Is ORP a good measure of when to re stock tank after Power failure disaster?

[Ann Enomy]

4/21/23 19:22 GFCI tripped from faulty cooling fan. Ecotech Battery backup did not last the night. Apex did not notify me of power failure. Tank is at my office. Arrived at work 4/22/23 at 8:00 to almost total loss. Tank temp was 68˚. I removed all the bodies and only had anemones, Leather corals and sinularia left alive in the tank. I have been doing daily 20% water changes since mentioned disaster and have been testing nitrate, nitrite and Phosphate (don't have ammonia kit) and all are still undetectable. Never got a spike in anything even when I had a very definite bacterial bloom in the tank. The Sinularia all died off over the first 5 days with exception of some small frags I was able to save. Now appears like everything left is "stable". The only thing that appears off is ORP. My normal was in the high 300's and now I am in the 250's. Every water change I do it drops about 50 points then bounces back by the end of the day. I am doing my best to vac the gravel and have moved all the rockwork around to get all the detritus so i'm assuming this might have something to do with the low ORP as well.

Should I wait until ORP is back to normal levels to start adding fish back in?
Should I trust the test kits that my water is clean?
How many more days should I continue the water changes?

 

[brandon429]

No, orp isn’t a good guide

Old tank syndrome is vanquished in reefing now

the cause of old tank syndrome is compounding whole waste particles that blanket the interstitial sand grain zones and plug up the channels in live rocks. Old tank syndrome is the gradual reduction of open, high flow contact reef tank surface area via compounding waste and invasion blanketing...

www.reef2reef.com

being post rip clean is the right time to re stock, that’s a thread designed to rehab crashed or crashing tanks solely by a special cleaning method to eject that waste you see

no bottle bac is used, your cycle isn’t dead.

 

[Ann Enomy]

Good read, Thanks.

Very nervous about loosing more life and wasting money.

Just thought low ORP might mean active decomposition and maybe I shouldn't rush it. I have read Randy's guide on ORP and know I shouldn't chase it but in this situation I'm nervous about ignoring it as well.

 

[brandon429]

Hey can u post a full tank picture when lights come on, I really enjoy seeing small details about the system that present only in pics

 

[doubleshot00]

Why not change all of the water? Seems confusing to me. How big is this tank?

Weird the apex didn't alert you? Did you have Heartbeat on?

Ive seen a few issues like this about gfci's tripping and people preaching you need one. What's the correct answer here i wonder.

 

[Ann Enomy]

Why not change all of the water? Seems confusing to me. How big is this tank?

Weird the apex didn't alert you? Did you have Heartbeat on?

Ive seen a few issues like this about gfci's tripping and people preaching you need one. What's the correct answer here i wonder.

Its a 120 gallon tank with a 40gal sump. I still have some corals so I don't want to stress them more with a 100% change.

I am unfamiliar with heart beat. I had a software update sitting there and after I updated I am getting alerts again. Don't know what happened before.

I must admit I have been poor about monitoring. I have the LCD display which I glance at every day but only calibrate probes 1x per year. I have my maintenance routine and things were great so I didn't stress about numbers.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Have you cleaned the ORP probe since the crash?

 

[Ann Enomy]

Hey can u post a full tank picture when lights come on, I really enjoy seeing small details about the system that present only in pics

Ok, Here it was 1 day after:

Here it is this morning, I have been moving rocks around to vacuum under them and am not taking time to "Scape" yet so the rockwork sucks at the moment.

Wasn't in the office yesterday. Today I am noticing a GHA bloom. Measured Phosphate which was 0.2 last week and now its 1.3!

Wondering what the heck just happened over the weekend?

 

[Ann Enomy]

Have you cleaned the ORP probe since the crash?

I have not. Is there some specific method you suggest?

BTW, Thank you for being such a great resource! I learned a lot reading your articles over the years!

 

[brandon429]

That is looking great and regenerating, wow

That gha/ cyano cycle in my opinion comes from the nutrient mass left in the tank, but regarding organisms look how they're perked up and open that's great

 

[Troylee]

Ok, Here it was 1 day after:
View attachment 3131303
Here it is this morning, I have been moving rocks around to vacuum under them and am not taking time to "Scape" yet so the rockwork sucks at the moment.
View attachment 3131304
Wasn't in the office yesterday. Today I am noticing a GHA bloom. Measured Phosphate which was 0.2 last week and now its 1.3!

Wondering what the heck just happened over the weekend?

Holy nem Batman!

 

[Ann Enomy]

Holy nem Batman!

That's why its my avatar! all started from one. Have sold about 3K worth to local fish shops over the years.

 

[Ann Enomy]

Seeing that there are no fish in the aquarium. What about using Lanthanum Chloride to reduce the phosphate spike? I measured again with Hanna Checker to make sure it wasn't user error.

 

[brandon429]

If you leave whole waste particles in there, and use lc to catch the leak, expect years of dinos and cyano coming

There's a reason there isn't another article on crash recovery with examples

If you do the hard thing, the export work from the sand and rocks now, you buy years of quality lifespan

It only seems you can take an alternate path now, but it won't in six months from now

Only choose a remediation path you can find examples for, all else is guessing and your setup has real potential to continue in a quality mode

 

[Ann Enomy]

If you leave whole waste particles in there, and use lc to catch the leak, expect years of dinos and cyano coming

There's a reason there isn't another article on crash recovery with examples

If you do the hard thing, the export work from the sand and rocks now, you buy years of quality lifespan

It only seems you can take an alternate path now, but it won't in six months from now

Only choose a remediation path you can find examples for, all else is guessing and your setup has real potential to continue in a quality mode

I'm still in cleaning mode. I would like to keep blowing the rocks out and 10% WC's while vacuuming for the next 5 days and maybe then get some small peaceful fish over the weekend.

Just want it to be the best it can be now when major overhaul is easy. Thought if I "captured" the released phosphates now with the LC it would be beneficial.

I haven't used GFO in over 3 years and have never used LC. All that phosphate must have been sequestered in the biomass.

 

[o2manyfish]

ORP isn't a good choice, as the others have mentioned. It shows the cleaniliness of the water (so to speak - very simple terms) of it's ability to hold oxygen. The less crap in the water the more room for oxygen -- This is simplified way way way down.

It's so counter intuitive that while ORP can be measuring the cleaniliness of the water, that after a water change, and adding "New" "Clean" water your ORP drops significantly. But that's the nature, of mother nature.

Given you seeing numbers like 300 and 250, when there is decaying tissue in the tank makes me wonder of the accuracy or the ORP values you are seeing. Usually after a good water change you should be under 200 until it bounces back - which can be as much as 200 points overnight.

Follow Randy's advice of cleaning the probe - My choice is a vinegar soak for a few hours and then cleaning with a toothbrush -- A spare not the significant others

Dave B

 

[taricha]

I don't find ORP to be useful to correlate to "clean" water.
Your tank is still doing some pretty rapid changes, as you've seen. Although the surviving livestock seem fine, I would wait until measurables stay in place before restocking sensitive stuff.