Devastated :(
- Thread starter CanadianReefer
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reeftopia
Community Member
Consider yourself lucky many have returned to a lot worse or even no live occupants.
If I were gone a single week and my wife had to care for my 2000 gal system it would
be real smelly when I returned, guaranteed. I would suggest since we know the ins and
outs of our system like no one else that next time you go out of town take a week of watching
your husband so that you can politely critique his routine.
If I were gone a single week and my wife had to care for my 2000 gal system it would
be real smelly when I returned, guaranteed. I would suggest since we know the ins and
outs of our system like no one else that next time you go out of town take a week of watching
your husband so that you can politely critique his routine.
CindyKz
Valuable Member
The sh#t always hits the fan when we are gone doesn't it????? My hubs (who sounds like yours, helps with maintenance and tries hard when I'm gone but NOT a reefer) even bought me an Apex and 2 cameras in the hopes that we would avoid tank related - stress on vacation....nope. My poor daughter tried so hard, but I still had to talk her through a couple emergencies and I came home to a dead fish 
I feel your pain too. Your plan sounds solid to me. Hang in there, good luck and let us know how it goes. We're with you.
I feel your pain too. Your plan sounds solid to me. Hang in there, good luck and let us know how it goes. We're with you.
Happened to me often with my son taking care of my tanks when I was away. When overseas in 2013 for 6 months I just hired the LFS to set up a regular maintenance contract but for shorter trips I used my son. Wife/significant other refuses to touch the tank...says that is my hobby; garden is hers. What I've now moved to is to feed a bit more the day or two before I leave for travel and then I've got two Eheim auto-feeders set up on my tanks to allow them to be fed 2-3 times a day while gone. Have a similar setup on my freshwater chiclid tank also. Then all my son has to do is drop the correct amount of frozen mysis or marine angel or krill into the tank in the AM and all seems to now go well (I text him the number of cubes for each tank so he has it in writing and in/on the one thing he checks religiously...his smartphone!). I also added a web cam so I can periodically check on the tank and at least visual tank behavior of the inhabitants while gone. Since I am on the TRITON method now...water changes are not a big worry so far and I just empty my skimmer and top off my ATO before I go and do light maintenance. Lighting is AI and on full 24 hrs cycle so given a major tragedy or natural disaster its been good so far. Next build will add a back up power supply to the build to fully ensure things are automated and backup are redundant.
Sorry for your losses tho.
Sorry for your losses tho.
rkpetersen
walked the sand with the crustaceans
Oh jeez. First, sorry this happened. Second, spouses sure can be frustrating, can't they? I would never trust my wife to take care of my aquaria, not even for a few days. The one time I did, it was not pretty (let's just say I moved away from manual dosing after she nuked my system with alk.) Third, I was wondering if there isn't someone you know in Ottawa that could be a champ and come by every couple of days? It would be pretty easy, since you wouldn't even have to give them a key or alarm passcodes (just have them stop by when hubby is home.) I'm fortunate to have several people I'd trust for this. I'd probably pay them something or get them a nice gift for the help. Or, if really in a bind, you could maybe hire a professional aquarium maintenance company to come by on a temporary basis.
Still, all that said, I would hate to leave the physical proximity of my systems for more than a few days. So my mom had better stay healthy is all I can say.
Still, all that said, I would hate to leave the physical proximity of my systems for more than a few days. So my mom had better stay healthy is all I can say.
terri_ann
Well-Known Member
Sorry, so very sorry. It happens to many of us. My husband likes to look at our systems but that's it. We can' control when emergencies are going to happen so i try to prepare beforehand. First, get someone knowledgeable to help in whatever capacity (Yes, gift them in some way when they help), if possible-hire even if not daily to help but to feed/test/etc. I have a list of honey-do for tanks stored on my computer...I print it out and add in values/specifically what food/etc. He Knows the value of our systems and the importance so daily when I'm away, we talk about the tanks. If i dont know what he' trying to say, take a cell picture! Call so&so and ask they stop in/come over now I do not blame but i expect his help, just as he expects mine for when he's gone.
Hang in there as you will get everything back in shape. It's great that you shared your feelings and experience as you know you're not alone and have everyone supporting you!
Hang in there as you will get everything back in shape. It's great that you shared your feelings and experience as you know you're not alone and have everyone supporting you!
Daltrey
Valuable Member
I could only imagine what would happen if I asked my wife to watch my tank. I'm the one that decided to take on a 200 gallon tank and ultimately I'm the only one responsible for the well being of it.
