da1001's dead tank update

[da1001]

So I went into my bedroom this morning to grab something and noticed I had a slight trickle of water down the edge of my tank. I thought: That's weird, I cleaned it yesterday and mopped up all the water after I was done. I took a closer look and noticed that the water was super high in the tank, so high that it was hitting the little clear bracket that holds the lid in place and actually going up and over the bracket and trickling down the edge of my tank. The water level in the tank was ridiculous. We are talking like well over halfway up the bars of the AIO drainage area. Im like wtf. So I start digging around and noticed some of my filter floss had popped up and was causing the water to run super slow through it, which was making the rear chamber water level lower than normal which was then in turn kicking my ATO off a hell of a lot more than normal. I removed some of the floss and pushed the rest back into place and the water started flowing properly again but the rear chamber now had more water in it then when I unplug it for my daily fish feeding and it auto levels between the display and the rear. I siphoned out about a quarter gallon of excess water, cleaned up the drip on the outside, found a good 4 ounces of water on my stand which is luckily waterproofed, mopped that up and then checked my ATO reservoir. It was nearly empty of course. I only filled it up like 2 days ago, it should have only been half empty. Refilled that and checked the salinity and I was still ok on that at 1.024, so I wont worry about brining it back up to 1.025 again until next week's water change. So yeah, dodged a bullet there, I am glad that I didn't have a larger reservoir for the tank that could have been really bad. In 3 weeks when I go on vacation I told my sister how to specifically check the ATO unit to make sure nothing goes wrong while I am gone.

 

On a sidenote, do you all know of any type of aquatic bug or pest or anything that eats montipora? Mine has been going great for the first week that I bought it, but then it started going south on me recently. It starts with a whitening/die off around the bottom of the coral and slowly works its way up the limb and it looks like there are little white bugs or something on it? Wherever the white dead part is, they are right there too. The smaller piece that is slightly higher up doesn't have any of that yet so I cant 100% rule out that it isn't just the stunner chalice throwing out tentacles and hurting it that way, but I have never seen tentacles yet and I check quite often. Thoughts anyone? I can try to get pics with the macro if I can, just let me know.

[teenyreef]

Wow, good thing you caught it when you did! I've had the same problem with of my ATO's (Tunze Nano). You can prevent future problems by adding a second float valve that works as an overflow sensor and disables the ATO when the water level gets too high.

 

Your bugs sound like montipora eating nudibranches (MEN)? Bad stuff if it is

[da1001]

Wow, good thing you caught it when you did! I've had the same problem with of my ATO's (Tunze Nano). You can prevent future problems by adding a second float valve that works as an overflow sensor and disables the ATO when the water level gets too high.

 

Your bugs sound like montipora eating nudibranches (MEN)? Bad stuff if it is

 

I think you may be right, teeny. I don't see a MEN around but it looks like egg sacks all over below the cleared out spot. *sigh* Honestly I am not sure if all the fighting with this tank is worth it anymore. True, it was started as a hobby tank that I meant to run for a long period of time (think years). And for the most part, I have been successful in that to a certain degree; its been running for 7 months now. But I find more and more time taken up by my work lately and I keep making mistakes like forgetting to coral dip absolutely everything and then pests go out of control. Hell the only thing that appears to be doing good is my Zoa's, which are hardy as crap. The Ric has, over the course of 2 days, shriveled up to almost nothing as well and I am having serious trouble with keeping up with cleaning and maintenance anymore. Starting a second tank for quarantine and re-dipping the Monti and having it sit in quarantine for 3 months is not in the cards right now. Not sure what to do anymore, too much stress in my life right now associated with keeping the tank going. Tanks are supposed to be stress relievers, not stress makers. This post might have a tear-down thread soon. I have been wanting to upgrade to a 20L anyway and re-do everything from scratch now that I know what the hell I am doing but only once I can finally get work sorted out. They keep making me do overtime at the moment though to get everything caught up since they made me take that new position though so I still feel stuck between a rock and a hard place right now though. 20 days to vacation, I will keep it running it that long at least and think long and hard about what I want to do with the tank while I am sitting on a beach with a cold beer in my hand getting sunburnt.

