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

[brisco]

Canucks probably lost too! Insult to injury!

[Bblinks]

Originally Posted by brisco

Canucks probably lost too! Insult to injury!

[Bblinks]

Originally Posted by 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

How big was the tank Anthony? How much water did you drain out of it before you took off to the game? What three fishes died? Sorry for all the questions, I just have a genuine interest on this topic. I just can't seem to believe this can happen in such a short time. There is gotta be a better explanation to the cause of it. Thanks for your time.

[loumaggs]

Originally Posted by kien

Sorry to hear about your loss. It sucks to go through something like that. So what are you plans moving forward?

If I'm honest I don't actually know wha the plan is, I think I'm just leaving things to settle for now. Literally can't afford to restock at the mo net so I don't really have an option. I'm selling off some coral because I'm more of a fish person

[loumaggs]

Originally Posted by Scythanith

I don't think anyone is doubting the legitimacy of your tank loss. Everyone is very sympathetic toward you about that I hope you get back on the seahorse and carry on with the hobby.

Seahorse very good

[loumaggs]

Originally Posted by Animal-Chin

Last night I got home from work and my Cali Tort was 3/4s bleached/dead. I thought "maybe I should quit reefing" for a moment or two...lol I can't imagine a total tank wipe out, must be devastating.

Louise has a place in the youtube reef world. She may not be hardcore like some of the guy reefers who do video's like scientists but her vids have a place like anything else. I enjoy watching from time to time and if I learn something, bonus!

I'm far from a scientist but I enjoy making the videos... which is why I do it.

I actually have a learning difficulty which is why I speak slightly slowly, one of the reasons I started doing the channel was for that (I'm improving compared to my first videos you'll notice)

[loumaggs]

No one pointed it out to me, I normally post and then come back to check, I make my videos in an effort to help beginners. Not experts, I've been doing this nine years now so I know a little but I never claim to be an expert.
I've given my explanation in the video, everything which I know pointed to tank losing oxygen. I had a reasonably heavily stocked tank and I think that probably contributed to it. The only thing I did the night before was clean the glass.

Originally Posted by ComfortablyNumb

loumaggs: did someone advise you that there were negative posts here? Is that why you came back so quickly? Previously, you hardly ever responded to your own threads or questions in them..is why I'm asking.

There have been some legitimate questions posted as to how your tank crashed so quickly...no one here seems to have experienced anything like that, despite almost all of us having experienced power outages, many of far greater duration in tanks much more heavy loaded than yours.

We're not saying it didn't happen of course, its just your explanation of why it happened seems rather unusual (tank ran out of o2 in an hour or so) compared to anyone here's experience.

Again, not to say it didn't happen like you said it did, but if you are going to hold yourself out as an expert while soliciting donations from us, you must expect questions like these.

*edit* My sympathies for your loss...nobody enjoys seeing beautiful fish like that die.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Originally Posted by brisco

Canucks probably lost too! Insult to injury!

No, actually this was a few years ago and the Canucks WON!!! I've only been to a handful of games, but they've actually won every game I've attended over the last decade or so. This wasn't true in the 80s or 90s though.

Rich,

it was only a 34g RSM, so much smaller than the OP's reef tank. I never had much luck with that tank and tore it down and replaced it with my 93g cube after this incident. I lost a med. Marine betta, a Naoko fairy wrasse and a third fish I cannot remember now. It was a complete Brain-fart moment and I still feel bad that my carelessness lead to their needless deaths. I admit I was really shocked that they died in such a short period of time without circulation. Before this happened, I would have sworn a tank could go half a day without power without suffering any casualties (unless overstocked like my main reef tanks usually are). The third fish may have been a mandarin goby. My leopard and yellow canary wrasses survived, but they hid in the sand for another day or so. I was in the process of planning a switch over to a bigger tank and had just recently added the MB in anticipation of that upgrade. My theory is the water change dropped the tank's ORP and without turning on my powerbar, the oxygen level dropped quickly. The 2 wrasses survived probably because they are used to surviving on lower oxygen levels when they bury themselves in the sand every night. As long as the pumps were working, this bioload was fine but without circulation it was clearly too much for the available dissolved oxygen levels in that size tank (4 small fish & 1 med.).

I had done a 10g water change and did another 10g change when I came home from the game.

Now I own 3 battery operated air pumps, a generator and a battery back up (UPS) in case of blackouts to ensure that I can at least keep my tanks oxygenated. I also check every piece of equipment after each water change to make sure everything is plugged in and working again.

[SeaHorse_Fanatic]

Originally Posted by loumaggs

No one pointed it out to me, I normally post and then come back to check, I make my videos in an effort to help beginners. Not experts, I've been doing this nine years now so I know a little but I never claim to be an expert.
I've given my explanation in the video, everything which I know pointed to tank losing oxygen. I had a reasonably heavily stocked tank and I think that probably contributed to it. The only thing I did the night before was clean the glass.

Not only was your tank reasonably heavily stocked, the fish you kept were mostly large tangs and other species that require heavily oxygenated waters to thrive. Once circulation was lost, these large tangs would have been the first to go and then it would have been a cumulative effect in a very negative way since each death would have depleted the oxygen level even faster and create a dead zone at the bottom layer of water, which is of course where the living fish would settle to conserve energy (Murphy's Law at work). Without the energy to stay near the surface, those fish would have been the next to succumb to oxygen deprivation. This is my theory of what happened in your tank.

Anthony