Tank tanked!!!!!! Need some serious HELP

[Spec V]

My tank has been perfect for about a year. Last night I came home to a tank full of dry food and possibly some chicken soup compliments of my 3 year old daughter. Did a 50% water change and tried to vacuum as much of the food as possible. Woke up at 4 to check on it and found everything dead except my corals, hermit crabs, snails and my pistol shrimp. What do I do now. I took all the living stuff out and put them in large pots with new SW. How should I approach the tank. It's a spec v. Should I attempt to clean it or should I start all over. ***

 

[SerenityReef]

Start over.

GL!


Cheers,

 

[patrickreef]

Man that is awful. I have always had a fear that something like that would happen. So what died just the fish? I would drain the tank purchase enough salt water to fill it up plus extra. Use the extra to rinse the tank and dip and rinse any live rock. May want to get a cheap tank to hold the lving residents in so they have filtration during the process. Then as long as the living things are happy in their tempory residnace. Introduce a few first and see how they do for a day or so then introduce teh rest back in. Wish you the best of luck.

 

[mrs.nanoreef]

Bump for advice gl

Sent from my SCH-I535 using Tapatalk 2

 

[Shadow1]

I agree with the rinse everything and basicly start over I would clean the tank and all equipment with vinager to eliminate risk of oils from the food. Rinse live rock etc with fresh salt water, put all livestock in a temp situation till you are sure your system is back up and stable.

 

[Lilmatty5dimes]

dang sorry to hear this. glad your not calling it quits. hope you can get the beauty back up and running.

 

[Spec V]

 

[Spec V]

This was the best I could do at 4 am. Going to see if a lfs will lease me some time in there established tanks until I can get this one cycled again. Getting new live sand and my filter was chemipure elite, bio balls, purigan a sponge and filter floss. Should I get new live rock?

 

[glb]

Oh no!!! Good luck. That's kids for you. Lol.

 

[Steveowhits]

In the past I have used large rubbermaid "tuffmade" containers as holding areas. You can buy one with a similar capacity as your system. Make sure to rinse it really well. You could add a powerhead and a small amount of carbon to keep some aeration/filtration going. I would also purchase a bio-filter booster from LFS. Good luck

 

[glb]

This was the best I could do at 4 am. Going to see if a lfs will lease me some time in there established tanks until I can get this one cycled again. Getting new live sand and my filter was chemipure elite, bio balls, purigan a sponge and filter floss. Should I get new live rock?

I'm not an expert, but it seems that you might be able to scrub the rock clean. But someone more experienced should chime in on that.

 

[Shadow1]

Dry people food or fish food? Any way to confirm the soup? If it is soup there are probably oils in it, by the time you got to it oils may have been trapped in the filters. Scrap the filters replace with new ones, like I said earlier wash tank with vinegar rinse clean, rinse rock well with fresh salt water, I may replace the sand too. The big question is what type of food and if there were oils in it. If no oils a good rinse new filters and you should be good wouldn't add fish for a few weeks till bio is set again.

 

[johnanddawn]

In these situations O2 is the the problem
Bacteria bloom in the presence of so much nutrients and deplete the water of DO
The result of course is dead fish first followed by others if not addressed
Changing water, sucking out the nutrient sourse and adding an air supply is your first line of defense

If its just fish food that would likely be enough but as stated oils would be far more difficult as the only thing that dissolves oils is soaps, vinegar won't do it
If there is chicken soup in the water you will need to completely tear down everything, wash all equipment and the tank with mild soap, and start over with 100% new water.
The rock and sand may be ok because oil floats on water and may not have coated them, however if you think the rock has any oil on it you may have to re- cycle it outside the tank and hope that during the curing process the bacteria eat up all the oils
Good luck

 

[Spec V]

Confirmed the soup theory. Started from scratch. Washed out the tank started w new live sand and new cycled salt water. Trying to save the rock bc a lot of my corals are on them. Thanks to all for the advice. Will keep you posted

 

[glb]

Confirmed the soup theory. Started from scratch. Washed out the tank started w new live sand and new cycled salt water. Trying to save the rock bc a lot of my corals are on them. Thanks to all for the advice. Will keep you posted

Oh dear. You're a very good parent to be handling this so calmly.

 

[DSP]

Wow sorry to hear man.One time my son put a container of earthworms in my tank lol Luckily I didn't lose anything though.

 

[Spec V]

So this is what I have one day later.
6 pounds of new live sand. 5 gallons of cycled salt water. 8 lbs of my old live rock which seems to have held up. Rinsed it and I am crossing my fingers... Now lets go through what's alive. Ultra orange recordia, ultra green recordia, green recordia, orange and green hairy mushroom, red mushroom, blue mushroom, green Duncan, 1 mussel with green zoas on it, green Kenya tree, war coral(not looking good) 3 snails, 2 hermit crabs I think. Saw one. can't find the other but I'm pretty sure I put him in the pot last night. 1 pistol shrimp, several zoanthids, and one unknown little crab that I thought was dead but also seems to have gone MIA. Doing a 15% water change every other day.

 

[glb]

Sounds like you're on the right track!

 

[Spec V]

 

[Shadow1]

Looks like you are on the right track. No way to make one soup proof....My kids are grown and gone but regularly have 16 Grandkids over, no food is allowed anywhere near the tanks. I dread this happening, I have a fully exposed filter system for our 300 and need to get it closed up. Hope it continues to go good for you.