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Sarah24!
2500 Club Member
So sorry eek. This may work it did for me, but every coral system is different. If you can move your sps etc or the ones you just can’t lose, see if your local fish store will allow you to put them in their display tank or one of theirs. When house lost power thanks to some drunk driver, I didn’t have power for almost three days. I could only run a few power heads and heaters before the breaker popped. But I moved all my coral to my lfs. They kept it alive and good for me. Maybe remove th coral you have and cycle your tank again. It maybe more work but you won’t have the bad water for your coral. For the fish eeek, trying to catch those in a reef is just brutal. The softies normally like dirty water so they should be fine I’d keep doing what your doing for that tank. But your 300, i have a 240 tank and I usually do 60-70 every month or 3 weeks and it’s great for me, I can’t say for yours since the tanks are always different. But wish you luck and if you tank crashes I would be happy to make frags of mine and you can have them. (My lfs would need to frag it since I don’t know how, specially w acans). But it would get you back started again w some coral.
Tumey
Reefer With A Broken Brain ( TBI Survivor )
Things can always be worse. I know it’s heartbreaking & frustrating but you could have been in a position where you had to leave for the family emergency without anyone to tend to your tanks. Your husband gets an A for effort from me. I was in a motorcycle accident that resulted with me in a coma for 5 days suffering Mild Traumatic Brain Injuy & fracturing my C7 vertebrae, my wife knows nothing about our tank & maintenance so thank goodness I had just introduced her friend to keeping reef aquariums. My wife thought to have her newbie friend tend to our tank while I was in the hospital. I can empathize with how you feel because in just the short time I was out of the picture my reef suffered too. Keep your head up. The fish & coral can be replaced , your parameters will get straightened out & remember it could have been much worse.
NanoCrazed
Well-Known Member
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I'm sorry to hear -- and definitely feel your woes. Happened to my tank in a similar situation. Wife fed the tank as she would feed my bettas...a few pellets with some skipped feedings. As you can imagine, it takes one fish to go and spoil the tank and a chain reaction occured. Lost all my fish except a pair of clowns and all my corals. And with the high nutrient load, GHA and bryosis took over the tank.
After that, I went out and automated everything in my tank... It took me a long time to get my tank back to a place where I could add back stock.
After that, I went out and automated everything in my tank... It took me a long time to get my tank back to a place where I could add back stock.
I too am sorry for your loss and devastation. My husband is hands OFF of the care of my tank cause I would blame him. The money and time you loose is very devasting. But keep at it and you'll recover. Can't count the # of my tank crashes. After vowing I was THRU I found myself bringing it back to life. May God help you to regain all your loss and it turns out better than before
I had to go out of town for 3 weeks because of a family emergency, so I left my hubby in charge of taking care of the aquarium. He usually helps out when I do regular maintenance etc., so between that and the fact that he had called several times to get the "honey do" list, I thought my aquariums would be okay.
He tried very hard, but I just returned to find out that things have gone to ****. He forgot the cylopods in the food mix, so my filefish died (it was the only thing he would eat). I had a beautiful copperband in QT that was destined for my softie tank - he was eating when I left (small mysis) but the hubby kept feeding him jumbo mysis (it was a small juvenile fish) which he couldn't eat... He starved to death
... but there's more... my freshwater tank also suffered. I did a 50% water change, siphoned the substrate and cleaned the filters... my nitrates are still at 80 and 2 of my fish have disappeared.
How much food does it take to increase my nitrates and phosphates by this much?? Not only did he overfeed and not use the right foods, but an entire large bottle of reef roids is completely gone. So I ask how often he was feeding the corals... once every day or two... OMG :O
Since I can't yell at the hubby whatsoever (he thought he was doing a good job) I figured I'd come on here to vent... it's amazing how quickly downhill something can go when you aren't there to keep an eye on it
I'm going to have to do many water changes to fix these issues... I hate to do it to my reef since stability is key, but I can't afford to keep the nitrates this high for too long... now it's a matter of finding the balance... maybe a 45g water change every 2-3 days till I see better numbers??
NS Mike D
In the arena.
how's the tank rebounding? I feel for you, my tank crashed (pump cord shorted) two weeks ago today. Lost or about to lose all the awesome @CherryCorals I picked up last month in their auction :-( and some corals that have been in my tank from the beginning.
my zoas are just starting to open - so they take time.
