Disaster!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[grevedin]

I come home to find ALL my fish dead, water clowdy, all corals retracetd including all my SPS, every Shrimp, Crab and other crustacean dead except for a CB shrimp, my seastars hanging on by their claws and also the various snails I have.

So far 16 Dead fish + numerous crustaceans.

All my corals are hanging in there but chances for survival are slim.

I check all water parameters, and sea that everything is OK except for my PH controller which shows a value of 6.7 for the tank water!!!!!

I then realize that my CO2 tank is comletely empty and the valve blew, basically injecting god knows how much CO2 into my reactor and into the aquarium before it automatically shut off.

I have trued to remedy the situation by adding buffer, adding kalkwasser to raise PH and doing a 30% water change using freshly made sea water.

PH is now at 7.80 but water still very clowdy and most SPS sliming.

A few have become very pale in color.

Any suggestions are welcome. This is truly a sad day for me.

:(

[kebo]

I am really sorry to hear about your loss. I know how you are feeling and it's not a good feeling. I just had a huge ich outbreak in my 180 yesterday, and I think that I will end up losing most of my fish before it's all over with. I have a couple of fish that are big and really expensive not to mention very hard to find. Best of luck with your tank.

[Awestralian]

Very sad news.
Im feel for you.

It seems there are so many mechanical breakdowns causing tanks to crash lately.

Good luck saving the rest of your tank.

[beermanic]

Throw in some airstones and crank up the air pumps. This will cause any CO2 to disapate and your PH should rise. I had the exact opposite problem with my freshwater tank and once I removed the excess surface agitation the CO2 stayed in the water so if you increase surface agitation CO2 should leave the tank. Hope this helps, good luck hopefully some of your corals will pull through.

[ReefRaf]

Use the largest diameter hose you have to siphon water into 5g pails, causing as much tubulence as you can. Pour back into the tank and repeat. This will help expell the CO2

[JazzMan]

Get the top of that water moving.....you need to have gas exchange!!! All the recommendations on here are good.....

Keep us updated.

Sorry to hear this.......

[grevedin]

I have done all that and the water is getting to normal PH levels. The water is still very clowdy though, and I fear it is due to bacteria die off. What should I do for that?

[ReefRaf]

carbon and water changes

[beermanic]

Praying never hurts!!

[Lunchbucket]

ouch that sucks...water change and carbon are you best bets...sorry to hear

Lunchbucket

[Snoopdog]

I had this fear a year ago, i cannot stress the importance of going ahead and buying an electronic controller. The Aquacontroller can turn off CO2 in the case that something like this occurs. I know that no one wants to spend $400+ dollars on a controller but in the long run being able to save yourself from heat/cold/low Ph can save you more in coral and fish loss than the price of the controller. Many days i have come home and my light be out, check my temp and it is sky high, one time someone had turned the air conditioner off, other times a fan failed.

[grevedin]

The problem is that I do have a controller, and it did shut the valve off, however, there was so much CO2 in the reactor by that time, that even though the valve shut off, the continuous waterflow through the reactor kept dissolving the CO2 in the reactor and lowering the tank PH down to 6.7 until I returned home.

I guess that to be really safe, one would need to have the controller also shut off the pump feeding the reactor, so as to avoid what happened to me.

[Snoopdog]

Wow never thought about it, maybe putting them on a splitter on the same X-10 module would work. Glad you made me think about it.

[jdieck]

What is your Alaklinity?? The claudiness could come from a sudden precipitation of your calcium carbonate, adding the buffers could have helped compound the problem.
At this point you may be running either too low (Due to the precipitation) or too high due to the buffering to bring the PH back up.
If you find the alk out of wack again the best solution will be continue with water changes.

Good Luck.

[Joseph Sorrels]

We can try to do everything to make our systems fail safe but there is always that weak link. I have a neptune pro backed up to a UPS and went on vacation don't you that the GFI feeding the UPS and other things like my skimmer and other toys luckly I was able to walk my mother in law though reseting the GFI. I don't presently have the controller hooked up to a phone line that will page me if something is out of wack put plan to do it soon and would recommend everybody with one do the same.

