Waking up from the nightmare build: the reboot

[KenO]

What happened?

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

What happened?

No idea. Or, more specifically, no idea why.

So, all of the coral and fish (minus several fish we wanted out of the system) went into the sumps. There are 2 sumps, each one 110 gal, connected with 2” bulkheads. With everything shut down, they are each 90% full, so let’s say 190 gal of water.

Corals went into one side, with the exception of 1 big Sinularia colony, which went into the other side. The fish and additional rock went into the other box. Stationed 1 AI Hydra 52 over the boxes (the majority hitting the coral side. Protein skimmer running, and a pump on one side drawing from one box and emptying into the other. Wave gyre hooked up on the coral side.

Everything was fine for over a week. No issues. Fish were feeding well, corals were open and ‘happy’. I’ve done this a hundred times (at least). Left on Friday, everything looked good.

Came in this morning and the first thing I saw was the skimmer going nuts and a mountain of foam on top of the water. Water murky.

All I can think was that one of the bigger Sinularia pieces bit it, and took the rest of the Sinularia out with it. There was more than 20lbs of Sinularia in there, so that made a bit of a mess.

That was the majority of the coral biomass in the tank. The rest is anywhere from OK to pretty stressed. One big frogspawn colony looks pretty bad. I have 200 gal of tank water in bins upstairs, so I immediately moved the rest of the coral up there with pumps.

The fish seem OK.

This is crazy.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

I’m just kicking myself.

I had strongly considered just putting all of the Sinularia in a couple of the water storage bins upstairs instead of the filter. I hate that stuff. Don’t trust it at all.

Getting rid of most of it was one of my primary goals with this reboot, but this is not what I had in mind.

 

[Lowell Lemon]

Sounds like you caught it in time though. Soldier on I know you can turn this tank around!

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Sounds like you caught it in time though. Soldier on I know you can turn this tank around!

We’ll see.

All the Sinularia is dead. Not the end of the world...but I hate killing corals. There’s now a garbage bag full of black slimy death.

My plan today was to finish buffing. Looks like I’m going to be doing big water changes instead. What a mess.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

So many mistakes made. Never should have put all the Sinularia in w/everything else. Never should have timed this when I knew I was going to be out of town. I would have come over Saturday and Sunday and would have seen something was up and rectified it immediately.

Instead, I’ve got reef Chernobyl on my hands. It’s amateur hour over here right now.

 

[Sallstrom]

Sorry to hear about the Sinularia crash. I've seen similar Sinularia meltdowns. Not a pretty sight. And the smell..

Do you have backup corals somewhere?

 

[KenO]

Went through a tank crash a few months back. I feel your pain. Keep doing those water changes.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Sorry to hear about the Sinularia crash. I've seen similar Sinularia meltdowns. Not a pretty sight. And the smell..

Do you have backup corals somewhere?

Yes, I’ve got plenty of stuff I can throw in (GSPs, more sinularia, toadstools. Nothing huge line was this tank had, and I’m worried about how empty it’s going to look.

The plan was to phase out the bigger soft corals, but...not all at once, and not like this, obviously...so it’s more disappointment in just seeing a huge mass of coral go down. More disappointing that it was so easily avoidable.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Update (*sigh*)

When I found the meltdown, most of the coral was in one filter box, fish and other inverts in the other. I shut the coral box off from the fish box, and then just emptied it after I got the corals that were still alive out.

Drained all the water (100gal), scooped out the dead coral sludge, and then wet/dry vacuumed the rest out. Added salt and filled it back up. After 1/2hr of mixing, I reconnected the two boxes.

Just came back, and the water is about 20x clearer than it was before the water change. The skimmer (thank God for the skimmer) is pulling a fair amount out, but it’s not going crazy. That leads me to believe that I got most of the worst stuff out. Also added a bag of carbon.

The big frogspawn lost tissue on the branches, but most of the polyps looked OK. After moving it to the bin of clean water, there’s some polyp extension. We’ll see. I’ve brought them back from worse. Pretty sure the other corals will pull through. There were 3 RBTAs that had detached from the rock and were pretty inside out when I found them. But they did react to me picking them up. So, you know what that means...I’m going to end up with 20 of them.

Fish not eating much. Don’t blame them. Gotta get this thing back up and running STAT.

 

[samnaz]

Dang, that’s awful. I feel your pain. It sucks but try not to beat yourself up about it too much... we all make mistakes. Ya live and ya learn. Things can only go up from here.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Dang, that’s awful. I feel your pain. It sucks but try not to beat yourself up about it too much... we all make mistakes. Ya live and ya learn. Things can only go up from here.

