygen that may have killed something. The fouling from that, in those conditions, would probably kill something else and a cascade of unchecked die offs would then occur.
Fishytime has the right idea though. We are getting the tank up and running so the rock can cycle and then we will rebuild from there. I am leaning towards a seahorse/pipefish species tank filled with macro algaes so already the wheels are turning....

[muck]

Dang Dale.. thats really sad.

Im thinking that once I set up my new tank (and I will....eventually) I think I might have to get a house-sitter or just not ever go away for holidays again.