Wow. Please keep us up to date with what is going to happen from here.

I hope you can get your tank back up and going again real soon.

Good luck! I'm pulling for you!

OMG sorry to here

That sucks it hapend to me 5mon's a go and this is all that lived i was out of town 3 days tho.
[IMG]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b5/lfduty/100_2075.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b5/lfduty/100_2076.jpg[/IMG]
and this is the tank to day.
[IMG]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b5/lfduty/thDSC017631.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b5/lfduty/thDSC017501.jpg[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i16.photobucket.com/albums/b5/lfduty/IMG_08741.jpg[/IMG]
So stay with is it like a bike falloff and get back up and go good luck. :(

This thread has amazed me. Two very rare things occured.

Finding an octopus in your tank

Tank crashing

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7910945#post7910945 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by 55semireef [/i]
[B]This thread has amazed me. Two very rare things occured.

.......

Tank crashing [/B][/QUOTE]
This is not rare at all.

Haha...lets see the statistics on how often it happens then. If this wasn't a rare event...then we would be seeing a lot more threads stating "my tank crashed, now what?"


Its not just rare but ironic on how it all happened. Thats what I really meant.

I'm sorry to hear what happened. It sounds like it wasn't something you could have predicted at all. :(

Mega sweet you lucky northerner !

For some reason I predidcted it in the beginning. Somehow I knew something was going to go wrong. It was too good to be true.

Manny,

Sorry for your loss. When you're ready to start up again let me know and I'll send you a frag. I've always felt this hobby needs some type of "social security" system to help out in times such as these.

Just a thought... For someone to take what many would call a risk and keep the octo instead of ridding the potential menace is commendable in itself. To plan the family vacation and take what sounds like great care and thought to maintain the system and have the results that happened here is just devastating. If everyone that posted on this site would do as [COLOR=red]anothermineral[/COLOR] suggested and be willing to send a frag or 2 to restart this system, we could truly support our hobby and help rebuild this piece of the ocean. It would take some cordination and following this thread to make it work along with the willingness to set the system back up.

What do you guys think.

If this works out count me in!

"PAY IT FORWARD"

I should have said posted on this thread. I dont think there is a home system big enough to handle a frag from everyone on this site. :rollface:

A sad, but well written story. Lesson learned, anything mechanical and automated, given enough time will surely fail.

Wow...I was about to write a compliment on becoming the thread of the month...but then I saw the "crash". Geesh...what a bummer!

Sorry about the loss. Hopefully you're not out of the hobby.

Geesh, has a "thread of the month" ever been so depressing?

... haven't read the whole thread, so maybe this was covered, but unless your tank has a virtually airtight lid, your octopus may end up outside your tank one day, unfortunately. There was an octopus at monterey bay aquarium that was discovered slipping out of his tank nightly and slipping into other tanks full of fish for a "late night snack" before returning to it's own tank. They're very intelligent.

The Octopus was brilliant and it is sobering to hear that the nightmare that haunts us all, that of a malfunction while on holiday, crashed what looked an amazing tank.

I hope that you manage to get the tank running quickly and that your hitchhiker luck continues.

A bittersweet thread, but well deserving of thread of the month.

[B]55semireef[/B] ,

I was gone for two weeks this summer. During that time period my wife took care of my tanks. She was gone for 2 1/2 days out of the whole two weeks. Guess what happened? The fan went out on our central cooling unit and the temperature in the house rose to over 100.

I was in out of state so my wife got to do her first (and last) water change. She changed out 75g out of my 105g. I lost 5 species of lps and sps, 2 toadstools, tons of ricordia, 2 gorgonians and a flame angel. A black percula, 1 oscellaris, one maroon clown, all my zoos, a galaxia, a cup coral, a small patch of star polyps out of a huge isolated colony and a few ricordias are all that remains. Only one small green monti surived while two large orange montis bleached out immediately.

