Chronicle of a dying nano...

[DensityMan]

Left work Friday and Tim's tank was fine.

Got to work this morning and apparently the building was extra-dry this weekend. Part of the 'double-insulated' heater was exposed and it Popped...

Luckily it threw the breaker in the powerstrip, but it had to have shocked the tank for at least a moment to have done that. Temp is reading 86 (normal 84). When the breaker flipped it killed the power to all pumps and the filter (lesson learned, notes for improving power setup have already been made).

I have no idea when, between Friday night and Monday morning, the heater popped, but everything looks bad; except the red scooter blenny who seems more comfortable now than he did Friday.

Checklist of doom:

- ALL zoanthids are closed up tight.

- Montipora (digita form) is closed up and covered in a grey-white film that doesn't blow off.

- Two other encrusting stony corals are pulled in tight; one is showing skeleton...

- Water is whitish and cloudy.

- Halimeda is pale.

- Xenia stalks are upright, but green-tinted (like when I overdosed the tank with Flatworm Exit - all three times) and limp. All polyps are open and hanging down. It hasn't begun to melt at least...

- Both yellow cukes appear to be limp and unhappy (one is losing his grip on the rock altogether).

- Large turbo snail is unmoving and half-open.

- Most nassarius were found at the waterline.

- Astrea snails are dead/unmoving...

- Stomatella snails are uncharacteristically out and about in the daytime; halting in weird poses, inverting and hanging upside-down or stretching for the surface...

- Cerith snails are all unmoving...

- Blue-legs are moving around more than normal...

- No sign of Tim (G. smithii mantis shrimp) this morning.

Not happy, nope, not happy at all...

TO end on a positive note, not only is the new scooter blenny out and about (apparently unharmed) he has also consumed all of the planaria visible last Friday. /shrug

[Sting]

Oh my goodness- this is such bad news! I had loved following your new updates and pictures- your tank had looked amazing, and man, that mantis had to have been happy! Don't give up hope! I can't give any good advice, because I've never been in a situation like that, but I hope everything works out for the best!!

[melev]

That is very sad.

[DensityMan]

Yeah... thanks for the well wishes/comfort/condolences.

I'm hoping Tim is packed in tight and srvived the initial jolt. I haven't heard him at all yet today, but his hole is still sealed up...

What really sucks is just having to watch the cascading failure as it happens on my desk. I'll be leaving as early as possible today to do a couple drastic water changes and move a few zoanthids out in hopes they pull through. the snails are doing worse... same with the SPS/encrusters; they've actually started attracting nassarius snails and sloughing off tissue. What sucks even more is that I wanted to come downtown last night and check on the tank (I had a new meal for TIm), but I resisted the urge to do so and went home after my part-time gig instead.

Of the five nassarius "grave-digger" snails That have come down from the waterline to eat, three are on zoanthid colonies (some of which are already covered with brown skin in patches) and two are crusing the sps-skeletons.

The red feather-dusters have both shed their heads. All of the xenia is shrinking and a turning a more putrid shade of green (I need to scrape it out while on lunch actually - it is probably moments away from melting down completely). If I didn't know what it was supposed to look like it would actually be 'pretty.'

I'm disgusted and amazed at how fast it is 'failing.' I am almost certain this'll hit me pretty hard tonight when I get a chance to try and "save" Tim and some of the corals...

I haven't given up hope yet on finding Tim alright and getting the (as yet to be named) scooter and a few other items out of his tank while it recovers/restarts.

I'll have pictures of the morbid event later as I left my USB cable at home this morning.


(The quasi-religious part of me feels pretty silly asking ya'll to keep a little hope/prayer/happy-thought going for Tim, but I've become pretty attached to the little guy myself. And he's had a rough time of it lately anyway. His karma/mojo/spirit must be really bad off this time around...)

[DensityMan]

I may have been better off waiting to take the xenia out by siphon. They were 'melting down' and only their skins were keeping them intact. I may have done more harm then good in removing them...

Just another lesson learned the hard way in hopes of saving someone else from trying to remove (dying) xenia with a scraper alone.

The first stalk I scraped off the glass and ruptured it's skin at the base; releasing a gush of blood-red/brown liguid (not the slime that a healthy xenia produces when cut while fragging). It stinks like live xenia, only more pungently (the rest of the office (all three of them today) must love me). Having learned my lesson on the first I did the others on the glass much more carefully. The xenia growing on the rock was removed outside the tank, but still it expelled it's brown, nasty liquid into the tank as it was lifted from the water. So then I just took a pair of pliers to the rock and crushed away any part the xenia was attached too. /shrug

[Vicious]

Sorry to hear about your loss. Still hoping Tim pulls through this. However, knowing how tough Mantis are, I'm sure he's perfectly ok.

[Doppler]

DensityMan,If Tim dosen't pull through,I will happily donate a new Tim when you get back up and running.I have 4 mantis shrimp in my sump,they came as hitchhikers on my liverock and I didn't have the heart to flush them.They eat silversides and haven't killed 1 snail.
melev,excellent web site!! very informative and you have 2 beautiful tanks

[DensityMan]

Thanks Vicious!

Doppler: hope I don't have a need to call on you for a replacement Tim, but thanks for the generous offer. If I don't see him in the near future I know who to call.

I had fully intended to make an emergency evac of the tank from the office tonight, until I realized how worefully unprepared for the task I was. Tonight I am gathering (and creating) the tools to move the tank (nothing like a mid-winter tank-move, eh?).

I have the 5g rubbermaid to hold all but Tim's rock and a good part of the water (not that I'll be using all of this water again). I sturdy plank to lift/carry and support the tank in transit on the front seat of my truck. Egg-crate and a box-top to cover the tank in-transit. I also have to get another heater to bring the tank back to temp. I already have all the water ready to go and may be able to head back to the office tonight to start the process.

