Reefing Disaster, have you ever had a disaster happen with your tank?

[mousehunter]

Let's see... Had my first tank bust it's seams - loads of fun (think I lost all the fish). Lost a lot of plants in my planted tank (it was what replaced the one with the busted seams) when I was working overtime and was not around to notice the HQI bulb had burned out. Had a electrical short in my replacement T5 (that was the replacement of the over driven T8 light (that one surely was not UL listed...), which was the replacement of the HQI) - gave off the magic smoke, but my wife smelled it so did not burn down the house. Had a cat commit suicide - It jumped on the replacement LED (which replaced the T-5), slipped, got tangled in the HQI hanger (it was still hanging above the tank), probably danced a bit, breaking one of the hangers for the HQI and the hanger for the LED (which went into the tank electrifying it). So the cat was hung, drowned, and electrocuted all at the same time as destroying yet one more lighting system. Tank went downhill for a while after that one..., plants were dead again before I managed to get a good replacement light on them.

Right now that tank is doing very well - but invested almost enough to start a new reef tank in getting it there (it now sports a pair of Kessils, and a new near medical grade CO2 regulator after a CO2 tank dump). Meanwhile, building the new reef tank anyway.

 

[Enad]

Experienced a fairly long power outage in the beginning of January during an ice storm with temps in the teens. House got down to 31 degrees inside. If I acted quicker, I think I could've saved everything but this was my first experience with a long term power outage while owning a reef tank. I assumed it would come back on within the same day but it took over 36 hours. My mistake was not covering the tank with blankets right away.

Long story short, I had to get an uber to get to home depot in order to get super long extension cords and a car inverter because our car was blocked in by a fallen tree from the storm. I drained as much of the water as I could without disturbing any of the corals that sat higher in the water in order to make it easier to heat the water up, and then hooked up two heaters with the inverters I bought, as well as a wireless air stone. Power came back on just in time because the two heaters I had set up on inverters was only able to keep the tank around 61 degrees. My fish just looked dead when I'd peek under the blankets. It was so devastating to see.
I believe the water had gotten down to the low 50s, potentially high 40s before I was able to get a heater in it.

I lost power again a day or two after this storm when ANOTHER storm came through, but this time I was much more prepared. Even though I wasn't able to access my inverters until the morning due to my own stupidity, I wrapped the tank in 3 layers of heavy blankets right away and got the air stone going of course. Power went out around ~11pm and when I got up in the morning, I tested the water temp and it was 1 degree cooler than usual. 77 degrees. None the less, I got the heaters set up in the am and the water maintained 76-77 degrees for the entire ~20 hours we were out of power that second time. The fish and corals just had to live in the twilight zone for a while but were otherwise acting just fine. If only I had done this right the first time, everyone would've been fine. I feel terrible about it, but it was a lesson learned.

I ended up losing one fish, my wonderful Fathead Anthias and I lost all my bubble corals, a nice candy cane colony(it was in the sump where there was no heat..) as well as a beautiful Acantho. Otherwise, everything else survived initially though a few corals never properly recovered even to this day.

I do want to call out the absolutely incredible survivability of Palythoa's though. I have a rock covered in Palythoa's that I keep in my sump, I use it to cycle new tanks and what not. These Palys were the first coral I ever had and were just 2-3 little polyps on some live rock when I set up my first tank. When we lost power, both times I obviously focused on keeping my display heated and not the sump. The sump water temp was in the high 30s when the power came back on after the first power loss....no aeration either. I assumed these Palys were dead, so I tossed them in a bucket with the other dead/dying meaty corals, and I let that sit for a day before I decided to dump it. I pulled the Paly rock out before I dumped though because I had a bit of sentimental attachment, it being my first coral. Now that the tank was running again, I put it back in the sump and wanted to see if it would recover. It took a few weeks, but the polyps started to open back up again and now it probably has more polyps than it did before the power outage. Just a testament to the sheer survivability of these incredibly hardy corals. It's genuinely difficult to kill these things!

 

[snorklr]

2011 Hurricane Irene hit NY...the tank was in my shop, and the storm surge was over the top of the wet dry...all softies dead and everything in the shop (auto repair) under water...oil and chemicals floated on water and covered everything and since this is how i made my living the cleanup was priority and just wrote the tank off as unsalvageable...couple days later noticed the hermit crabs running around...what killed everything else wasn't oil and chemicals, it was the lack of salinity of the flood water...the door to that room had been closed so i guess whatever had been floating on the surface never made it in there...."Tanked " was on tv at that time and those bozos were dumping salt into a tank and adding fish 15 minutes later so just did a complete water change...crabs and shrimp survived...
2012...shop was sold and tank moved into basement of my house...I'm in NC at my new property when Hurricane Sandy hits...everyone in NY is "theres no electric, no food in stores, and no gasoline...don't bother coming back"....so the tank had no power for 2 weeks...everything dead...got it going again and eventually moved it to my shop in NC in preparation to selling my house...well shop had no HVAC so a hot summer got it into the high 90's and killed the remaining kenya trees.....( was also away during a NY heat wave with the shop a/c off and killed everything prior to Hurricane Irene disaster)....needless to say i have a chiller now...and a whole house generator...BTW the same rock is still in my tank today

 

[Rocky Mountain Reef]

Yes, just posted a thread on it...power out and all fish died from suffocation....thought is was a short on return pump that electrocuted them...lost $3-4k in corals and fish...getting a solar back up system just because of this...and other smart things our fellow R2R friends have recommended

 

[mushromboy]

Hey guys sorry for my grammar . But i have some tank issue that occurs since i'm moving out of my mother's house
- the tank is 88x27x40 running with 2 of noopsy k7 mini with 25%-30% of it power . Skimmer is from redstar fish sq70
- i'm mainly in softies so i have all kind of it from trees coral to finger leather and some kind of LPS like torches and hammer
- here it's the result i'm testing in my LFS : Salinity 1.025
Cal 440
Mg 1050
Alk 13
No3 50
Po4 200 ( using hanna ppb test and it's blinking )
My problem it's some of my coral won't open and start dying (duncan , candy cane) or some type of stress make it bleach (sps and some hammer and softie like cabbage coral and stuff)
Can anyone help me please