[Awestralian]

I don't presently have the controller hooked up to a phone line that will page me if something is out of wack put plan to do it soon and would recommend everybody with one do the same. :eek: :eek2: :eek:

My god, that is truly a case of technology overload.
Technology to keep an eye on technology. Ye gads.
Whatever happened to keeping things simple? The best failsafe you could ever have.

[dattack]

Is the effluent of the Calcium reactor submerged in a sump?

WOuldn't most of the CO2 escape if you have excess CO2 in the air if the effluent hose is not allowed to be submerged? Even then, a drip every second from the calcium reactor in a 500 G shouldn't lower the pH by that much within a 24 period.

[agiacosa]

Sorry to hear about your disaster.

Some CO2 regulators are known to dump CO2 when the pressure in the tank lowers to a certain point. Typically when the tank is almost empty. This creates a CO2 bubble in your reactor.

Some reactors deal with this better than others. For example, the MTC would allow the excess CO2 to vent without mixing with the water. Others would vent the CO2 via the effluent line. In this case the effluent line should not be submersed thereby allowing the CO2 to escape into the atmosphere.

In your case, it appears that your reactor either had the effluent line needle valve very restricted so that CO2 couldn't escape before mixing with the recirculating water or its design doesn't allow for CO2 escape prior to mixing (e.g., CO2 recirculating type). If that is true, you can connect the reactor feed pump to the pH controller for the solenoid. This will stop the reactor if pH lowers too much.

In my setup, I use a CO2 vent system and a pH probe port in the reactor. The solenoid is turned off if the pH inside my reactor reaches a set point. I'm trying to add redundancy by also connecting a pH probe in the main tank that could also turn off the solenoid as a back up.

[OrionN]

How did the excess CO2 got into your tank? My Ca reactor out-put drip into the tank and the excess gas, if any, escapes into the atmosphere. To get pH of the tank down to 6.7, you got to really mix the CO2 into the tank water like injected it right in to the main pump intake or something similar. Is there any possibility that something else cause this problem.
Good luck. I don't know if you know but my tank just crashed also. It was essentially a total loss.

[jdieck]

Minh:

My best guess in this cases is not only the direct effect of the CO2 (which shall be minor) but the sudden precipitation of Calcium Carbonate (Snow effect & "Clowdiness") due to the excess addition of Alkalinity from the reactor.

When the combination of Calcium and Alkalinity exceeds the maximum supersaturation Calcium Carbonate starts precipitating out of the water column, the new particles formed accelerate the process by creating additional precipitation points creating a chain reaction which in minutes totally depletes the alkalinity creating a sudden significant drop in PH.

If you are lucky to be around when the precipitation starts one way to partially aliviate the problem may be to add vinager to the aquarium water to increase the solubility and stop the process but if you are not around and the process has completed the only way may be to replace as much water as possible as fast as possible.

IMO Adding buffers may be a gamble because with the precipitation, the Magnessium may also be significantly depleted thus lowering the limit of potential supersaturation. This means that depending on the end level of Magnessium a good portion of the buffer you add will keep on precipitating. So there is a chance to compound the problem if overreacting with the buffers. Note also that certain buffers may not imediatelly increase the PH but take up to four days to do so.

[desi04]

Hi! Grevedin:

I felt you had one of the best reef tanks I have ever seen,
especially the SPS (purple acro). I am really sorry to hear about the mishap. I am definitely not building my own reactor now.

Dan

(green pavona)

[Joseph Sorrels]

You could keep things simple if you choose. I have thought about doing away with the GFI but value my life much more, and for the pageing system I don't know about you but I have thousands ridding on things going well while i'm away. My God Technology over load :lol: :mixed:

[kevin gu3]

Sorry to hear!

Max aeration asap

[grevedin]

O.k, this is the situation now:

1) Did a 30% water change last night.

2) Did another 30% water change this morning.

3) Getting ready to do another 30% water change in about 1/2 hour.

Water has cleared up a bit and parameters are as following:

PH:8.17
dKH: 21 - very high - what shoud I do about it?
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0

I had to remove 7 dead fish last night, I was surprised to see my yellow watchman goby come out earlier today and he seemed o.k, but all the other fish are MIA and either dead or hiding.

The only surviving shrimp is my CB, and the variuos hermit crabs that are still alive seem to be slowly recovering.

