Define: “Tank Crash”

[Glenner’sreef]

Mine was “Blue Clove Polyps” almost a year ago. Setting me back those months tried my patience. Life and colors are thriving again!!!

1. Has your reef at any level been set back or crashed.

 

[KrisReef]

Mine happened 20 years ago when my eldest son played with the chiller knob (he loved knobs!) and the tank went from 78 to 55F. I drained the tank and took everything to the dump, and we moved to northern California where I lived reef free for a few years.

 

[JZ199]

Besides battling GHA I hope I never experience any major crash or setbacks!

 

[homer1475]

Many years ago we lost power for a week. I lost everything, and the smell was horrendous!

Got out for many years after that one.

 

[anthonymckay]

I overdosed fluconazole a few months ago trying to kill a bubble algae breakout that started getting out of hand. Resulted in all my SPS browning out, killed some torches, and made most of my zoas close up and shrink for a while. Closest I’ve come to a whole tank crash. Thankfully things have mostly recovered since then.

 

[Jekyl]

Mine was “Blue Clove Polyps” almost a year ago. Setting me back those months tried my patience. Life and colors are thriving again!!!

1. Has your reef at any level been set back or crashed.

Dealing with GSP taking over myself. How did you rid yourself of the plague?

 

[brandon429]

tank crash examples from the field:

-skipping disease preps, that working fine for eight months ish, then going on a vacation, murphy's law kills all the fish when you're gone unable to remove carcasses. the only known cause of an ammonia spike in display reefing=ten dead fish you can't remove. the systems usually crash and all corals die


reef tank crashes do not kill filter bacteria, they spurn filter bacteria growth in fact with the excess dying organisms and their ammonia.

-willing takedown crashes. the system still runs, but is so blanketed in waste/invasions they would just rather not have it. they get new rocks, sand, and repeat the same practices that crashed the tank originally.

-hardware crashes/my heater fried and stuck etc.

 

[brandon429]

I guarantee tank crashes are blamed on red sea and API ammonia kit readings of .2 and .25/.5 respectively. the keeper discerns a problem in the reef, runs a cheap test, gets something not zero, and attributes the problem to a crashed filter community. they then buy all manner of new bottle bac to add to a system with no ammonia problems whatsoever, I see this in threads all day long for years.

reef tank ammonia control never crashes or stops or stalls causing the other issues if a tank is running and not in a power outage or abnormal issue.


if its a running/normal reef tank the ammonia control is never going to stop or stall or mini cycle, only a bunch of dead fish dying not from ammonia causes an ammonia issue in a display reef. ammonia rises only after the fish kill, not before.

it's the most locked in thing you reef has...motion across high surface area rocks causing ammonia control we can all rely on. reefs don't run zero ammonia, they commonly run .2 in a running/stocked setups=new cycling science.

old cycling science states crashes are caused by things that can never crash a reef tank. if you have ANY ammonia on a cheap test kit, old cycling science says to prepare for a crash, the test kit is never doubted.

 

[brandon429]

I have also seen fish-caused crashes of reefs during tank moves and upgrades (fish-caused in that they lived fine in the prior reef, but for some reason took on disease in the new setup)

relocating a reef tank incorrectly can crash it in a small % of jobs. I have seen sandbed waste kill fish when it's upwelled several times, we collect those loss example links routinely.

 

[TnFishwater98]

 

[TheBear78]

I overdosed fluconazole a few months ago trying to kill a bubble algae breakout that started getting out of hand. Resulted in all my SPS browning out, killed some torches, and made most of my zoas close up and shrink for a while. Closest I’ve come to a whole tank crash. Thankfully things have mostly recovered since then.

I did similar with some NT Labs Parazoryne. I didn't shake the bottle very well and syringed the undiluted gunk from the bottom of the bottle. The fish started twitching and everything closed up. My poor Coral Banded shrimp jettisoned both his arms and disappeared.
I did a 50% water change ASAP and another large change two days later. Even my GSP started to brown but luckily everything bar the shrimp survived in the end.

 

[anthonymckay]

if its a running/normal reef tank the ammonia control is never going to stop or stall or mini cycle, only a bunch of dead fish dying not from ammonia causes an ammonia issue in a display reef. ammonia rises only after the fish kill, not before.

The exception I could see to this is something I've seen from time to time from beginners... having way too many clean up crew members in a tank that doesn't need much cleanup. ie: Not enough algae, etc for a large number of snails causing them to die off and as a result spiking ammonia.

 

[Glenner’sreef]

Many years ago we lost power for a week. I lost everything, and the smell was horrendous!

Got out for many years after that one.

3 days our A.C. was out in the middle of our Arizona summers. Lost everything! 15 years ago? They couldn’t get a part to repair it? For 3 days? In Arizona? Unbelievable!

 

[brandon429]

To reduce a massive portion of tank crashes, quit using sandbeds in display reefs

 

[mfinn]

I guess my closest thing to a tank crash I've experienced in nearly 40 years was recently when a power outage caused my diy dosing setup to dump 1000mls of All For Reef in my 66 gallon tank in a short time.
Lost 30-40 torch heads, 50+ heads of my hammer, 20+ frogspawn.
Large Favia and chalice colonies.
A few things survived but it was pretty disheartening.

 

[fish farmer]

3 day heatwave cooked my 55 gallon.

I recured my rock and attempted a reboot which I struggled with, but eventually turned things around.

 

[Glenner’sreef]

I guess my closest thing to a tank crash I've experienced in nearly 40 years was recently when a power outage caused my diy dosing setup to dump 1000mls of All For Reef in my 66 gallon tank in a short time.
Lost 30-40 torch heads, 50+ heads of my hammer, 20+ frogspawn.
Large Favia and chalice colonies.
A few things survived but it was pretty disheartening.

That’s heartbreaking!!! I would say power outages happen maybe once every year or two here in Az. Granted only for 20 minutes to 3 hours but that’s enough time to wreak havoc.

 

[brandon429]

the bacteria in a common sandbed compete against tank resources substantially during stress events

they command 02 in competition with fish

they emit waste acids as a byproduct of reducing proteins

common hands off reef sandbeds sustain mounds and mounds of millions of aerobic bacteria complexed into detritus that begin a community crash from the bottom up when temps rise or when circulation stops/aeration to the bed is reduced by some change event.

for outage prone areas, reef bare bottom to reduce crashes, or at least keep the bed diapers very clean- cleaner than average reef tanks who get away with the massive extra bioloading that is any reef tank sandbed.

given stoppage of circulation or increase in temps as a stress test, a bare bottom reef will live longer and actual crash recovery is far easier without a huge sandbed to replace/rip clean.

reef tank sandbeds are tolerated within displays, they're not some integral link to success. They are a huge liability for reef displays even if some books and oceanic studies in 1998 said they weren't.

reef tank sandbeds are bioloading that tax our systems that we don't get much enjoyment from, unless counting some worm tracks counts as fun

I will always keep a deep sandbed because I think bare bottom setups look boring, I'm acknowledging the tax they're doing to my reef. if I was in an outage prone area, I'd be bare bottom.

sandbeds provide insulation, protection, housing, food in proximity for the invasion cells like dinos we hope to avoid