Quote:
Originally posted by jtesdall
I am really sad to hear that Travis. These tank crashed lately are really scaring me. Especially when they have your years of experience. What happened? You aren't getting out are you?
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This was nothing for you to worry about. It was a "perfect storm" of issues. I setup a holding tank for all of the fish and corals at my old place so I could get the 90 running at the new place. The water at the new house was so crappy and cold it fouled out my old RO filter in no time. The 90 never did get filled as in 24 hours of running my 75 gph RO I got 15 gallons of water. To help things along I decided to put the live rock and water I brought along on the move into the 90. Unfortunatly the water hit 56 degrees during an only 2 hour drive and an ammonia spike fouled the water in the 90 gallon tank. The ammonia spike allowed the pH to drop to 5.85 and it actually started to melt my live rock.
So, the 90 was not ready, but we had to be out of the old place by the 31st. We drove down to Davenport only to find all of my fish laying on the bottom of the tank. A few corals were dead and the rest looked like crap. Appearantly the heater was plugged into an outlet that was run by a light switch and the switch got flipped as we left. The tank was at 60 degrees and a pH of 7.45. This killed a couple corals and I thought it killed all of my fish. I quickly threw some heaters into the tank and slowly raised the temp to 75. I luckily had some buffer there also to combat the pH drop as the temp increased. At 70 degrees all of my fish came back to life!!! I thought I had a chance at saving my tank.
We moved everything that night and drove home through the worst fog I have seen in years. The fish made it through the trip and through the night. We checked on them before going out to breakfast and the tub holding the corals and fish was at 74 degrees and a pH of 7.85. We left for breakfast. When we returned the temp was 78, the water was cloudy, and the pH dropped to 6.87. I believe the ammonia spiked with the increased heat and the pH change allowed the calcium to precipitate thus dropping the pH. Similar to what happened in the live rock tank.
So now I have 3-4 corals sitting in fresh saltwater in 10 gallon tanks and a 90 gallon filled with cycling water and dead rock...
Got to love this hobby!!!
