Homewrecker
Well-Known Member
Let me preface this by saying that 100% of these problems were easily avoidable had I paid more attention to the tank, been more diligent about maintenance and in short if I had an Apex lol(which I'm forcing myself to order this week).
In the last 2 months my tank has come uncomfortably close to crashing multiple times. At one point the tank(40 Gallon IM Fusion) was going through roughly 40 ml of calcium and alkalinity per day. Everything was growing like a weed and stuff was thriving! I would make 30+ frags of monti cap a month to bring into my LFS for Pete's sake! And then the first issue occurred.
At the beginning of November my nutrients bottomed out, hard. I was away for work for about 5 days and the tank had gone unfed. I knew there was going to be a small issue but I honestly did not think it would be THAT bad. I didn't have a drop of nitrate or phosphate in the tank and everything lost a ton of color. As I work to resolve this issue my air conditioning unit breaks and remains off during a 100 degree day out. The temperature in the tank rises to 86 degrees and I am certain that most of my acros are going to peel... but they dont. They do however look absolutely miserable with zero polyp extension at all. Healthy, vibrant corals that I've had for 5+ years are now looking grey and I am getting discouraged as heck. I toss a couple of the colonies that are too far gone and after waiting a week I decide starting my water change schedule again will help get things rolling again. After 3 water changes there is still no color in the SPS and now the LPS are starting to bleach a bit. While doing this water change I notice the tank is a bit warm again and decide to double check the heater.... well exactly what you expect occurred. Somehow the heater had been bumped and was set to 82 degrees. I resolve this problem by turning the heater to 78 and think to myself that I'm good to go!
December rolls in and its my busiest month of the year so while I continue to try to work on the tank I often go 2-4 days without getting into it. After a really cool day out I go to take a look at my pitiful example of an acro tank and as I touch the glass I notice that its cold to the touch... great! The heater now failed in the OFF position completely and the tank has been sitting at 72 degrees for who knows how long. I go to the LFS pick up a new heater with an external thermostat and set it to 78. Although I know that this should be done slowly, at this point I'm completely over the situation and assume the tank will heat overnight. I wake up the next morning and the external thermostat reads 78 degrees, awesome! But something makes me double check the temperature and I notice the external thermostat is off by 3 degrees. I compensate for the difference and start looking at my other parameters. My calcium is through the roof even though I've only been dosing 1 ml of calcium per day for weeks(500+ would barely register on salifert) alk is higher than average and they wont seem to come down even with the dosers completely off.
Right here is where I just kind of let out a giggle because of how ridiculous the situation is. I've been keeping tanks for years and I refuse to let this one get the better of me. I go the the LFS one more time, buy a Hanna salinity/ temp probe to have on hand(I had heard they were very reliable). I double check the temp and it tells me what the original $9 thermometer from before said. Temp was no longer an issue but the tank still looked like absolute poop and as I'm looking at this tank slightly sulking I notice that my salinity is at 1.035 according to the Hanna. Suddenly lots of things started to make sense especially the super elevated levels.
Flash forward to today and I'm dropping my salinity by a point daily while adding alkalinity to compensate a bit. Calcium is finally registering on Salifert(490), temperature is good, corals are looking slightly better(really mostly just wishful thinking but they will with time!) and there are stable nutrients in the tank. There were so many points these last couple months where I really just wanted to take down this tank and restart and so many moments where I contemplated getting out altogether but right now I'm thankful I didn't. I guess this long, drawn out thread is really just a cautionary tale to anyone that doesn't put enough redundancies in their tank. A majority of my issues could have been quickly and easily diagnosed had I sprung for an aquarium controller ages ago but I chose to spend the money on corals instead...let this be a word of caution! Sometimes, its better to skip the sexy coral and buy the sexy life support equipment instead.
TLDR: Everything that could go wrong went wrong but now we're slowly making a comeback.
In the last 2 months my tank has come uncomfortably close to crashing multiple times. At one point the tank(40 Gallon IM Fusion) was going through roughly 40 ml of calcium and alkalinity per day. Everything was growing like a weed and stuff was thriving! I would make 30+ frags of monti cap a month to bring into my LFS for Pete's sake! And then the first issue occurred.
At the beginning of November my nutrients bottomed out, hard. I was away for work for about 5 days and the tank had gone unfed. I knew there was going to be a small issue but I honestly did not think it would be THAT bad. I didn't have a drop of nitrate or phosphate in the tank and everything lost a ton of color. As I work to resolve this issue my air conditioning unit breaks and remains off during a 100 degree day out. The temperature in the tank rises to 86 degrees and I am certain that most of my acros are going to peel... but they dont. They do however look absolutely miserable with zero polyp extension at all. Healthy, vibrant corals that I've had for 5+ years are now looking grey and I am getting discouraged as heck. I toss a couple of the colonies that are too far gone and after waiting a week I decide starting my water change schedule again will help get things rolling again. After 3 water changes there is still no color in the SPS and now the LPS are starting to bleach a bit. While doing this water change I notice the tank is a bit warm again and decide to double check the heater.... well exactly what you expect occurred. Somehow the heater had been bumped and was set to 82 degrees. I resolve this problem by turning the heater to 78 and think to myself that I'm good to go!
December rolls in and its my busiest month of the year so while I continue to try to work on the tank I often go 2-4 days without getting into it. After a really cool day out I go to take a look at my pitiful example of an acro tank and as I touch the glass I notice that its cold to the touch... great! The heater now failed in the OFF position completely and the tank has been sitting at 72 degrees for who knows how long. I go to the LFS pick up a new heater with an external thermostat and set it to 78. Although I know that this should be done slowly, at this point I'm completely over the situation and assume the tank will heat overnight. I wake up the next morning and the external thermostat reads 78 degrees, awesome! But something makes me double check the temperature and I notice the external thermostat is off by 3 degrees. I compensate for the difference and start looking at my other parameters. My calcium is through the roof even though I've only been dosing 1 ml of calcium per day for weeks(500+ would barely register on salifert) alk is higher than average and they wont seem to come down even with the dosers completely off.
Right here is where I just kind of let out a giggle because of how ridiculous the situation is. I've been keeping tanks for years and I refuse to let this one get the better of me. I go the the LFS one more time, buy a Hanna salinity/ temp probe to have on hand(I had heard they were very reliable). I double check the temp and it tells me what the original $9 thermometer from before said. Temp was no longer an issue but the tank still looked like absolute poop and as I'm looking at this tank slightly sulking I notice that my salinity is at 1.035 according to the Hanna. Suddenly lots of things started to make sense especially the super elevated levels.
Flash forward to today and I'm dropping my salinity by a point daily while adding alkalinity to compensate a bit. Calcium is finally registering on Salifert(490), temperature is good, corals are looking slightly better(really mostly just wishful thinking but they will with time!) and there are stable nutrients in the tank. There were so many points these last couple months where I really just wanted to take down this tank and restart and so many moments where I contemplated getting out altogether but right now I'm thankful I didn't. I guess this long, drawn out thread is really just a cautionary tale to anyone that doesn't put enough redundancies in their tank. A majority of my issues could have been quickly and easily diagnosed had I sprung for an aquarium controller ages ago but I chose to spend the money on corals instead...let this be a word of caution! Sometimes, its better to skip the sexy coral and buy the sexy life support equipment instead.
TLDR: Everything that could go wrong went wrong but now we're slowly making a comeback.
