Fenwickwick
New Member
So.....
I recently returned home from a 10 month deployment with the Army. I had an incredibly beautiful mixed reef tank (65g) when I left. I entrusted my father (who also has a super successful system) to watch over my tank while I was gone. I have a Apex/Trident installed on the tank and (at the time) had a Jaebo dosing pump set up to dose CA/Alk/Mag. The setup was a super healthy, well-oiled machine. Acro colonies, zoas, softies ect, all killing it. All until I got "the call."
One month into the deployment--"John, I've screwed up big time. I didn't understand the Jaebo interface and I accidentally pumped the entire reservoir of Alkalinity solution into your tank."
The tank was like a snow globe with the amount of precipitate that was produced. A ton of my corals died, but not all of them. Most of the Zoas colonies are still fine. Torches, Euphyllias, mushrooms, acans and 2 of my large acro colonies all made it out alive. (still a **** ton that died though).
All the fish slowly died off one by one. Clowns hung on for about 6 months and were the last to die. My cleaning crew was nuked entirely. Starfish and urchins are somehow unaffected. Now I've got a massive hair algae problem and cant get any cleaning crew to live for more than 9 seconds. Any fish that I have tried to re-add also die within the day. Essentially, anything that even gets close to the sand is dead.
My sand-bed is toxic and kills anything that gets near it. (except the SFs and urchins).
SO. Aside from the obvious, what (chemically speaking) has happened the toxify the sand? The corals on the rocks are all growing and doing fine again.
What am I doing about it? Well, I bought a brand new 120g ****** tank and I'm tearing the old one down. What should I do with my rockwork with all the corals? I don't want to reuse the rock, but dang. There's a ton of healthy coral on them. Worried the rocks are somehow toxic like the sand is. Idk, I'm super torn.
Any thoughts or advice from the community on how to proceed would be awesome!
I recently returned home from a 10 month deployment with the Army. I had an incredibly beautiful mixed reef tank (65g) when I left. I entrusted my father (who also has a super successful system) to watch over my tank while I was gone. I have a Apex/Trident installed on the tank and (at the time) had a Jaebo dosing pump set up to dose CA/Alk/Mag. The setup was a super healthy, well-oiled machine. Acro colonies, zoas, softies ect, all killing it. All until I got "the call."
One month into the deployment--"John, I've screwed up big time. I didn't understand the Jaebo interface and I accidentally pumped the entire reservoir of Alkalinity solution into your tank."
The tank was like a snow globe with the amount of precipitate that was produced. A ton of my corals died, but not all of them. Most of the Zoas colonies are still fine. Torches, Euphyllias, mushrooms, acans and 2 of my large acro colonies all made it out alive. (still a **** ton that died though).
All the fish slowly died off one by one. Clowns hung on for about 6 months and were the last to die. My cleaning crew was nuked entirely. Starfish and urchins are somehow unaffected. Now I've got a massive hair algae problem and cant get any cleaning crew to live for more than 9 seconds. Any fish that I have tried to re-add also die within the day. Essentially, anything that even gets close to the sand is dead.
My sand-bed is toxic and kills anything that gets near it. (except the SFs and urchins).
SO. Aside from the obvious, what (chemically speaking) has happened the toxify the sand? The corals on the rocks are all growing and doing fine again.
What am I doing about it? Well, I bought a brand new 120g ****** tank and I'm tearing the old one down. What should I do with my rockwork with all the corals? I don't want to reuse the rock, but dang. There's a ton of healthy coral on them. Worried the rocks are somehow toxic like the sand is. Idk, I'm super torn.
Any thoughts or advice from the community on how to proceed would be awesome!