 

EDIT: Yep, its a MEN. I see it hiding on the backside of the Monti,

[reefernanoman]

I think you may be right, teeny. I don't see a MEN around but it looks like egg sacks all over below the cleared out spot. *sigh* Honestly I am not sure if all the fighting with this tank is worth it anymore. True, it was started as a hobby tank that I meant to run for a long period of time (think years). And for the most part, I have been successful in that to a certain degree; its been running for 7 months now. But I find more and more time taken up by my work lately and I keep making mistakes like forgetting to coral dip absolutely everything and then pests go out of control. Hell the only thing that appears to be doing good is my Zoa's, which are hardy as crap. The Ric has, over the course of 2 days, shriveled up to almost nothing as well and I am having serious trouble with keeping up with cleaning and maintenance anymore. Starting a second tank for quarantine and re-dipping the Monti and having it sit in quarantine for 3 months is not in the cards right now. Not sure what to do anymore, too much stress in my life right now associated with keeping the tank going. Tanks are supposed to be stress relievers, not stress makers. This post might have a tear-down thread soon. I have been wanting to upgrade to a 20L anyway and re-do everything from scratch now that I know what the hell I am doing but only once I can finally get work sorted out. They keep making me do overtime at the moment though to get everything caught up since they made me take that new position though so I still feel stuck between a rock and a hard place right now though. 20 days to vacation, I will keep it running it that long at least and think long and hard about what I want to do with the tank while I am sitting on a beach with a cold beer in my hand getting sunburnt.

I think that we all have been there(frustrating with our tanks). Sorry for your troubles. And it sounds like your long hours at work isn't helping either. Yeah, it sucks when life gets too busy for our tanks. I have been extremely lucky with pests, since the only ones I have been dealing with are hydroids(I weed them out with tweezers) aptisia and flat worms. I have never dipped any of my new corals, but I'm seriously considering to start doing that. Good luck with your troubles.

[da1001]

I think that we all have been there(frustrating with our tanks). Sorry for your troubles. And it sounds like your long hours at work isn't helping either. Yeah, it sucks when life gets too busy for our tanks. I have been extremely lucky with pests, since the only ones I have been dealing with are hydroids(I weed them out with tweezers) aptisia and flat worms. I have never dipped any of my new corals, but I'm seriously considering to start doing that. Good luck with your troubles.

 

Thanks man

[kimberbee]

Yikes!! Glad you caught your ATO issue before it was too late!! I accidentally forgot to turn my ATO back on over the weekend. Luckily my salinity only went up to 1.026. Phew!

[da1001]

Yikes!! Glad you caught your ATO issue before it was too late!! I accidentally forgot to turn my ATO back on over the weekend. Luckily my salinity only went up to 1.026. Phew!

 

I have been lucky with both my downswings as well as upswings in salinity level with this tank, its always stayed at least 1.023 and never gone over 1.026 so I always feel like I dodge a bullet in that sense.

 

On a sidenote, I was in a pissy Monday mood and tossed the monti, lets see it get eaten alive when its already dead! I know I probably shouldn't have now that I think back on it, but sometimes I can be an a********. I was just tired of the whole damn thing. So now I have room for the Chalice to grow out and I can move the dragon eyes zoa up and see if it likes the extra light and maybe it wont be quite so easy to knock off since it will be on the middle of the rock rather than the edge.

[teenyreef]

Ha! Teach that guy to get infested

Seriously, though, while we tend to obsess over every little thing, sometimes it's better just to toss a problem coral and move on. Much more fun in the long run.

[da1001]

Sorry I haven't uploaded in awhile, first I was on vacation, then back to work to play catch up...its been a mess. I had pretty much decided I was just going to keep my IM10 rather than change to anything else or tear it down or anything when my cat made the decision for me. I was eating Chinese and had set the plastic bag on the floor out of the way. She decided she was going to play with it but ended up getting it caught around her fat hind end, which freaked her out and she started tear-assing around the house at max speed. She went under the camera tripod and tipped it over right into the side of the tank which ended up cracking it. I freaked out and literally tore around the house at the speed of light trying to stop the leaking water and set up something I could throw everything in. I duct taped the side of the tank, grabbed my spare 5 gallon, a heater and a HOB filter and quickly made some new saltwater, tossed everything in there but it was too late. My stunner chalice ended up croaking on me, all my Zoa's are pissed and only halfway opening and my torch is not sticking his arms out more than a quarter inch at the moment, but I did manage to save the shrimp and clownfish. I am trying to re-cycle the brand new tank and hope parameters don't go nuts on me but who knows. I have never had a tank blow on my before. It was my own dumb fault for leaving the tripod too close to the tank and putting the bag on the floor, I wish I had known it was even a possibility that this could have happened. Anywho, I took a shot of the tank as it looked before the chalice died and I guess I can post it up if anyone wants to see, but for the moment I am in super low-tech and just trying to keep everything alive mode, the pic doesn't really look all that great.