The summer before, when I was gone for approximately the same amount of time, the power went of and my return pump from my sump didn't kick back on. Neither did some of the pumps that circulated my water in the display tank. End result, 2 dead tangs, 3 clowns, 3 damsals, 1 firefish, 1 foxface, 2 angels, 2 wrasse, 5 cleaner shrimp, one flame shrimp, 1 sargent major. Again, the tank was only left unchecked for 2 consecutive days out of the whole time period. That time my all my corals survived with the exception of a large orange monti. Luckily, I had fragged it and had a small colony in one of my school tanks. I fragged it again and started it all over.

Long story short, I've experienced 2 major crashes in approx. 30 years of keeping tanks and they both happened when I was gone. Bottom line, it does happen.

Buddy Pine, I really feel for you. I know what it's like and it sucks unbelieveably. You face a huge amount of work ahead of you. I almost gave up on the whole mess when it happened the second time to me. I really came close to giving up the hobby. I was utterly depressed for several days as I sat out of state knowing my tank was a disaster. Thank God my wife was beyond patient and did what she could to save what she was able to. She had never used a refractometer or "played" with skimmers before this. Imagine trying to explain how to do this over a cell phone that kept dropping your calls! Dang Cingular! Fewest dropped calls my buttocks!

That was amost two months ago. I finally talked myself into going back to one of my regular lfs and purchased some new corals to "replace" some of the ones that I wasn't able to salvage just yesterday. I'm now glad I stuck with it and saved what I could. It would have been extremelly easy to just take it down and call it quits. Adding a couple of new corals back to the tank raised my enthusiasm quite a bit. In a few weeks I'll be getting frags of some of my corals that I had fragged and given away over the last couple of years. It feels pretty good to know that "part" of them survived and will once again be back in my tanks.

Good Luck and stick with it and let us know how it turns out.-Mike

[QUOTE][i]<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7922672#post7922672 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by 55semireef [/i]
[B]For some reason I predidcted it in the beginning. Somehow I knew something was going to go wrong. It was too good to be true. [/B][/QUOTE]
What a stange thing to say? :rolleyes: :rolleyes:
Buddy Pine,
Best of luck in get your tank restart.
BTW, donating local frags is great but send them overnight mail is just too costly and much of a hassel to make it worth while. When I was selling frag online, I have to take off an afternoon everytime I send a package. The money I got from the frag did not even cover the lost in income for the time off.

55semireef,

That was pretty rude to say imo. It wasn't his fault because of the octopus. To me it seems like maybe you were a little envious and hoping something WOULD happen badly.

I'm in for sending frags. I'd like to see the tank back up and running. You only learn from your mistakes.

Much obliged everyone, for all your support which always leads me to positive direction. For the love my [I]"Reef"[/I].... still feeling so numb...nodding... seven years of enjoyment with this tank almost everyday, now to come home and look at....

[IMG]http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h220/manny240Z/Crash6.gif[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h220/manny240Z/Crash5.gif[/IMG]
[IMG]http://i65.photobucket.com/albums/h220/manny240Z/Crash4.gif[/IMG]

Cheer up. Think of it like this:
The smelly stuff is out of the house. It is much easier now. Wait for the rock to recycle (in the yard I hope). Water, salt, and you are back in business. The hard work is over. I know because I clean up a huge mess before too. My tank was bigger than yours with a thicker sand bed. I have to climb into that smelly mess to scoop it out.
The fishes lost were sad but all the other animals did not have enough awareness to feel anything.

Let the fun of restocking begin and the satisfaction in seeing these tiny corals grows and grows. You know much more about your tank now and you will put in just the right animals this time.
Good luck.

Damn! That middle pic is tough to look at.

Buddy, I've read this top to bottom... and I can't convey my sympathy well enough for you. Good luck with the rebuild... don't give up.
M'kee

Wow, horrible man! And to think i got away with 14 days and no sitter. Some things just dont seem fair. I would gladly send you many frags, unfortunately i live in Ireland so that's probably out of the question, but yeah, anything i can do...

All the best
Ciaran.

very, very sad!!! will you start over?