This is a very sad story, but we were all shocked and amazed. I have an AIO at the office. Its about 3 years old and everyone at the office loves it. Over a weekend the ATO controller failed. The water level dropped in the pump chamber. That chamber also housed the UV sterilizer. The water dropped low enough that it exposed the UV sterilizer to air. The UV sterilizer got hot enough that the bulb broke. It was a Chernobyl event. I showed up on a Monday morning and everything was dead. SPS, LPS, instantly bleached. Bacon, the long nose hawk and Luciano the storm clown had passed. The entire CUC gone, my back wall of GSP gone. The level of pain was more than I could imagine.
I started to tear down the tank. Had all of the rocks out, and started to pull the sand out. At this moment, I saw a glimmer of hope, a slight movement in the sand. I carefully put the rocks back in, changed 80% of the water and filled every inch of the back chambers with carbon. I didn't tell anyone, i just kept target feeding the area of sand movement.
A few days later everyone in the office was amazed to see that Butters, the yellow coris wrasse survived. Because he stayed in the sand, it must have protected him from the Chernobyl event. Its been a month now and Butters is doing remarkably well. Even though the tank is going back through the ugly stage again, we're starting to see some of the softies coming back to life.
So yeah, Butters surprised all of us. If it wasn't for him, I would have thrown the entire tank in the dumpster.
Baby Butters:
Butters this morning:
