Help my tank got completely wiped out :(

[Kolby’s Reef]

Hello, I was needing some help and wondering why everything in my aquarium died. I left for vacation all parameters were good and normal fish was healthy and I came back to this. The gfi receptacle tripped and tank got turned off for a day or two. I believe something with the aquarium tripped it. The fish and coral I had in the tank was: Flame Angel, Coral Beauty Angel, Mandarin Goby, Pajama Cardinal, Bangai Cardinalfish, Goby, Tomini Tang, Yellow Tang, Siganus Vulpinus Foxface, Ocellaris Clownfish, Ocellaris Snowflake Clownfish, 2 red bubble tip anemone, 2 green bubble tip anemone



Coral:

Cali Torte Acropora, spider-man zoas, watermelon zoas,Mohawk/Pandora Zoas, Rose Gold zoas, Blue Zoas, Rasta Zoas, Blood Sucker Zoas, Ricordia Yuma Mushroom, Blue Devils Finger Leather, Green Rhodactis Mushroom, purple discosoma mushroom, Purple Scrolling Montipora, Green Star Polyps, Pink Star Polyps and Toadstool leather.



I was wondering if my anemone died and completely wiped out the tank or what the cause of this could be?

 

[Kolby’s Reef]

Tank had like a clear slimy film to it. Let me know if the video won’t load

 

[biokeeper]

What size tank is that? Looks pretty heavily stocked so I imagine if it were off for a day or two then it wouldn’t take long for your “good and normal” parameters to go downhill.

 

[Tuan’s Reef]

If no power for couple of days....It can kill. No oxygen. No gas exchange equals death. I think an Apex could of alerted you and maybe even fix it remotely.

 

[ZombieEngineer]

It was the lack of flow. Most corals can only go 4-16 hours without flow before they start dying. Nitrifying bacteria also start dying in a similar time frame.

This triggers an ammonia spike and since the nitrifying bacteria don't have ample flow, they can't convert this ammonia to nitrate. This leads to a chain reaction that gets ammonia levels high enough that your fish start dying one by one too.

I had a similar issue that was without flow and heat for at most 18 hours. The only things that survived were my frogspawn, yellow tubinaria, a Duncan, one acan, and some palys. All of my fish and every other coral including my BTA were gone.

 

[G Santana]

That long without at least surface agitation will deplete oxygen especially in warmer weather.
Sorry for the loss!

 

[vetteguy53081]

Sorry to hear. High likelihood, lack of oxygen due to no flow, bacterial die off, ammonia and nitrate spike and even temperature change with power being out.
I always if im gone more than a day have a trusted friend with experience come over daily to feed and observe my systems.
On your behalf. . . Local club (members) and LFS may be a source for you to consider

 

[Kolby’s Reef]

What size tank is that? Looks pretty heavily stocked so I imagine if it were off for a day or two then it wouldn’t take long for your “good and normal” parameters to go downhill.

90 Gallon and why would u think this? I don’t think temperature would drop that much in a day. Or do the pumps and circulation and gyre need to be on?

 

[Chrisv.]

90 Gallon and why would u think this? I don’t think temperature would drop that much in a day. Or do the pumps and circulation and gyre need to be on?

Without oxygen, the fish would likely be toast. Pumps are more important than temp in this case.

 

[Swanus]

Can be multiple things. This is why i never had anemones and never will. If they die they often take the whole tank with them. Most likely tho is the lack of flow. This is why you should always have a battery back up that automatically powers atleast one of your pumps, because otherwise your corals start dying in about 3 hours. Have you checked your heater? If it is a glass heater it the glass might have shattered, broken down or stayed on. Therefore you should always run a heater on a temperature controller. You can get one for like 40 euros that even sends you a message if something is wrong. If you dose one of your dosingpumps might have failed and nuked your tank. Like i said there are multiple options. Very sorry for your loss.. keep your head up, learn from it and come back stronger!

 

[CoralB]

Every one in this thread is spot on as to what probably happened . If you had one powerhead on a battery back up system giving flow and agitating the surface this might not have been a disaster. Really sorry for your loss !