Thanks. I hear ya.

It’s just that I always pride myself on not making the critical mistake. I know how Sinularia is, and I should have known (especially with that much) to keep it separated from everything else.

But...the project moves forward. My hope is that the other coral I pulled turns around, and that I get the system up again soon to allow for complete recovery. Just have to finish buffing and then put the rock structures together, and I can fire it back up. Hopefully Thursday.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Alright, getting back on track. Couple of days behind schedule.

Finished buffing it. It doesn’t look super clear in the pics because I didn’t use a finishing polish, but it should look really good once water is in. I will probably give it another once-over using the magnet cleaners and 1500 grit paper and up once there’s water in it and I can see what I’m doing.

In the pic below, you can still see some scuffing in the acrylic, but it’s very fine. Once water is in it, I can use the magnet and do it from outside the tank and actually see what I’m doing. It won’t look brand new, but it will be close:

Today, after a couple other accounts, I’m going back and it’s time to build the wall cover for that beam box and start putting the rock structures together that will go along the back.

Finally...something creative!

BTW, it looks like all corals not named Sinularia will pull through OK. Jury is still out on a couple, but overall I think most will make it. Some bleaching, but otherwise intact.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

I think painting that far left end panel really helps with the overall look and balance. It makes those boxes a little less noticeable.

The view from the kitchen side is greatly improved.

I think it’s going to look pretty sweet once I do the rocks.

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

No government shutdown is going to keep me from building that wall:

This hair-brained scheme might just work.

The one thing I quickly discovered is that I have no choice but to apply the Quikrete and small live rock pieces once the eggcrate is welded onto the acrylic of that crazy beam-box. I was hoping to do that before putting it up, but there’s no way that’s going to work.

So for now, I just laid down some of the mortar to reinforce the welded on pegs for the live rock shelves.

Wish me luck!

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

I got my first confirmation that this plan might work when I realized a couple of the acrylic pegs were too close to the side of the aquarium, tried to remove them from the wall structure, and couldn’t get them to budge!

 

[Be102]

No government shutdown is going to keep me from building that wall:

This hair-brained scheme might just work.

The one thing I quickly discovered is that I have no choice but to apply the Quikrete and small live rock pieces once the eggcrate is welded onto the acrylic of that crazy beam-box. I was hoping to do that before putting it up, but there’s no way that’s going to work.

So for now, I just laid down some of the mortar to reinforce the welded on pegs for the live rock shelves.

Wish me luck!

Interested to see the outcome with the quickrete

 

[Sallstrom]

No government shutdown is going to keep me from building that wall:

This hair-brained scheme might just work.

The one thing I quickly discovered is that I have no choice but to apply the Quikrete and small live rock pieces once the eggcrate is welded onto the acrylic of that crazy beam-box. I was hoping to do that before putting it up, but there’s no way that’s going to work.

So for now, I just laid down some of the mortar to reinforce the welded on pegs for the live rock shelves.

Wish me luck!

Will be really exciting to see the result!

We've put(with cable ties(short term solution..)) some longer acrylic rods(not sure that the right word) on the back side of the egg crates to make them stronger when we have planned to put heavier rocks and corals onto them. Just to aviod them "bending".
I'm sure you got a plan already, just something that came to mind

Good luck!!

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Interested to see the outcome with the quickrete

You and me both

 

[Gregg @ ADP]

Will be really exciting to see the result!

We've put(with cable ties(short term solution..)) some longer acrylic rods(not sure that the right word) on the back side of the egg crates to make them stronger when we have planned to put heavier rocks and corals onto them. Just to aviod them "bending".
I'm sure you got a plan already, just something that came to mind

Good luck!!

Thanks!

Trust me, I have gone through every conceivable way of building vertical, low-profile walls with shelves. It seemed like every idea I had was doomed to fail.

I’m playing it safe by not putting any big shelves on. What I did was epoxy acrylic sheets to the back of the egg crate, so that I can weld the acrylic sheets to the acrylic box. Then, I cut the acrylic rods and welded them onto the acrylic backing. Then reinforced with the quikrete.

Now, as I’m building the wall, I can take the bigger shelves, put the rods into them, and then reinforce the shelf against the wall with more quikrete.

My thinking then is that everything is triple reinforced. Then, as the corals grow, they will eventually act as yet another anchor. And really, the shelves are only on the top half of the wall. The bottom half will be supported by the floor of the tank.

(*I hope, to all of the above)