How do you all deal with loses?

[MysterioMask]

I have recently been dealing with algae problems and have been slowly chipping away at it. Today I went to work and when I came back I had found about 90% of the water in my sump was gone. (my tank is 30 gal and sump is 30 gal and the sump is situated in the basement). So I started dumping all the backup water I keep in old gallon milk jugs so I can replace water each day from evaporation. (which I didn't have a lot left) I ran upstairs and turned the pump off because what ended up happening was the tank was over filling and dumping water out. What happened was I think some dead algae got wrapped around the valve in the basement to the sump because when I opened the valve more I saw a large blob or something come out of it. I then refilled the water normally to where it should be at and got the salinity back to the way it was. I only have 4 fish in the tank right now a coral beauty, a black comb tooth blenny, a firefish and a pennant fairy wrasse. The wrasse was dead, and I think the coral beauty will be dead within a day since its swimming wonky and breathing heavy and laying on its side at times. The other 2 seem okay for now from what I can tell. I also put an air stone in the tank itself to try and give them more air. Also I lost a peppermint shrimp.

I have 2 questions I guess. Could salinity shock have caused the death/deaths because the lost water had to make the salinity go up. Also I tested the water in the tank. The ammonia seems to be about between .25 and .50 right now. Maybe they died from ammonia? Im not sure why the ammo was so high maybe smaller creatures died from the salinity although I didn't think ammonia would spike that fast.

2nd question is how do you all deal with loses? I feel terrible just losing 1 or 2. If I lose them all that will be worse as I had that happen once before. But just losing 1 makes me feel terrible and I shouldn't be doing this. Is that normal or do you all have to just look at them like some sort of object and detach yourselves from them being actual living things?

 

[Reeferdood]

Sorry for the dilemma you are faced with. We all have losses in the hobby, weather it is our fault or not. Nobody likes to kill living things especially the ones in our care. I am sure the salinity shock likely led to the demise of your fish & shrimp and that is likely where the ammonia came from. What was your salinity level when you checked it?
From here it is up to you to fix the problem with your ATO to prevent this from happening again. By design it sounds like it has flaws that should be fixable.
Hope this helps.

 

[pluikens]

First, I'm sorry for your loss. For me, I certainly don't look at my fish as just objects. From fish to corals to snails and everything in between, they are living creatures which I have taken on the responsibility of caring for so it does bother me when I lose something. What helps me is to start making a plan shortly after the event of how I can make sure the same mistake doesn't happen again. When I first got into saltwater, my first two clowns died of ammonia poisoning because I added them too soon. Even after using bottled bacteria, I was still performing water changes daily to keep ammonia down and the fish just did not seem happy which made the hobby less fun for me. After that, I decided I would never keep fish in a tank with ammonia. Just wait for the tank to mature enough that you should never have to worry about ammonia levels.

As for your tank situation:
It sounds like from what I read that your drain clogged from the tank to the sump so water was being returned to the tank at the normal rate and overflowed the display. What style drain do you have on your display? The reason I always run either herbie or bean animal style drains is so that if one drain clogs, the backup(s) can always handle the flow from the return.

If water just overflowed out of your display, this wouldn't have changed the salinity in your tank as you were overflowing water with salt in it. If you had an ATO, salinity would have changed as the ATO added fresh water to make up for the saltwater lost so salinity would have decreased some. My ATO and many others have a failsafe to turn off if they run for a set number of minutes to ensure they are only making up for evaporation and not overflowing water.

You said you dumped backup water back into the tank to make up for the overflowed water, water that is typically used for making up for evaporation. This water should be freshwater with no salt added so if you made up all the overflowed water with this, salinity would have dropped drastically. With rough numbers, if you made up for 90% water loss in your sump with freshwater, a salinity of 1.025 SG would drop to something like 1.014. After you added the freshwater back to the system, did you then add your salt mix to get salinity back up? If so, do you have some of the numbers from testing you system salinity between refilling with freshwater and adding salt mix? I strongly encourage mixing your saltwater before adding it to the tank. Even in what can seem like rush situations, providing the livestock with the proper water is more important to me than getting the system back up and running.

Hopefully answering some of my questions will help keep your mind off the losses and their lives will serve as lessons learned to help you improve as a fishkeeper.

 

[Tautog]

Drink more! In fact, toast up a few shots in honor of your passing member. If I did this every time something dies, I would have the problem . Many reefers lose stuff, corrals, fish, but it’s not always your fault. Stress from transportation is a big culprit. 20-30% die, but then some never die. Corals are more tolerant, and can totally grow back if 99% looks dead. I have seen this in my tank.

 

[Ron Reefman]

I hate to lose anybody in my tank(s), however, life on the reef is no picnic and losses will occur naturally as well as by mistakes and errors. And it's especially hard if it's a long term member of your reef, a slow grower you've had for years or due to a dumb mistake. You just need to get past it. I lost 95% of the branching and plating stony corals in my tank in one day. The tank was 2 years old and was 70% these stony corals that were expensive frags and growing out very well. But my chiller thermostat failed and the chiller ran for hours overnight and dropped the water temp below 60F. Encrusting stony corals and zoas survived. I was devastated.

Two points about your system. You need an emergency drain and a watertight tray inside your stand around your sump (unless you don't mind a sump overflow flood)! Not many reefers do what I call a drip or spill tray around the sump. I've done it on my last 3 system builds and it's become pretty common among members in my local club. I can't even tell you how many people have been saved from a big spill or flood by this simple design. And even if you have to do an over the back return from the sump in order to free up a drilled hole in the tank for an emergency drain, do it! I can't believe tank manufacturers aren't making it a standard feature. It's probably because they don't want to scare off potential buyer by admitting there is a need for an emergency drain.

