95% tank crash after move.. What's next?

[ashr]

So I moved over the weekend. Took time to take the tank down.. about 6 hours or so. Bagged all the corals. Live rock with in bins (with wet paper towl) and all the fish were in buckets...

****ty thing is I guess I had more die off on my rocks than I thought. After setting my tank up around 10pm the next morning was a disaster.. the house smelt like death and I knew something had gone wrong.

In all all but two fish lived.. and the tank was milky white.
Due to the murky water I could not see my SPS melting away..
All in all I lost 95% of my tank... some of the nicest, 4 years of growth and some of the best SPS I have seen around. I felt terrible.

Now I must rebuild.. but where to start? Do I start over with SPS or try something new like a predator tank? Any thoughts on where to go from here?

Thanks for listening.. It's been a rough couple days.

[Dearth]

That is supremely s**tty man. I've often thought what I'd do if my tank crashed I know I went over board on my rock so I would still go LPS and more open tank with way less rock and more swimming fish.

FOWLR tank is somewhat appealing but after having coral for this long I don't think I could handle a tank with bare rocks...

[ashr]

That is how I am feeling right now.. I had some very large colonies and Ijust couldnt do it over.. I am thinking of going with a bit less rock and pack some frags of SpS again closer so it's more swimming room for fish but with some nice SPS. My LPS and clam lived.. So I have that going for me I guess haha.

Just one of the worst days I've had in this hobby.. 4 years of work and money gone with in 24 hours.. FML

[straightrazorguy]

Oh, man, that sucks! Can you frag whatever's left of the SPS to try to propagate them? Do you have a spare tank? There's empirical evidence that frags have survive better survival rates than whole colonies.

[miuYH]

Any idea what lead to the die off?

[ashr]

I tried to frag off the main colonies.. They all melted away.. which was strange. I also had a few frags I tried to save in a diff bucket that died, along with a friends tank.

All LPS and zoa's and clam are ok.

Ammonia spike
Lack of o2
lack of flow the first night ( pump wasn't turned to full blast)

I think I made the perfect storm

[Aquattro]

I moved my 75g into a 150g. All large colonies. Things went sideways and I lost everything. I pouted for a day, and then started over. The next build was even better. This is always a when rather than if. You just deal with it, be sad for a bit, then do it even better the next round!

[mikellini]

I've never lost a thing when moving the tank (5 times in 5 years, and one move was 1200km). The trick was to use the tall green 10 gallon garbage pails from walmart (really heavy duty plastic). Fill with water and rock, and place corals in between the rock while wedging the rock so it wouldn't shift. Fish in last. For the long move I also ran a small heater and pump pointed at the surface off an inverter in the vehicle. The buckets can easily be handled full with two people and have wheels for the flat parts. Stairs are a bit of a pain tho...

For next time. Hope you bounce back

[mikellini]

Almost forgot, very important to remove the sand bed and either wash VERY carefully or start with a new one...

[intarsiabox]

Look at it as an opportunity. You can change anything you didn't like about the last tank or try a biotope tank, predator tank, etc. Setting up new tanks has always been the most exciting part of the hobby for me. Good luck on the next one!