Angry-Monkey Posted February 17, 2018 Share Posted February 17, 2018 Sorry this is a double post from my aquarium journal. Tldr - forgot to turn heater back on after w/c before going on vacation. Tank sat in the 60s for 4-5 days. Went on vacation for 4 days, came back to a cloudy tank, algae on the glass. All sps white with just very faint bit of colour here and there. Octospawn looks dead. Duncan, blasto, favia and acans look alive but pissed. Zoas are all closed, rics are shriveled and meteor shower has receded and is pale. Toadstool seems ok. Both fish seems ok. Initially I thought my top off had run dry as that was my main fear before leaving. Third chamber was a little low but not really and ATO was full. Looked at my power strip to realize that after my w/c the day before leaving I had forgotten to turn my heater and ATO back on. Evaporation wasn't really an issue because of how cold the tank was running. What made things worse is that I had dropped our house thermostat to 16C (60.8F) before leaving. Turned the heater back on, topped up the evaporation and then did a 40% w/c. Tank came back up to temp overnight and lights are just coming on now. I think most of my LPS and softies are going to make it. Anyone think there is hope for the monticap, sunset monti, poccilipora and octospawn? What's the best strategy for trying to recover them? Should I decrease the lights at all? Aldo, I ordered a jebao sw2 from China on eBay and it arrived while we were away. Is now a bad time to add it to the tank? The idea was to get more flow on my sps as im only running the return right now. Would more flow on them hurt or help possible recovery? Added a picture of the most affected coral. Quote Link to comment
Angry-Monkey Posted February 18, 2018 Author Share Posted February 18, 2018 Bump for advice... Quote Link to comment
WV Reefer Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 4 hours ago, Angry-Monkey said: Sorry this is a double post from my aquarium journal. Tldr - forgot to turn heater back on after w/c before going on vacation. Tank sat in the 60s for 4-5 days. Went on vacation for 4 days, came back to a cloudy tank, algae on the glass. All sps white with just very faint bit of colour here and there. Octospawn looks dead. Duncan, blasto, favia and acans look alive but pissed. Zoas are all closed, rics are shriveled and meteor shower has receded and is pale. Toadstool seems ok. Both fish seems ok. Initially I thought my top off had run dry as that was my main fear before leaving. Third chamber was a little low but not really and ATO was full. Looked at my power strip to realize that after my w/c the day before leaving I had forgotten to turn my heater and ATO back on. Evaporation wasn't really an issue because of how cold the tank was running. What made things worse is that I had dropped our house thermostat to 16C (60.8F) before leaving. Turned the heater back on, topped up the evaporation and then did a 40% w/c. Tank came back up to temp overnight and lights are just coming on now. I think most of my LPS and softies are going to make it. Anyone think there is hope for the monticap, sunset monti, poccilipora and octospawn? What's the best strategy for trying to recover them? Should I decrease the lights at all? Aldo, I ordered a jebao sw2 from China on eBay and it arrived while we were away. Is now a bad time to add it to the tank? The idea was to get more flow on my sps as im only running the return right now. Would more flow on them hurt or help possible recovery? Added a picture of the most affected coral. I’d say you are doing all you can do...... wait and see who recovers. 1 Quote Link to comment
markalot Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 Blasto looks good. For the rest, just keep things stable and hope for the best, really hard to say. Stability is the key to recovery. 1 Quote Link to comment
dandelion Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 If I were you I wouldn’t add the wave makers now. It may not make things worse, but if things don’t recover you’ll never know if it’s because of the wave makers. 1 1 Quote Link to comment
Angry-Monkey Posted February 18, 2018 Author Share Posted February 18, 2018 Ok great, thanks guys. Will wait to add the wavemaker and won't adjust lighting schedule. Quote Link to comment
Clown79 Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 I'd wait on the wavemaker, like @dandelion mentioned, it will be difficult to determine if it's a cause of an issue. It sounds like you are doing all you can. Try not to beat yourself up. I did the same thing a month ago except I wasn't on vacation and should have noticed I forgot to plug my heater after a wc. 1 Quote Link to comment