All my LPS seem to be o.k, an anthelia colony has crashed and i had to remove it before it would polute the rest of the tank.

SPS:

A couple of montipora digitata's seem to be o.k.

Most of my acros are faded and displaying a weird fluorescent coloring, and they continue to slime. In addition, some are expelling zooxanthellae.

My two large claams seem to be fine.

I am continuing with water changes.

[john rochon]

just for my own knowledge, I thought is was virtually impossible to overdose C0'2 ? I was under the impression that excess gas would just disipate if you have decent water circulation? I haven't hooked up yet but would like to know the most failsafe simple reactor, and setup.

[nvillacci]

as long as they are sliming there is still hope, if they do bleach, make sure you feed them alot more...

[jdieck]

This is what IMO will help:

Lower the light to reduce stress as the corals are expeling zoo and fluorescing (Symptom of shock and try to defend from the light), If they bleach you need to keep low light and start increasing it slowly over a period of several weeks. Continue with water changes but at a slower rate now until the Alk drops to about 13-14. Of course No more Kalk and turn off the ractor and no feeding for a while. (5 to 6 days), If you have a canister filter let it run to remove as many floating Calcium Carbonate particles as you can.

Once the Alk is down to around 13 with the water changes you can let the alkalinity continue droping on it's own to about 10 dkh when you can start balancing Calcium and Magnesium and re-start Kalk additions. Continue monitoring Ammonia just in case some of the bacteria also suffered or you have dead organisms that you can not remove.

Keep in mind that major water changes are also very stressful so try to prepare larger batches so you let some of it settle for about 24 Hour. Use heavy aereation in the new salt water and the aquarium if possible via air pump and aerating stone. This aereation will reintroduce some CO2 from the air and help stabilize the Carbonate Cycle and the Nw water faster without dropping the PH. Only if the PH rise (delayed effect from the buffers) you may add very small amounts of vinager to the water to speed up the stabilization and prevent a second precipitation process which may happen if the alk is still that high and the PH increase above 8.3- 8.4

Good Luck!

[grevedin]

jdieck,

Thanks for the help, I really appreciate it. After this last water change, the dKH should be around 15 at this point (will check shortly), and I will follow your advice regarding the lighting period.

Hopefully thay will be able to make a recovery.

Best Regards,
Giovanni

[uryy4me]

I suspect you will be doing some rather large water changes for probably the next week. dKH is probably the least of your concerns, you probably arlready know this but just in case....if it hasn't already started your tank is going to cycle so I would prepare for this as best as possible (I know many advise against it, but I'd get some amquel to help beat down the Am/Ni spike when you are either too tired to do another water change and/or out of ro/di). Good Luck...been there, done that, it really sucks!...its bad enough when your tank crashes but to drag it have to follow it with a week or so of hard work is down right cruel!

[quazi]

If you have Polyfilters, now is the time to use them. If not, go out and buy several now. It will greatly help the excess bio-load in your tank.

Good luck!

[Experimenter]

Your Alk reading is probably not accurate right now. I had a tank crash last summer and the same thing happened to me - Alk was off the scale. I posted on the Chemistry forum and Habib (Salifert) responded that there were likely many things in the water, other than carbonate alkalinity, that would be caught in the reading. So, don't worry too much about that reading.

IMO, you should still do water changes - probably once a day or at least every other day for the next week. By then, things will have settled down. But it will probably take at least a week for that Alk figure to come down and once again be an accurate indicator of carbonate alkalinity. I would advise using polyfilter for the next few days too.

Good luck,
John

[vic8361]

Sad to hear about your tank Geovanni hope all comes around well.
Vic

[grevedin]

Update:

1) I have added the poly filters as suggested
2) Added 2 areator stones conected to an air pump in the sump to increase gas exchange
3) Added a diatom filter (only other filter I had) to trap Calcium carbonate particles
4) prepared another batch of water for possible water change tomorrow

The tank seems to have stabilized and most of the remaining hermit crabs are back to life, probably busy eating away at the dead fish which I cannot find

Some of the SPS are gradually regaining a little bit of color and showing some polyp extension (limited though).

A few others are still pale and fluorescent.

