My Tank crash - Hopefully you can learn from my experience :(

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Kien,

These questions were answered.

"How long was the power out? 4hrs? Slightly more

What is you total system volume? 1100 litres

How many fish? Too many apparently

How did the inverts fair and which ones do you have if any? Fine until ammonia spike"



BTW, in case anybody bothered to check (which I did before I posted), the OP was NOT on Canreef since the 15th, when the original post was made, until she responded to yesterday, which explains why the questions were left unanswered. Again, everyone here should remember Canreef is not the OP's home site (UK-based, not a Canadian reefer).




From my own experience, I once made a totally stupid & very costly (for my livestock) mistake of forgetting to turn my power bar back on one of my tanks after a water change. I was in a rush because my father-in-law had called while I was in the middle of doing water changes with free tickets to a Canucks game. I rushed through my water change, plugged everything back in, but took off without looking to see if the power came back on (which it didn't since I turned off the powerbar before starting the water change). By the time I came home, I had lost 3 fish , which I felt very guilty about since this was a totally preventable accident. The tank was much smaller than the OPs, but my bioload was also much smaller, yet in the 4 hours I was gone to watch the hockey game, the oxygen level had dropped enough to kill the biggest fish, which then increased the rate of oxygen depletion and caused an ammonia spike. So yeah, a tank crash can happen in less than 4 hours if all the stars align against you and your tank (Murphy's Law). Not one of my finer moments in my fish-keeping career, but I now am very anal about ensuring everything is plugged in and working after a water change.

This is another lesson I hope others can learn without going through it themselves. "Double check everything post-water change"!!!

Anthony