 

[Kolby’s Reef]

Thank you all! I understand now thanks for the advise and tips. I have had a reef tank for 3 years went on vacation and got a horrible call from the person taking care of it that everything was dead. I found out it was my protein skimmer i plugged it in and it didn’t turn on. Sad this tripped the whole system and shut it off I could have gone a couple days without a protein skimmer just sucks it tripped the system and killed a couple thousand dollars of coral and fish…

 

[Kolby’s Reef]

Now debating on selling the rest or starting over :/ If I start over what would everyone’s advise be? Should I clean the tank get the sand out, get new sand, let the rock dry out, and the coral that is still on there (like zoas and gsp) dry out? Then get a new protein skimmer new sand stick the dry rock in let it cycle etc and become live rock again? Like i said lesson learned just sucks it had to nuke the whole tank and I appreciate the advise like a apex system or something that monitors everything. But as to what I just said about starting over is that how I should go about it or what you you guys recommend?

 

[ZombieEngineer]

Now debating on selling the rest or starting over :/ If I start over what would everyone’s advise be? Should I clean the tank get the sand out, get new sand, let the rock dry out, and the coral that is still on there (like zoas and gsp) dry out? Then get a new protein skimmer new sand stick the dry rock in let it cycle etc and become live rock again? Like i said lesson learned just sucks it had to nuke the whole tank and I appreciate the advise like a apex system or something that monitors everything. But as to what I just said about starting over is that how I should go about it or what you you guys recommend?

After my similar crash (also a GFCI tripping flow and heat from a failed heater), I invested in a UPS for my apex to alert me of this kind of problem. Mine is set to alert me for all kinds of things, but for this issue specifically I have alerts set to tell me if the power is lost to any specific energy bar or to the entire tank. If that happens I can run home, have my wife help, or ask the neighbor who also has a reef tank to investigate.

Other things that can help for this specific situation are

- using multiple electrical circuits for the tank and splitting flow evenly between them.
- getting a battery backup or UPS for your wavemakers.
- using an aquarium controllers loss of communication heartbeat function (If my apex loses connection to the network for 30 minutes in a row, I get a text and can send someone to investigate)

 

[BrotatoSalad]

I have no advice on starting over, but so sorry for this tragedy! The timing certainly couldn't have been worse. For what it's worth I hope to see the reboot/redemption story come across the trending page in the months to come.

 

[CoralB]

Now debating on selling the rest or starting over :/ If I start over what would everyone’s advise be? Should I clean the tank get the sand out, get new sand, let the rock dry out, and the coral that is still on there (like zoas and gsp) dry out? Then get a new protein skimmer new sand stick the dry rock in let it cycle etc and become live rock again? Like i said lesson learned just sucks it had to nuke the whole tank and I appreciate the advise like a apex system or something that monitors everything. But as to what I just said about starting over is that how I should go about it or what you you guys recommend?

That could only be your decision as far as starting over again . If you do decide to start over I’m sure there are many people on this site to help you better protect you from trying to keep it from happening again . In the mean time you should clean everything thing and you mentioned you have zoanthids. Please be care full as they can become toxic when removing them . Get them outside asap and seal them in a bag or container if not salvageable and toss them . Again sorry for your loss !!

 

[ZombieEngineer]

you mentioned you have zoanthids. Please be care full as they can become toxic when removing them . Get them outside asap and seal them in a bag or container if not salvageable and toss them

Zoas do not contain palytoxin. Only palys contain that. The ones that do are often referred to in the hobby as "button polyps" that are brown or green with stripes/ridges pointing to the mouth, incorporate sand into their tissue, and usually have very spikey "pedals"

Though better to be safe than sorry.

 

[ZombieEngineer]

Should I clean the tank get the sand out, get new sand, let the rock dry out, and the coral that is still on there (like zoas and gsp) dry out? Then get a new protein skimmer new sand stick the dry rock in let it cycle etc and become live rock again?

You would be better off just removing anything that died, keep sand and rock in the tank and just do a really big water change (like 50-75%) after the tank stops stinking. Better to just remove the elevated nitrates and phosphates from the crash and keep an established bacteria population than to dry it out and start from scratch.

If you are lucky you might have a few corals make it through even if they look terrible now.

 

[Chortanator]

I had this happen when I used NO3 : PO4-X without a skimmer. It suffocated my fish and killed one of my nems, the only things that lived were some snails, urchins, and a watchman goby.

 

[Swanus]

I would just keep going! Just take it slow and maybe dont invest in new lifestock that fast. You can make a beautifull tank without investing in really expensive corals. Read into some good preventative measures. You can use temperature controllers, titanium heaters, maybe an apex, you can diy a back up that runs a 20w powerhead for 80 hours with around 100 dollars, ph controllers, quarantining fish and dipping corals etc. There are a lot of things you can do to prevent things from going wrong, but it is part of the hobby. It happens to everybody atleast once, but eventually you find ways to minimize the risk.