Tank Crash.

Well, i gave it a good run, i recently went down to Madison for business this last week, and left my gf in charge of some basic maintenance and im sad to report, i lost all corals, but one, my red planet is still looking great, i did a water change before i left on monday, and got back late last night and was throwing out dead corals, i now only have one SPS in my tank, fish are all fine, noticing a pretty decent amount of cyano algae in the back corner and alot of green algae on my glass my parameters are all in good shape, im still shocked as to what happened (think the biopellets were the culprit) my tank parameters are as follows

calcium - 420
alk - 9dkh
p04 - 0
trate - 0
trite - 0
mg - 1400
ammonia - 0
ph 8.2
temp - 80
sg - 1.025

IM not sure what i can all do but either recover from this with getting the tank back up to par, or just shutting down for awhile and seeing how everything pans out with my new house. im open to some advice and suggestions or possible solutions i didnt try! Thanks guys!

 

Very sorry for your losses...how frustrating it must be and sad too. Go with your heart is all I can say. It might be wise to hold off on making any decisions as your still grieving. You've done your wc and your parameters are all good. Just leave it be for now

 

That rough. I just went through a crash on a mature sps system last week myself, so I know how you feel. I think you should jump right back in and get it going again. Just remember, every tank has to end one day, but when they do, there's always potential to make them better than ever.

Michael Rice
Marine Engineers Aquarium Blog
Sent from Tapatalk so excuse my poor English

 

Sorry to hear bud. I too travel a lot and have to leave my SPS dominant tank to the care of someone else. I had been running EcoBak for 4+ months, and feel that they had reached their full potential. I took them out last week, and switched to vodka dosing. In 5 days, I can see a difference already with water clarity. My params are NO3 (2-5ppm) and PO4 (0.00 Hanna). I have a fight with algae right now as well, so I know those numbers are inaccurate due to the algae's presence. My advice to you is take down your pellets, and switch to a vodka dosing regiment as well. I have heard too many stories now of BP doing more harm than good (assuming of course that is what caused the crash). Read read read before doing any carbon dosing however.

 

Thanks, i love the hobby but losing alot of money in corals, was a slap in the face, of course i cant be mad that it happened. just hate losing all the nice pieces i had.

 

Thanks mike, ive been looking into other options as well to make it more stable since last night, i only got about an hr of sleep, was pretty upset but not much i can do now, i have 7 months at my current duplex, and then im in my own house finally so i guess that means i have 7 months to get my tank started again, my goal is to transfer all the corals i grow in my smaller tank, into a much larger system when its all ready, my house foundation is currently in the ground, and will start to be built here within the next month.:-/

 

Sorry to hear about the tank crash, it's an awful thing to even think about because of the hard work and time I know everyone puts into their tanks. I am new to this hobby so I don't have any advice to offer, but I am curious to know what could have caused the tank to crash in just 4 days?

 

I have been doing some research on vodka dosing, and the thing i was doing was lowering my alk to accomodate the dosing, the good side of this i guess is i dont have to worry about burning my corals, mike and i had a conversation previously on how i should start and he gave me some really good info on how and what supplies i will be needing to start, the presence of algae does show their are some PO4 at least in my tank, but with the sailfert kits, they all have there flaws, i did order a hannah po4 checker, and a lamotte NO3 kit, as i heard/read that good kits are very important while dosing vodka, the pellets are officially gone off my tank as of last night the only thing that really kills me is everything just started to encrust on my rockwork, so now i have to see the dead parts :-/

 

Well, it could have been numerous things, as SPS are a little more difficult to have, on monday i did clean everything out, put my new filters in, did a 10g water change, had previously noticed some burn from my pellets/high alk so i cut the pellets WAY BACK, and started to lower my alk, and i can assume it was the combo of both, and me not being here, once things go south on a tank, it all happens pretty quick, SPS are less forgiving then others.

 

sorry about your loss, that really stinks to come home to.

how long were the pellets running on your tank?