Post mortem - Wavemaker/Powerhead failure

[Ralph Ritoch]

I lost 1 of my flowerpot corals and nearly lost my hammer coral. The hammer coral colony is mostly dead and bailed out. The culpret, my wavemaker was clogged, and while it was turning it wasn't turning fast enough to make waves. I have been very busy so it must have been like this for at least 5 days. It is really too late to undo the damage but what can be done to prevent this in the future? Is there any "trick" to easily see if the water is still moving properly, verifying the wavemaker is working?

 

[nitrodude]

As long as that wasnt the only flow in your tank (as in you have a return pump circulating water)
Then your corals didnt die from the powerhead not moving enough water.

 

[ScottB]

I'll second @nitrodude suggestion that you may need to keep investigating unless that powerhead was solely responsible for flow.

As to monitoring hardware performance (aside from just looking at the tank) you can spend some real money on an APEX that monitors watts, amps and volts. You can program it to text you if a powerhead (or anything you plug into it) goes out of your preset ranges. APEX is overkill for that, but does a lot of important things for me.

I am fairly dependent on APEX monitoring when out of the house, but I am around enough to know when most equipment needs cleaning/maintenance.

Thanks for reminding me that all my gyres are due for a cleaning. Ugh.

 

[Ralph Ritoch]

As long as that wasnt the only flow in your tank (as in you have a return pump circulating water)
Then your corals didnt die from the powerhead not moving enough water.

My return pump doesn't circulate the water since I didn't want to risk a reverse siphon so the water "sprinkles" out of 5 holes in PVC pipe that is about 2" to 3" above the water.

 

[TheHarold]

Even you have an apex monitoring power consumption, you should have a regular interval to check equipment performance and/or clean them. Whether it’s every week or every month, being thorough and having preventative maintenance is the only way to have success long term in reefing.

 

[Ralph Ritoch]

Thanks for the ideas. I generally think redundancy is the real issue, only having one powerhead isn't a good design. There are 2 other possible causes, one is the wild crabs & hermit crabs I recently added, but they are supposed to be reef safe. The second possibility is some kind of infection. I say infection because there is a white mold on top of the dead hammer coral heads. I thought this was from the bailout but now I'm not so sure. Even after restoring the circulation the remaining heads are dying and other than slightly low calcium, I don't see anything worse about the parameters. The octo protein skimmer arrived today and is now setup and the remaining flowerpot is doing well. After spending nearly $1000 on this aquarium and $5000 on a new macbook pro, there is no way my wife would ever let me buy an APEX right now. I'll add it to next year's wishlist.