Good luck in the future. And if you have any questions about my drip tray idea after reading my build thread (link to it in my signature below) just ask there.

 

[HB AL]

You just move on.

 

[MysterioMask]

First, I'm sorry for your loss. For me, I certainly don't look at my fish as just objects. From fish to corals to snails and everything in between, they are living creatures which I have taken on the responsibility of caring for so it does bother me when I lose something. What helps me is to start making a plan shortly after the event of how I can make sure the same mistake doesn't happen again. When I first got into saltwater, my first two clowns died of ammonia poisoning because I added them too soon. Even after using bottled bacteria, I was still performing water changes daily to keep ammonia down and the fish just did not seem happy which made the hobby less fun for me. After that, I decided I would never keep fish in a tank with ammonia. Just wait for the tank to mature enough that you should never have to worry about ammonia levels.

As for your tank situation:
It sounds like from what I read that your drain clogged from the tank to the sump so water was being returned to the tank at the normal rate and overflowed the display. What style drain do you have on your display? The reason I always run either herbie or bean animal style drains is so that if one drain clogs, the backup(s) can always handle the flow from the return.

If water just overflowed out of your display, this wouldn't have changed the salinity in your tank as you were overflowing water with salt in it. If you had an ATO, salinity would have changed as the ATO added fresh water to make up for the saltwater lost so salinity would have decreased some. My ATO and many others have a failsafe to turn off if they run for a set number of minutes to ensure they are only making up for evaporation and not overflowing water.

You said you dumped backup water back into the tank to make up for the overflowed water, water that is typically used for making up for evaporation. This water should be freshwater with no salt added so if you made up all the overflowed water with this, salinity would have dropped drastically. With rough numbers, if you made up for 90% water loss in your sump with freshwater, a salinity of 1.025 SG would drop to something like 1.014. After you added the freshwater back to the system, did you then add your salt mix to get salinity back up? If so, do you have some of the numbers from testing you system salinity between refilling with freshwater and adding salt mix? I strongly encourage mixing your saltwater before adding it to the tank. Even in what can seem like rush situations, providing the livestock with the proper water is more important to me than getting the system back up and running.

Hopefully answering some of my questions will help keep your mind off the losses and their lives will serve as lessons learned to help you improve as a fishkeeper.

Its a diy setup because of where I wanted the tank. The tank isn't drillable or I wasn't willing to risk it I don't remember which at the time.

The ATO is basically me doing it by hand. So I don't have one that's automated.

I did dump freshwater back in. I also had jugs of salt as well when I pulled some salt out of the water before. To lower the water volume in the sump because it had gotten higher than I like. so it was a mix of both. Also when this all happened pretty rapidly. So when I ran upstairs and pulled the plug on the sump. I let the water lower a big and (unless my brain is making this up) I tested the water salinity really fast and it was like maxing out the needle. I was running my salinity at 1.026 or at least that's what I had it at yesterday. I was running it slightly higher because I read that it can help slow down algae blooms even though 1.026 isn't much different than 1.025. After looking at the salinity I shot back to the basement and made sure the valve was more open than it was, ran back up stairs plugged the sump pump back in then booked it back downstairs again to make sure water was flowing through it. By this time I had the water level high enough from the extra water jugs I had around that the pump had enough water to not suck any air. (I have markings on my sump tank and it was at the Fill Now line which is basically minimum water I need to have the pump not pull any air) Once I knew the water was cycling properly I went about filling up some buckets with salt water mix and used dechlorinator because I wasn't going to be able to wait hours and hours for RODI water to fill up enough. So I mixed all that together and didn't wait very long before putting it into the sump tank. Waited till it was unclouded enough to see the bottom of the buckets and put the water into the sump tank. Tested the salinity. It was around 1.023-024 because I shorted the salt mix some because I was estimating id need less because of the reading I got. Put some more water into a bucket put a decent amount of salt in, mixed it quick and got the reading to 1.025 .

I would guess this took me maybe 20 min to do all this if you want a time line. maybe slightly more.

Also I had a reading on ammonia about 2 days ago of 0.

Evaporation causes the salinity to rise in my tank. I figure if I remove water shouldn't the salinity continue to go up? If it doesn't work that way then why was my reading so high? Everything was literally fine before I went to work even though I didn't test the salinity before I left. I did test it the day before though. But nothing had changed in the tank before I left.

Also the water in the tank seemed a bit brown. My best guess is that my GFO bag was dripping a bit in the sump. not sure if that could affect fish any though.

I had planned to put in a float valve to shut the pump off if the water got to high but I just never got to it yet.

 

[pluikens]

Evaporation causes the salinity to rise in my tank. I figure if I remove water shouldn't the salinity continue to go up? If it doesn't work that way then why was my reading so high? Everything was literally fine before I went to work even though I didn't test the salinity before I left. I did test it the day before though. But nothing had changed in the tank before I left.

I thought the water was so low in your sump because it overflowed out of your display? If you just lost mixed saltwater from the system, your salinity wouldn't change. Was the water loss all from evaporation or losing it due to an overflow?

 

[MysterioMask]

I thought the water was so low in your sump because it overflowed out of your display? If you just lost mixed saltwater from the system, your salinity wouldn't change. Was the water loss all from evaporation or losing it due to an overflow?

Overflow, im willing to concede that perhaps in all the rush I didn't read it right or my brain remembers it differently. But if you were to ask me in a court what I saw id have to say it was high.

Is there any other ways salinity could have gone way up?

Im not fighting with ammonia. Been using prime and api quick start since that's the only thing the local pet store when I went early in the morning. I may try getting bacteria from the fish store if you think api quick start wont help to get the bacterial filter back up.