All other corals - mainly LPS; and the clams are doing fine

The sole fish survivor, my yellow watchman goby seems to be doing o.k as well.

Water parameters are the following:

Ammonia - very low if not undetectable
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
dKH: 17

Now I can only pray for RTN not to develop on the SPS.

[Snoopdog]

The watchman is probably happy because he has the run of the tank. For all you know he planned it.

[miktrav]

I know we're not on best terms but I just wanted to say sorry for your loss. Hopefully your corals will survive. Your tank was really nice to look at.

Mike

[jdieck]

I'm really happy things are starting to straighten up and seems most of your corals could make it just keep in the lookout for a potential Ammo spike.
Guess the goby did well as one of their habits is to dig in the sand where the PH is usually lower.

[grevedin]

miktrav,

After all the animosity between us I really appreciate the support. I hope the corals are going to make it.

Thanks,
giovanni

[grevedin]

Update:

Tank seems to be doing better, and seems to have stabilized. I also added a new clean-up crew to take care of the dead fish in the tank, that are trapped somewhere behind the rockwork.

As far as the SPS are concerned, unfortunately RTN has set in. I have lost 6 large SPS colonies so far.

:(

[vic8361]

I am so so sad about the sps corals I was hoping they would make it. You had some really nice stuff sorry to hear about it Geo.
Your fellow reefer.
Vic:(

[jdieck]

Sorry about your corals. Gudd idea adding the clean up crew.

[Joseph Sorrels]

I came home to to find needle valve on the co2 stuck and free flowing co2 my tank was PH 7.6 and reactor ph at 5. I can't beleve what can happen so quick to our systems. I haven't seen any ill affects so far and i am running a air stone to blow off co2 and hopefully raise my ph. I can only imagine how you must of felt because if i would have came home a little later BY BY tank. I going to get a new needle valve and hook it up to my neptune controller. I was wondering if anybody as much experience with this? my only reservation would be if the probe goes bad and reads a high ph in which i have had happen what would the result be? I have a PRO-Cal with a retro fit PH probe incerted in the reactor.

[jdieck]

You can use the Neptune as a PH controller if you meassure the PH of the reactor (not the aquarium) so you can connect the CO2 solenoid to an X-10 module set to run say "If PH>6.8 then CO2 on" , "If PH<6.6 then CO2 off".

Although this set up will work it has two inconveniences:
a) You loose the ability to monitor Aquarium PH
b) The solenoid valve may still get stuck open and flood your aquarium with CO2.

The best safety system will be as follows:

a) Set your CO2 bubble rate using the needle valve to maintain an effluent PH no lower then 6.5 without the need of a controller.

b) Install a controller for the CO2 (Pinpoint can work) and set it up to run between 6.8 and 6.6 (May be lower if you have lots of SPS and Alk consumption but no lower than 6.4

c) Connect the CO2 controller to an X-10 set in a way to turn off if the Aquarium PH drops below say 7.9.

This way if the CO2 is close to empty the regulator loose control and the needle valve may let too much CO2 in so Neptune will shut off what the PH controller may take too much time to detect. If the solenoid gets stuck open or the PH controller fails open the needle valve again is adjusted not to drop the reactor's PH below 6.5

[Joseph Sorrels]

Thanks for the tip. I am going to install a new needle valve because i think the seal bearing inside the valve went bad go figure. I am going to try hooking up neptune pro to control reactor and i have a pinpoint to monitor the ph in the tank hopefully it would catch it there quicker before its gets to the tank. I have a probe insert on the top of my PRO-CAL. I think things can only be so fail safe and i have to keep on top of it with better maintance in the future. I bought the reg. used probably mistake. I plan on hooking up the neptune to page me in a abnormal event.

[grevedin]

An added precaution which would have saved my tank is to have also the pump feedeing the reactor connected to the controller, so that if it shuts of the solenoid, it will also shut off any the flow through the reactor, thus avoiding any excess CO2 in the reactor ever reaching the tank.

[Joseph Sorrels]

I think that is a great idea also for added safety. I was real sorry to hear about your tank are things coming around better? I would like to add that i bought a needle valve with a lock down so once you have it set there is a lock down nut to prevent the valve from being moved from that setting.