ajmckay Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 Agree it sounds like you're doing about what you should be doing... Keep things stable and consistent. Try to reduce stresses on the inhabitants. I've done similar things before as well... Try to improve something based on your experience. For example write "Heater" on a sticky note and put it on the glass whenever you turn it off. This might be all the reminder you need to turn the heater back on (worked for me before, because cleaning the glass is the last thing I do in my tank maintenance). Alternatively if you have the ability to put it in a place where it will stay submerged even during tank maintenance then you don't even need to worry about it. 1 Quote Link to comment
Clown79 Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 2 minutes ago, ajmckay said: Agree it sounds like you're doing about what you should be doing... Keep things stable and consistent. Try to reduce stresses on the inhabitants. I've done similar things before as well... Try to improve something based on your experience. For example write "Heater" on a sticky note and put it on the glass whenever you turn it off. This might be all the reminder you need to turn the heater back on (worked for me before, because cleaning the glass is the last thing I do in my tank maintenance). Alternatively if you have the ability to put it in a place where it will stay submerged even during tank maintenance then you don't even need to worry about it. I did something similar to ensure I won't do it again. I purposefully now keep the plugs hanging in a basket in my stand so as soon as I am done I visually see that I have plugged them all in. Quote Link to comment
dandelion Posted February 18, 2018 Share Posted February 18, 2018 8 minutes ago, Clown79 said: I did something similar to ensure I won't do it again. I purposefully now keep the plugs hanging in a basket in my stand so as soon as I am done I visually see that I have plugged them all in. I on the other hand forgot to turn off my ATO when I did water change on my nano last month. My ATO is only one 8 times a day30 minutes each time and it happened to be “on” when I did water change. Left me puzzling why new water at 1.026 became 1.024 in the tank. I didn’t realize until that day when my ATO reservoir was empty that that was the reason. I have also forgotten to turn back on a return pump overnight during the winter. Heater is in the back chamber so tank water was like 70°F. Things didn’t seem bothered, though. 1 1 Quote Link to comment
Angry-Monkey Posted February 18, 2018 Author Share Posted February 18, 2018 7 hours ago, ajmckay said: Agree it sounds like you're doing about what you should be doing... Keep things stable and consistent. Try to reduce stresses on the inhabitants. I've done similar things before as well... Try to improve something based on your experience. For example write "Heater" on a sticky note and put it on the glass whenever you turn it off. This might be all the reminder you need to turn the heater back on (worked for me before, because cleaning the glass is the last thing I do in my tank maintenance). Alternatively if you have the ability to put it in a place where it will stay submerged even during tank maintenance then you don't even need to worry about it. Thanks for the suggestion ajmckay. I definitely need to start doing something like that because I often forget to turn the ATO back on. Never happened with the heater before, terrible luck that it was just before leaving for a few days. Quote Link to comment
ajmckay Posted February 19, 2018 Share Posted February 19, 2018 15 hours ago, Angry-Monkey said: Thanks for the suggestion ajmckay. I definitely need to start doing something like that because I often forget to turn the ATO back on. Never happened with the heater before, terrible luck that it was just before leaving for a few days. At one point I had an entire checklist printed on a small piece of paper and I would tape it to the tank and check off things as I did them - but that didn't last long. It was too much work checking stuff off lol... 1 Quote Link to comment
Tamberav Posted February 19, 2018 Share Posted February 19, 2018 I guess i am naughty and just leave the heater on... Apex and camera is nice for traveling but damn expensive. Quote Link to comment
Clown79 Posted February 19, 2018 Share Posted February 19, 2018 1 hour ago, Tamberav said: I guess i am naughty and just leave the heater on... Apex and camera is nice for traveling but damn expensive. I used to leave my heater plugged in too then I was cleaning my chambers out, water level dropped, heater was exposed and started smoking. ? Quote Link to comment
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