My beautiful 4 year old tank went down in flame on Sunday 6/8/2003. The whole tank died except 5 Ocellaris clowns, three Clown Gobies, my large 22 inches T. gigas, and a few LPS. Gone are about 35+ fishes, 19 clams, M. magnifica (two clones), my beautiful Rose anemone, and two other anemones, all my SPS and a few of my LPS. Also gone are two Bristle worms that are three feet long and thousands of other tank life. The tank was a total lost. My surviving lives went to friend tanks or LFS.
What happened was very simple but I there were a sequence of events that happened at the right time that crashed the tank. On Sunday afternoon/evening, I change about 100 g out of the 550 g system. All the water has being mixed 1 week ago and well aged and aerated. I also tank apart my Kalk reactor and full it to just above capacity with 16 lbs of fresh kalk. I also cleaned my skimmer at the same time.
The way I have my tank set up was an automate top off system with a 10 g reservoir. My top-off added to my sump using gravity, regulated by a water level float valve. I finished with everything by 8:30 PM and observed the tank until about 11:00 PM and went to bed. Everything was great with our sign of problem.
I woke up at 4:30 (our son was sick and needed some medicine) the tank was milky and about 60 g of water was on the floor. The sump pump run dry, the tank lost circulation through the sump. One look at the system and equipments, I find that about 8 lbs of kalk have emptied into the system and my 10 g reservoir was empty. I always have 60 g of mixed water on hand at all time so I added that into my tank and got the water level back up to normal. What happened was that with the newly washed skimmer and the water change, the skimmer overflowed. It happens just at the time when the Kalk reactor was stirring (15 minutes every 3 hours) which result in adding very thick Kalk into the system. The Kalk added really cause the skimmer to dumps more water resulting in still more Kalk into the tank. This event started a vicious cycle, which ends when the Kalk reservoir run out and the sump pump chamber emptied. The skimmer then proceeds to empty about 60 g of water into the floor. I got the pH down to about 9 with some water change and added vinegar, but the pH spike cause the death of my Xenia colonies and death of countless animals in the sand bed and LR. This in turn causes the ammonia spike that kill the rest. I just cannot mix enough water to change enough for a 500 g system to prevent the vicious cycle of ammonia release. By Monday afternoon, I can see the battle was lost. I took whatever I could out to my freshly made water (tap and IO salt in my water container) I called my friends and asked them to keep some of my clams, SPS and put the fishes in my 10 g tank in my bed room. I tried to save my two 3 feet worms but they did not survive.
What did I learn from this disaster?
Never feed Kalk via a water level float valve. I will always use a dosing pump for kalk from now on.
I will always use a collecting container that is inside the sump, and a container that will prevent overflow.
I will only work on the tank on Saturday, and will keep checking on the tank for 6+ hours after doing work on the tank.
After this disaster, I know that the Bio Mass involved in Bristle worms along is about the same biomass involved in my fish in my tank.
My tank was really healthy. Ick was eliminated from my tank. After the stress that my fish and tank went though, my 5 Ocellaris and three Clown gobies did not have any disease in my 10 g tank. They completely recovered after 24 hrs. Some of the LPS are really hard to kill. These included Frogspawn, Anchor, Goniopora, Alveopora.
I spend the last week tried to clean my system to get the smell out of my house. I will get rid of all the sand and use new sand. I will re-cure my rock I will redo my system and re set it up in a few months.
I learned lots with setting up my tank (may my fishes, clams and snails, and my other animals RIP) and will eliminate this potential disaster from my new set-up. I will also incorporate what I learned over the last 4 year into my new system. Maybe in 4-6 months, I will start to stock my tank again.
Thanks for reading. I hope you learn something from my disaster.
Minh Nguyen
What happened was very simple but I there were a sequence of events that happened at the right time that crashed the tank. On Sunday afternoon/evening, I change about 100 g out of the 550 g system. All the water has being mixed 1 week ago and well aged and aerated. I also tank apart my Kalk reactor and full it to just above capacity with 16 lbs of fresh kalk. I also cleaned my skimmer at the same time.
The way I have my tank set up was an automate top off system with a 10 g reservoir. My top-off added to my sump using gravity, regulated by a water level float valve. I finished with everything by 8:30 PM and observed the tank until about 11:00 PM and went to bed. Everything was great with our sign of problem.
I woke up at 4:30 (our son was sick and needed some medicine) the tank was milky and about 60 g of water was on the floor. The sump pump run dry, the tank lost circulation through the sump. One look at the system and equipments, I find that about 8 lbs of kalk have emptied into the system and my 10 g reservoir was empty. I always have 60 g of mixed water on hand at all time so I added that into my tank and got the water level back up to normal. What happened was that with the newly washed skimmer and the water change, the skimmer overflowed. It happens just at the time when the Kalk reactor was stirring (15 minutes every 3 hours) which result in adding very thick Kalk into the system. The Kalk added really cause the skimmer to dumps more water resulting in still more Kalk into the tank. This event started a vicious cycle, which ends when the Kalk reservoir run out and the sump pump chamber emptied. The skimmer then proceeds to empty about 60 g of water into the floor. I got the pH down to about 9 with some water change and added vinegar, but the pH spike cause the death of my Xenia colonies and death of countless animals in the sand bed and LR. This in turn causes the ammonia spike that kill the rest. I just cannot mix enough water to change enough for a 500 g system to prevent the vicious cycle of ammonia release. By Monday afternoon, I can see the battle was lost. I took whatever I could out to my freshly made water (tap and IO salt in my water container) I called my friends and asked them to keep some of my clams, SPS and put the fishes in my 10 g tank in my bed room. I tried to save my two 3 feet worms but they did not survive.
What did I learn from this disaster?
Never feed Kalk via a water level float valve. I will always use a dosing pump for kalk from now on.
I will always use a collecting container that is inside the sump, and a container that will prevent overflow.
I will only work on the tank on Saturday, and will keep checking on the tank for 6+ hours after doing work on the tank.
After this disaster, I know that the Bio Mass involved in Bristle worms along is about the same biomass involved in my fish in my tank.
My tank was really healthy. Ick was eliminated from my tank. After the stress that my fish and tank went though, my 5 Ocellaris and three Clown gobies did not have any disease in my 10 g tank. They completely recovered after 24 hrs. Some of the LPS are really hard to kill. These included Frogspawn, Anchor, Goniopora, Alveopora.
I spend the last week tried to clean my system to get the smell out of my house. I will get rid of all the sand and use new sand. I will re-cure my rock I will redo my system and re set it up in a few months.
I learned lots with setting up my tank (may my fishes, clams and snails, and my other animals RIP) and will eliminate this potential disaster from my new set-up. I will also incorporate what I learned over the last 4 year into my new system. Maybe in 4-6 months, I will start to stock my tank again.
Thanks for reading. I hope you learn something from my disaster.
Minh Nguyen
