Recovering from Sandy.

riosf63 · Nov 4, 2012

Hey guys! I live in one of the area's affected by Sandy. Fortunately my area got it much easier than many others. Other then losing the power there was no other damage to my house and my family is safe. Unfortunately I didn't get back power till a few hours ago. My tank went 7 days with no power. I had been thinking about getting a generator, now that is a must. I lost almost everything in my tank, it's not pretty. All my fish are gone along with most of my coral. I still have some zoas, a moonstone, an acan, and even a few sps that look like they may be recoverable. Even a few snails are still crawling around.

I just don't know exactly where to start the recovery process. My intention was to change 90% of the water and scrub all the dead stuff off the live rock then hope for the best. Will this work without causing any further damage to what is still alive? Was hoping to get a few ideas see where some of you might start trying to recover what is left.

Bry · Nov 4, 2012

IMO... I would do several smaller (30-40%) water changes over a couple of days rather than 1 big one. Your tank took 7 days to get where it's at.. I think the shock of a 90% change all at once could be harmful to your critters that are still hanging in there.

Sorry to hear about your losses and good luck in rebuilding!

SeahorseKeeper · Nov 4, 2012

I'm so sorry for the loss of your livestock. There are several vendors on the site that are giving away boxes of corals to victims of Sandy.

As for rebuilding, I would consider replacing all the sand. The reason I would do this is a lot of the microfauna in it might be dead. Did you have any aiptasia or unwanted life on your live rock? If so, now would be a good time to cook the rock to rid your system of it once and for all. Scrubbing the rock to get any of the dead stuff off would be a good idea. I would probably do a large water change and have a good amount of saltwater on hand to be able to do smaller water changes as needed. Keep a close eye on the parameters. Good luck with the rebuild.