While the disappointment is still fresh and those sps that are still fading are like salt on a wound, but overall the tank has turned the corner and helping me feeling good about the tank (as opposed to seeing the graveyard it was two weeks ago)
my zoas are just starting to open - so they take time.
While the disappointment is still fresh and those sps that are still fading are like salt on a wound, but overall the tank has turned the corner and helping me feeling good about the tank (as opposed to seeing the graveyard it was two weeks ago)
OP
OP
CanadianReefer
Active Member
Thanks everyone for the well wishes. I've done 2 water changes on my tank thus far. The bad news is that the nitrates aren't dropping. The good news is that everything else seems to be fine. My LPS are probably a tad happier with the higher nutrient load, truth be told... that or it's because he fed them directly almost every day. A whole container of reef roids gone... lol what can you do?
My SPS that were left seem okay. I have a plating coral that is a little more green than usual, but the polyps are still extending. My monti has full polyp extension, as does my acro. I have a pocilipora that is browning at the tips but still fighting hard to survive and a setosa that I'll need to frag but may make it... better than nothing, I suppose, but I have a 1/4 bucket of dead SPS interesting note, all the SPS (minus the setosa) that survived were green in colour.... I guess they are a bit tougher.
The fish don't seem bothered by the levels at all, other than the drastic reduction in feedings. I've reduced it to once every 2 days with the frozen food and I'm trying out masstick in between since they claim it won't disintegrate as quickly. Seems to hold up fairly well...
As for the softie tank, I haven't touched it yet. My RODI system can only produce so much in a day, so I'm focusing on the main display for now. Other than my zoanthids, everything looks great. Fish aren't showing any signs of stress, but if they do, I may have to shift focus a bit. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Everything in the FW tank seems okay now. It's times like these that I relish in the simplicity of FW. Water changes are simple and quick and I can get things under control very easily.
I can't be mad at my husband. He dosed the tank with alk/calc/mag, testing alkalinity, dosed my trace elements - all these things were spot on when I got home (probably what's helping my tank survive now)... he had done a water change in my QT system, topped up all the tanks regularly - even tested salinity (I found his notes) to make sure he wasn't goofing up. I came home to a wifi leak detector having been installed so he would be notified is something went awry while he was at work.... That's way more than most spouses would do! ... If only he hadn't gone nuts with the feedings!!
He thought the corals would grow more quickly if they were fed more often, and though I told him to give the copper band small mysis and the filefish cylopods, these are easy things to forget. He often forgot their vitamins too, but to him, these weren't the important things to focus on. He simply wasn't aware of the repercussions.
I think people here are spot on. I'll start journaling everything I do so that he has a reference just in case I have to leave again. I know people who reef in the area, maybe I could warm up to one enough that if ever he had an emergency, he could have help. As for hiring a company, I had wanted to do that - especially when we went to Spain last year and had our kids looking after it (don't worry - the oldest is 18 so they are somewhat responsible at this point)... but he doesn't like the idea of having people we don't know in our home. He was the same way when I tried to hire Molly Maid and a pro painter... he's a do-it-yourself kind of guy.
I'll also mix and portion the food in advance so all he has to do is pop a cube in. I own one of those defroster feeding devices, so if he uses that, he wouldn't even need to wait for it to thaw. In fact, that would spread the feeding out over time so it might even be better.
You're right. We never know when emergencies are going to happen, so it's best to be prepared.
My SPS that were left seem okay. I have a plating coral that is a little more green than usual, but the polyps are still extending. My monti has full polyp extension, as does my acro. I have a pocilipora that is browning at the tips but still fighting hard to survive and a setosa that I'll need to frag but may make it... better than nothing, I suppose, but I have a 1/4 bucket of dead SPS
interesting note, all the SPS (minus the setosa) that survived were green in colour.... I guess they are a bit tougher. The fish don't seem bothered by the levels at all, other than the drastic reduction in feedings. I've reduced it to once every 2 days with the frozen food and I'm trying out masstick in between since they claim it won't disintegrate as quickly. Seems to hold up fairly well...
As for the softie tank, I haven't touched it yet. My RODI system can only produce so much in a day, so I'm focusing on the main display for now. Other than my zoanthids, everything looks great. Fish aren't showing any signs of stress, but if they do, I may have to shift focus a bit. We'll cross that bridge when we come to it.
Everything in the FW tank seems okay now. It's times like these that I relish in the simplicity of FW. Water changes are simple and quick and I can get things under control very easily.