The second obstacle is where to put the tank in the house. Sure it's only a 10g, but with 3 cats and a dog it has to be child-proofed and on a sturdy surface (my comp desk is going to have to do until it starts to bow). So I am cleaning the area and hoping that the remainder of the critters can make it through another night with good circulation and the removal of the xenia...

Wish me (them really) luck.

[melev]

Man Scott, I can't turn away... it is like watching a wreck on the highway.

I'm really sorry about your loss, it must be devastating even on a small scale.

I have a 10g on the kitchen counter that I've used for Sickbay and while it remains empty, I've not taken it down yet. Even with new livestock, I was thinking "cool quarantine tank" but the impatient side of me put the new guys in the reef tanks instead.

Thanks Doppler, I update it a lot.

[tylernt]

DensityMan,

The Penn-Plax B11 is the best $20 of insurance you can buy for a tank. It comes on automatically when the power goes off. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&i...=penn-plax+b11

[Vicious]

DensityMan,

I hope all goes well tonight. I just moved my wife's 10 Gallon home for the holidays. She's a Speech Language Pathologist and the 10 gallon sit's in her classroom. Three weeks without heat or anyone checking on the tank is too much to hope for.

Moving a nano isn't too bad, I do it a few times a year with my wifes. I just wish you were moving it because you wanted to......

Keep us up dated on how it goes, Tim is in our thoughts.

[Sting]

Just checking up, hope you can save as much as possible! Also, about the xenia, I wouldn't be surprised if they popped back up in a few weeks- they are so hardy! Just trying to look on the bright side of things...:/

[DensityMan]

The xenia was actually scraped out by hand as it was in the process of melting down. I have seen xenia comeback for a melt-down of the parent before, but it was a much 'healthier-looking melt-down then this.

It has been a learning experience and only myself to blame for not having an automatic top-off going at work.

I am trying to help the tank recover and will give it some time to heal before trying anything else with it (and to give Tim a bit more time to come back out). Not knowing Tim's fate is weighing heaviest on me still. I am resisting the urge to blow his door open with a turkey-baster and spook him out only because I don't want to stress him out further if the heater-popping/tank-crash prompted him to molt again...

The list of creatures that do NOT like electrocution followed by pollution and lack of water circulation:

Cerith snails do NOT do well in stressed tank conditions (lost all 4)

Astrea snails are about 50/50 survival.

Stomatella are a mystery population to start with, but there are a number of empty shells (far away from Tim's place) suggesting that they died, or they were stressed enough that the hermits took them out...

After 4 days of doing fine, the red scooter died (and still looked in fantastic shape in death) /shrug

Removed another collapsing zoanthid colony today.

And suctioned out the remains of 'both' tiny yellow-filter-feeding cukes (I don't know how I should refer to the clone - is it a separte entity or just an extension of the first?)

Ugly zoanthids are MUCH hardier than 'pretty' zoanthids...

Montipora sp. did not enjoy any part of this process, first it bleached, then it shed it's flesh...

PPE cousins (Big-teal-pinks and metal-reds) REALLY didn't do well in this scenario (had to remove some with a turkey-baster)

~

What has proved to be pretty tough, by any standards:

Four of the zoanthid strains I only had in this setup appear to be recovering. My gold-green-pinks, country-kitchen-colored and my small start of PPE's have both opened up (at least partially again). The PPE's no longer look like PPE's though, they are smallish and tired (brown-grey) looking, so I have swapped them over to my parent reef in hopes that the much better water quality there will help them to recover faster (even though the less intense lighting there will not prompt as much growth). The country kitchen-colored polyps have all color-morphed to far more boring and less intense hues and the gold are looking more yellow... We'll see... Two polyps of the red-rings have opened up (the rest are being scraped off today).

My colony of tiny-tiny polyped bright neon-mint-green star polyps have never looked better.

The plants (Halimeda and a branching root-bound 'grass') have recolored nicely and the grass even has a new blade starting.

The pocillipora and cup coral are doing well. The two mystery encrusters are looking better and have colored back up somewhat.


Thanks for all the suggestions and well-wishes. I haven't let it sour my holiday (much) and am just thinking up a few new-to-me failsafes for tiny tanks now.

[melev]

sigh

[tricksterpup]

DensityMan
My heart goes out to you on this. I never setup a Nano-reef here at work but I have had a few tanks here and both crashed. It is really hard to keep an eye on a tank when you are not here at work due to holidays or vacation. The main aggravating thing is trying to find people who are actually experienced fish keepers to keep an eye on your tank.

jim

[DensityMan]

Exactly, Tricksterpup; that's why the tank isn't going back.

GOOD NEWS:

Tim LIVES!



The tank still looks crappy, but is on the road to becoming balanced again. The GSP, Pocillipora frag and Halimeda LOVE the tank 'cycling' again... weird...

The "mean green" zoanthids in the tank have turned a dull (ugly) blue and brown, but have lived. One cerith snail came back from the dead. The PPE's are making a full recovery in the main tank. Just about everything else in the tank that survived colormorphed to an ugly shade of brown, but hopefully that can be reveresed in time.

Thanks again all for the support and suggestions lent through this "tragedy" (to me it was anyway). Now that the 75g tank is here (still empty, but that changes this week) the contents of Tim's tank (except for Tim) will slowly be transferred to there. I'll leave a few (really ugly) frags for scenery in Tim's tank (especially those being overgrown with hair algae currently), but the majority will be going to the big reef.

[Vicious]

Congrat's now at least you can keep going! Gotta appreciate how tough Mantis are!!

[melev]

That is good to hear, Scott!

[Doppler]

[Dakota_reef]

I'm very sorry to hear of your losses, but it's good to hear that Tim is alive and well.