[kimberbee]

[Slowtwitch]

Sorry I haven't uploaded in awhile, first I was on vacation, then back to work to play catch up...its been a mess. I had pretty much decided I was just going to keep my IM10 rather than change to anything else or tear it down or anything when my cat made the decision for me. I was eating Chinese and had set the plastic bag on the floor out of the way. She decided she was going to play with it but ended up getting it caught around her fat hind end, which freaked her out and she started tear-assing around the house at max speed. She went under the camera tripod and tipped it over right into the side of the tank which ended up cracking it. I freaked out and literally tore around the house at the speed of light trying to stop the leaking water and set up something I could throw everything in. I duct taped the side of the tank, grabbed my spare 5 gallon, a heater and a HOB filter and quickly made some new saltwater, tossed everything in there but it was too late. My stunner chalice ended up croaking on me, all my Zoa's are pissed and only halfway opening and my torch is not sticking his arms out more than a quarter inch at the moment, but I did manage to save the shrimp and clownfish. I am trying to re-cycle the brand new tank and hope parameters don't go nuts on me but who knows. I have never had a tank blow on my before. It was my own dumb fault for leaving the tripod too close to the tank and putting the bag on the floor, I wish I had known it was even a possibility that this could have happened. Anywho, I took a shot of the tank as it looked before the chalice died and I guess I can post it up if anyone wants to see, but for the moment I am in super low-tech and just trying to keep everything alive mode, the pic doesn't really look all that great.

"Unlike"

Hope you can bring back.

[da1001]

"Unlike"

Hope you can bring back

I will be doing my best. Everything seems a little less pissed off today at least and I see some algae for everything that is not a fish to munch on, paramaters seem ok at the moment, I will be doing a water change soon though to keep plenty of fresh water in there for everything.

[da1001]

So everything is slowly coming back. Apparently the water is good since the shrimp and fish are looking nice, still eating, etc. The torch is coming back and he is starting to extend again and his coloration is looking even better than before, I think its because he is so much closer to the light now and the zoa's are about halfway open now and I got decent algae growth on the sand again so it seems I am through the worst for now. Pics coming once I can clean it up and make it look "perty".

[da1001]

Left work early because I wasn't feeling well and when I got home I found to my dismay two things wrong. First, that the power had been out. Second, that somehow the power going out had messed with my Aquaclear 70 somehow. The AC70 was not running, I walk over and notice the motor was too hot to touch and then I look in the tank and see everything is dead. Freaking everything. 97 degrees in there on my thermometer. I am beyond devastated. I lost my favorite fish, my favorite shrimp, the awesome torch, everything. It was doing so good after the move too.

 

If you have a HOB power filer instead of an AIO, just be careful ok? I don't want this happening to anyone else's tank. I don't even know what to do with myself. Just spent the last hour and a half cleaning everything up, I am freaking done with tanks for awhile.

[Elizabeth94]

Oh my gosh.. this is terrible. I really hope this doesn't push you further from the hobby though. These both were freak accidents that really don't happen a lot. Take a break for a while and save any working equipment, sooner or later you will need it.

[dandelion]

That must have been terrible. I can't imagine how I will feel if that happened to me. I felt like crap for a day already when my fish died in QT. It must have been devastating. I am very glad you posted your journey so everyone can learn from your experience.

 

Yea I agree with Elizabeth that you may want to take a break for a little while. Don't toss everything because maybe at one point you will have the itch again to start another build. Reef tanks certainly should be relaxing not taxing.

 

Kinda sad to have read your first post, and then jumped to the last page and see your frustration. But such is life.

[Slowtwitch]

So sorry to hear this. Hope you can put this all behind you and start fresh again soon.

[da1001]

Thanks for the positivity everyone. No, I am not giving up the fight just yet. I will go back to lurker status again for awhile though, but I am keeping all the spare parts, not tossing anything at all. Hopefully the break does me some good. Guess its time to start checking out other people's tanks again.

[dandelion]

I'm not sure if this is the best time to ask, but did you figure out how the AC70 overheated your tank? I have an AC50 and I noticed the siphon will break during power outage, and when power is back the motor will be running dry creating immense heat. I don't get how the heat will transfer into your tank if it's running DRY???

[teenyreef]

Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear about the AC-70 disaster, especially after you were just starting to recover from the blown tank

Did the water get that hot just because it wasn't circulating again?

 

I know you will use this opportunity to come up with a new tank that will be even better - hang in there!

[da1001]

I'm not sure if this is the best time to ask, but did you figure out how the AC70 overheated your tank? I have an AC50 and I noticed the siphon will break during power outage, and when power is back the motor will be running dry creating immense heat. I don't get how the heat will transfer into your tank if it's running DRY???

 

 

When I got home, it wasn't running and the motor was too hot to touch, I think somehow when the power came on it kicked the AC70 on which somehow started overheating while still circulating water around the tank but since it was coming in contact with the hot motor, it heated the water up. I have one of those mods that fits over the AC70 intake so that it skims water from the surface rather than the middle of the tank and when I checked there was still plenty of water going in so it wasn't sucking dry or anything. That is my guess at least. I checked every other part when I started cleaning and it was all fine. I have never had any problem with siphoning because of that modded surface skimmer since the water only has to fall in to refill it and I spent the last week unplugging it for feeding and general maintenance issues so it would have had plenty of time to do something like to me. But hey, if you can think of anything else I am all ears. I would feel better knowing exactly what happened, but I wasn't here to see it.

