Went away the 4th and came home to disaster

[Sandyreef]

Subject says it all. My hubby decided to turn the temp up in the house so the air wouldn't run so much while we were gone from Wed night till Friday noon. Didn't find out about it until our return. He fessed up.

155 gal tank was totally cloudy. Temp was 90 degrees. I was pretty anxious. Went into high gear floating RO jugs of ice, fans running full blast into the refugiums, put airstones in the tanks. Had 30 gals salt water mixed up floated more jugs in that to cool it down and did a quick 30 gal water change, floated icebags in the Kalkswasser topoff system to cool that down to. Have a 100 gpd RO/DI and had a full 30 gal tank of fresh water already made so mixed up 60 more gals of salt using tropic marin and later that night changed 60 more gals. All in all changed 90 gals friday. Started running carbon. Finally got the temp down to 80. Tank finally cleared up Saturday afternoon.

Lost mandarin dragonet, 4 1/2" long, fat and happy that I had for over a year

Can't find my bi-color blenny in the 60 gal refugium.

18 headed flourescent green frogspawn - mush
yellow polyped gorg sloughed off all but the core
orange carnation coral that I had gotten as a 1" frag and it was 3" mush
Alveopora that was over a year old - 4 heads - nothing there
Pink Birdsnest is bleached
Wild Acro bleached
Yellow and pink acro - no polyps
Yellow porite - no polyps - glassy looking and a dull yellow
Gigantic pearl bubble is trying to come back but is having tissue receding from skeleton

I could go on and on but the list is to long.

Yesterday I see cyano in the refugium.

Planning on doing 60 more gal water change tonight. Last night took readings and there was no bad readings with ammonia, nitrite, nitrate using salifert test.

Any suggestions anyone ?

I am so bummed. My hubby feels pretty bad and he installed a window airconditioner on my fish room just for backup for the central air.

Note. In my 135 gal with 80 gal refugium, I had no casualties, Just have two fish and some leathers. I am glad but why the casualties so bad in my 155 with 60 gal refugium?

Sorry I rambled on and on.

Sandy

 

[liquid]

Best thing to do is keep up the waterchanges, run carbon, and skim hard. It took me about 6 months to get my tank back to some semblance of it's original glory after my temp spiked last summer. I feel your pain...

Shane

 

[Len]

Note. In my 135 gal with 80 gal refugium, I had no casualties, Just have two fish and some leathers. I am glad but why the casualties so bad in my 155 with 60 gal refugium?
Sandy

Probably because a stressed organism in your 155g released toxins into the water, putting into motion a snowball effect.

Aside from the heavy water changes you are currently doing (and the other mentioned steps Shane offered), there's not much you can do. Try Polyfilters too.

 

[tinyreef]

maybe it was the volume ratio of the refugium to the main tanks. not knowing how the setups are i would guess because your 80g refugium had less lights over it and the smaller 135g than the big 155g with its smaller 60g. also leathers are use to lagoon temps and maybe the fish are hardier than the mandarin.

i had a similar problem last thanksgiving that crashed my nano then. almost had the same today when i came into the office. my makeup water clogged and the tank was a full 1" below the overflow! 8O

hubby's separate ac is great! better luck the second time around :?

 

[danmhippo]

If you can, slowly raise the temp from 80 to 85 over a period of 2 weeks. If there are more temp spikes in the future (knock on wood, twice) to 90F, you will not see as much die-offs. It's usually the large temp swings that's the killer. Keeping your tank temp higher will prevent large swings like that.

I also think it's a good time for you to consider a chiller for your tank.

Keep up with GAC filtration in the system. Last time I had the tank meltdown, it took me 4 weeks to get condition stablize.

Good Luck

 

[Anonymous]

Light and temp interact to cause bleaching and death in corals.

If you have two tanks with the same temperature of water, the one with higher light intensity, especially UV light, will usually have more bleached corals.

 

[Chucker]

Been there before... My apartment has no climate-controlled air, and I was gone for a week a few years ago with the place shut up tight. Came home to a tank that looked rock halfway throught the curing process.

It's a slow road back, but you'll get there.

 

[Sandyreef]

Thanks everyone for the words of encouragement. It is appreciated.

Do you think my acros will have a chance of a comeback?

I am assuming that since I am starting to see cyano in the refugium that there is still a lot of excess junk in the water.

Do I need to keep doing 60 gal water changes every couple of days until it disapears?

Thankyou again,

Sandy

 

[danmhippo]

Being a lazy bum, I would let the cyno develope and siphone them out with a bit of gravel everyday. Cyno's are much more efficient in sniffing out excess nutrients then you would. Also, do a strong blast of the backside of all rocks to flush out detritus left behind/within the rock works. It's a good time to do a thorough clean up. (warning, you may want to do the water changes during the rock blast).

 

[fishfarmer]

Welcome to the club. I'm calling my 55 gal reef a total loss of coral and fish. I took most of my rock out of the tank and transferred it to a half full 38 gal with fresh saltwater water, carbon, skimmer, heater. I gave the rocks the sniff test and pulled what smelled dead off. I put a few polyp colonies in this tank as well. They didn't smell to great either. I'm doing partial water changes in this tank.

The main tank with DSB and remaining rock I'm going to leave alone except for water topoff and siphoning of algae and see what happens.

I'm thinking about trying to hook my window A/C to a temp contoller for the aquarium, so both my tank and room will get a cool down. We'll see what I come up with.

 

[reefsRcool]

:x hate that. sorry for your loss