FOWLR Tank crashed - please offer advice

[GDD66]

I'm on vacation with a camera on my FOWLR DT.
I set it up with an ehiem auto feeder, and suspect I over fed it. Even though I've left fish for 7 days many times, this was a 10 day trip. Never again I know......I'll have somebody check in on them going forward.

Tank is a 75 gallon, and has been established for 7 years with very little issues.
I left it with:
- chocolate chip sea star
- yellow tang
- one spot fox face
- spiny urchin
- pencil urchin
- two conch shells
- strawberry anthias
- three clown fish
- purple dotty back

Oldest inhabitant was the yellow tang (in since 2018), newest was dotty back (in for 7 months)

Checked in with camera on days 1-7 and everything was fine......On day 8, everything was belly up.

Tank has about 100 lbs of live rock, and a canister filter, wave machine, two heaters.

I'm heading home tonight, but am wondering how to recycle the tank.....I'm hopeful I can do a water change and save the live rock and filtration media.......but have never had this happen....wondering how long bacteria will live without fish producing waste?

Any advice is GREATLY appreciated.

 

[Devaji]

oh NO so sorry to hear this. I would have someone remove the dead life stock so there is less to worry about when you get back.

I would do 2x 25% WC or 50% to start off with and test and see where we are at.
wonder if it was the fish feeder? are you thinking it over feed? what brand?

you should be able to save the LR and sand I would think.

 

[brandon429]

the specific remediation for that situation is remove the fish, the filter bacteria are not crashed they're well-fed but overcome in the loss cascade. not dead at all

remove carcasses

remove ammonia either via larger water change

or waiting one week after fish removal: the ammonia will be eaten up by common filtration once the input stops/still change water for the massive nitrate spike to follow

or polyfilter it out with resins that uptake ammonia. the cycle is not harmed at all once the waterwater is gone or given about a week to convert from ammonia to nitrate. it'll not take a week, but that's the safe time.


**if you do not practice biosecurity from Jay, quarantining new lfs additions, disease can't be ruled out. you'd instate that practice when restocking the system

no bottle bac is used here, or bought, not needed, bac are fine

the bacteria weren't the limitation: this isn't enough dilution nor surface handle to process that jolt of new input. it would take quite a bit of overfeeding to begin a loss cascade. unless you can verify it was a whole container etc, I'd look for disease causatives vs feeding that's more of a longer term algae causing issue vs a full tank wipe, unless indeed it was a huge irregular amount.

 

[Flame2hawk]

Yes remove all deceased fish as soon as possible. Determine root cause of what happened as it is unlikely it was simple over feeding from auto feeder as it would have to dump allot at one time to kill all fish. Once you are sure of the root cause, do a water change and all should be good. It is imperative you figure it out before proceeding as the last thing you want is a repeat.