Catastrophe strikes while on vacation!!!

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Braves on the Warpath
Apr 3, 2003
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Marion, Illinois
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Left for 6 days for a fun trip to the Georgia Aquarium then spending 3 day lounging on the beaches of Daytona. Did a water change in my 75g. Checked to make sure all numbers were spot on, had the lighting timer set for 11 hours of daylight, all good, been up and running for 2 and a half years. Well, we arrived back home today to find my tank lights off, powerheads shut down and the tank was foul! :eek3: Apparently we must have had a power surge from a storm because 3 switches were tripped in our breaker box. Unfortunately one breaker controlled my aquarium and other was the deep freeze. You can only imagine how bad that was.

My wife turned on the fax machine and sure enough, according to the fax machine the power went off the night we left so my fish were sitting in still water with no lighting and no water movement for 6 days. Most of my corals died. The only survivors were about half of the mushroom corals. My yellow tang died. I had 5 blue/green chromis'. :( Only two survived. :( I've had a stubborn yellow tail damsel in their this whole time. He lived. So now my only survivors are the damsel, two blue/greens, some nassarius snails and mushroom corals. I instantly changed up 10 gallons as an emergency to remove some of the stench and other toxic buildup. Later in the day after a few hours of lighting and power heads running the damsel and chromises starting coming out of hiding. THis upsets me. when I first got my mushrooms they started as ten attached to a rock. Over the last few years they balooned to over sixty of them.

So now what? After removing dead items and the water change the stench from the water was gone. Should I do another water change tomorrow? Watch all my numbers? Thanks
 
Wow.. Sorry about that.. I have other pets and have had to train my babysitters on my tanks and how to feed etc..

I guess as far as the changes go, since you have had so much die in the last 6 days you probably have quite a bit of ammonia, nitrite and nitrate buildup. I would be performing tests immediately and depending on the levels perform a percentage of water change equivalent to the need (ie how out of whack are your levels). And then continue with daily changes until the levels are back into normal limits.
 
Your water changes right now are going to be governed by what you water test results show up. As there is nothing overly sensitive in the tank now, i would run it for a least a day for so to settled into the normal routine again of circulation, then do another 10% water change..it will be inportant that the trace element levels are brought back up in the tank, but, water changes done slowly enough as to not add more stress to what is in there....

Really sorry to hear of all the losses, it must be heart renching to come back and see that....

Could you post your test results as they stand at the moment..Give us more idea of how things are..

Niko
 
Dang man. It's obviously too late now, but you should really have a friend or family member come and check on your stuff every couple of days, to at least do water top offs and make sure the electricity isn't out.

I came home after vacation to 6-8 inches of hair algae covering EVERYTHING...but I guess I got off lucky.

Sorry to hear about this.
 
Dang man. It's obviously too late now, but you should really have a friend or family member come and check on your stuff every couple of days, to at least do water top offs and make sure the electricity isn't out.

I came home after vacation to 6-8 inches of hair algae covering EVERYTHING...but I guess I got off lucky.

Sorry to hear about this.


Not to hyjack this thread, but how is your system doing? More pixcies would be cool...
 
I'm so sorry to hear about the tank. That is awful.

I agree with the posts above that you need to watch your parameters and restart your normal routine. Is there no way that any of those corals would come back? I have never had this happen (I don't have corals) but from stories I have heard, they can be amazingly tough.

I hope you get your tank back and running as it should be soon.
 
Thats just terrible. I would keep watching the parameters and change out water as needed.

I would look into the cause of the breaker tripping. A power surge normally won't trip a breaker. It seems to me that your tank is near max'ing out the breaker and when the surge came it overloaded it. You can purchase one of those kill-a-watt meters or a clamp on multimeter to determine this. If it is near the max I would recommend running a dedicated circuit or two to the fish tank.

Another idea is if you have cable/dsl internet I would purchase a network camera. I bought one for my tank and when I've gone on vacation I just open up the browser and can see how things are going. Worst case I can call somebody to stop by or leave early.

I know the above doesn't help your situation right now, but it would be a good way to prevent it from happening again.
 
Sorry to hear about your tank. It has to be really difficult knowing how much work and effort went in to getting to this point. And it must be some law of nature that the one you don't want to die...but might be less upset at (the damsel) is guaranteed to live, no matter what.

Have you put additional filter bags of charcoal in your sump to help pull some of the amonia and nitrates out...not to mention the smell?
 
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