I can't be mad at my husband. He dosed the tank with alk/calc/mag, testing alkalinity, dosed my trace elements - all these things were spot on when I got home (probably what's helping my tank survive now)... he had done a water change in my QT system, topped up all the tanks regularly - even tested salinity (I found his notes) to make sure he wasn't goofing up. I came home to a wifi leak detector having been installed so he would be notified is something went awry while he was at work.... That's way more than most spouses would do! ... If only he hadn't gone nuts with the feedings!!
He thought the corals would grow more quickly if they were fed more often, and though I told him to give the copper band small mysis and the filefish cylopods, these are easy things to forget. He often forgot their vitamins too, but to him, these weren't the important things to focus on. He simply wasn't aware of the repercussions.
I think people here are spot on. I'll start journaling everything I do so that he has a reference just in case I have to leave again. I know people who reef in the area, maybe I could warm up to one enough that if ever he had an emergency, he could have help. As for hiring a company, I had wanted to do that - especially when we went to Spain last year and had our kids looking after it (don't worry - the oldest is 18 so they are somewhat responsible at this point)... but he doesn't like the idea of having people we don't know in our home. He was the same way when I tried to hire Molly Maid and a pro painter... he's a do-it-yourself kind of guy.
I'll also mix and portion the food in advance so all he has to do is pop a cube in. I own one of those defroster feeding devices, so if he uses that, he wouldn't even need to wait for it to thaw. In fact, that would spread the feeding out over time so it might even be better.
You're right. We never know when emergencies are going to happen, so it's best to be prepared.
Skynyrd Fish
Valuable Member
You need to establish some rules.
1. F' the tank up, No sweet loving for a month or two. He'll never screw this up again.
2. Seriously a whole container of reef roids?? They have instructions. This seems like when I intentionally fold the laundry wrong... So she doesn't ask me to fold laundry (Wife's OCD about it).
3. Use his credit card to replace losses.
4. Cook his favorite dinner. Use a different recipe, or one thats not good.
Please take this with a bit of humor!
1. F' the tank up, No sweet loving for a month or two. He'll never screw this up again.
2. Seriously a whole container of reef roids?? They have instructions. This seems like when I intentionally fold the laundry wrong... So she doesn't ask me to fold laundry (Wife's OCD about it).
3. Use his credit card to replace losses.
4. Cook his favorite dinner. Use a different recipe, or one thats not good.
Please take this with a bit of humor!
I had to go out of town for 3 weeks because of a family emergency, so I left my hubby in charge of taking care of the aquarium. He usually helps out when I do regular maintenance etc., so between that and the fact that he had called several times to get the "honey do" list, I thought my aquariums would be okay.
He tried very hard, but I just returned to find out that things have gone to ****. He forgot the cylopods in the food mix, so my filefish died (it was the only thing he would eat). I had a beautiful copperband in QT that was destined for my softie tank - he was eating when I left (small mysis) but the hubby kept feeding him jumbo mysis (it was a small juvenile fish) which he couldn't eat... He starved to death
... but there's more... my freshwater tank also suffered. I did a 50% water change, siphoned the substrate and cleaned the filters... my nitrates are still at 80 and 2 of my fish have disappeared.
How much food does it take to increase my nitrates and phosphates by this much?? Not only did he overfeed and not use the right foods, but an entire large bottle of reef roids is completely gone. So I ask how often he was feeding the corals... once every day or two... OMG :O
Since I can't yell at the hubby whatsoever (he thought he was doing a good job) I figured I'd come on here to vent... it's amazing how quickly downhill something can go when you aren't there to keep an eye on it
I'm going to have to do many water changes to fix these issues... I hate to do it to my reef since stability is key, but I can't afford to keep the nitrates this high for too long... now it's a matter of finding the balance... maybe a 45g water change every 2-3 days till I see better numbers??
I feel terrible about what you came home to. Whenever I leave town i portion out the food in those condiment containers you get with take out food. The frozen is still in the freezer with a note that says which days to feed. I only put one portion of food per container. Yes for a 3 week trip and multiple tanks that would be a lot of containers but better than what you faced on your return.
Also - not feeding daily is fine when you are away - this just makes it easier to give a call or text to whoever is watching the tanks. In general M-W-F works for my tank sitter.
Slarti
Active Member
Sorry about the trouble but I have to admit this bit did make me smile! So who says we not one big family around here...?