 

 

Oh no! I'm so sorry to hear about the AC-70 disaster, especially after you were just starting to recover from the blown tank

Did the water get that hot just because it wasn't circulating again?

 

I know you will use this opportunity to come up with a new tank that will be even better - hang in there!

 

I was considering saving up for a Biocube 14 and either using Steve's led combo to stick in the hood instead of the PC's to save on evaporation or maybe a nanobox mini but I am not sure. It's a lot of money and I am currently spending the next few years saving for a house. I need to decide which is important in my life, moving away from idiot neighbors who I cant stand or having the inner peace of being the owner of a reef tank again

[dandelion]

My match could be wrong, but I am wondering if your AquaClear really is the culprit. I did my calculations based on my knowledge from high school physics. If there are any engineers or physicists or electricians etc here please chime in and correct me if I am wrong.

 

I'm assuming you were running your reef in a 5 gallon tank after your 10G cracked? With rock and substrate and equipment let's say you have 3-4 gallon actual water volume. Let's say you only have 3 gallons (11.4L) for worst case scenario.

 

Let's say your tank runs at 80F (26.7C) normally. So there is a 9.4C difference to raise your tank temperature to 97F (36.1C). That means it takes 9.4C * 11.4L = 107.2 kcal, or 448525 J of energy to heat it up to that temperature. AquaClear 70 has a powerhead that runs at 6W. Assuming, worst case scenario again, that all 6W is used to generate heat instead of spinning the impeller, it will take 448525J / 6W = 74754 seconds to heat your tank up. That's 20.8 hours. Was there any chance that 21 hours have gone by since the power outage to you coming back to your tank?

 

I didn't take into account the heat generated from the transformer inside the powerhead. But then the heat from the transformer would have been transferred to the water during normal operation anyways. If the transformer shorted and generated immense heat, your GFCI or main fuse should have tripped, or your powerhead should have been fried.

 

Again I could have done my math completely wrong. But at this point I am suspecting a heater failure. What size heater are you running? Have you tested it afterwards? Either way I think it's worth its own thread for discussion. A lot of us run AquaClear filters here.

[da1001]

Not a bad idea, I will check in on the heater too as a potential culprit. The power outage would have only been for about 9 hours, so that's not long enough. The heater I used was a little 25w wal-mart heater that I had originally been using to heat up my mixed saltwater because it was the only one that I found could fit inside the AC70 next to the charcoal underneath the sponge. Its possible that it might have been a combination of both. Its also possible that maybe the power outage had nothing to do with it and the power filter started going bad the night before and I just didn't notice the temperate rising if it was slow enough, it would have probably only been 85ish at that point which isn't fun for the tank but wouldn't have killed anything. I am trying to think back on if I saw any difference in anything, maybe the fish was hiding under the rock and not swimming around like normal? I generally don't check anything in the morning since the lights off and I cant see well enough, all I do is top up evaporated water and then its out the door so I am just not sure anymore. I don't know, too many factors.

[reefernanoman]

Left work early because I wasn't feeling well and when I got home I found to my dismay two things wrong. First, that the power had been out. Second, that somehow the power going out had messed with my Aquaclear 70 somehow. The AC70 was not running, I walk over and notice the motor was too hot to touch and then I look in the tank and see everything is dead. Freaking everything. 97 degrees in there on my thermometer. I am beyond devastated. I lost my favorite fish, my favorite shrimp, the awesome torch, everything. It was doing so good after the move too.

 

If you have a HOB power filer instead of an AIO, just be careful ok? I don't want this happening to anyone else's tank. I don't even know what to do with myself. Just spent the last hour and a half cleaning everything up, I am freaking done with tanks for awhile.

. Man, that sucks! When I was starting out in 2005, my beautiful 12G nanocube overheated and everything died so I know how that feels. Sorry for your loss. Hang in there.

[dandelion]

Yea it's really a lot of things that could have gone wrong. I also didn't take into account room temperature and heat loss in my calculation, so I think it would've taken even longer for the tank to get so hot. I've thought about getting a cheap car dash cam and record my tanks 24/7. But as much as I wanted to know what killed my pets I also wanted to just move on.

 

I know I may sound like a heretic here, but if you're having a lot of things going on with life, have you thought about doing a FW in your 5G? You have all the equipments you need so you just need to get some $1 guppies and maybe a small algae eater. There's no prefixing saltwater, nitrate, phos, salinity, calcium, mag, alkalinity, lighting, gluing frags etc to worry about. And when they give birth to baby guppies, you'll understand why so many people haven't graduated to saltwater tanks yet.