When was your last crash?

[firefightered]

My first and "only" full crash is when I thought it would be a great idea to set up a tank here at the fire house. Had eveything looking and growing nice. The bug guy came in while I was not on shift and got toooo close to the tank. A Damsel was the only thing that survived. The 2nd partial crash was after the April 27th tornados hit here in Alabama. I was not directly affected but I was out for 2 weeks doing search, rescue, and giving aid to those who were affected. Unfortunatly I was not able to care for my tank durring this time and lost several corals. Still trying to bet things back to where everything is happy again. By the way... The tank is in my oun house now.

 

[shred5]

I have been in the reef hobby since the early days of the hobby with multiple tanks at a time and never have experienced a full crash. (Knock on wood)

I have had 3 very small partial crashes and only since I started sps’s.

First time was a bad batch of coral life salt. The salt had no calcium in it or it would not dissolve. Actually this led to a few sps’s rtn’ing, actually I would not even call this a partial crash. Lost two or three corals I think but it was a 40 gallon.

Second partial crash I had a mag 7 start fire in my sump. I was sitting in my living room and all of a sudden the lights started dimming and I heard this loud arcing sound coming from my fish room. I go into the room and there are sparks and smoke shooting out of my sump.. This poured a bunch of black stuff into my tank. This did not actually crash the tank at this point but weakend it. . At this time the 40 gallon tank emptied into a large refugium with mangroves and all kinds of algae growing in it (was actually cooler than the tank) and then the refugium emptied into the sump and this pump sat in the sump. Well I had a new pump over nighted to me which ended up getting lost, go figure. So I called them up again and that was the last pump they had. By the time I got one the tank was still ok. But I did something really stupid, I got the new pump installed and immediately fired it up. Water temps were not the same in the fuge/sump as my tank and I lost a few corals where the return from my sump was. Again, I only lost only a few sps.

The third partial was a few months ago on my 30 gallon all on one tank… I was gone for about 10 days and came home to a few of my sps’s bleached. Only thing I can figure is there was a long power outage and the temps changed to much. I was worried when I left because there were big storms forecasted that week. Anyway at this point now I put the rest of the corals in another temporary tank and decided to redo the all in one..

Dave

 

[turbo21]

My worst crash was years ago on my 390 gal fowlr.

I had bought a local lfs show tank when they went out of business. It was locally made.


My wife called me when i was at work to let me know the tank was empty and all the fish were dead. The slicone seam at the rear back wall let loose and all the water and sand poured out at once. I rushed home and found my stars and stripes puffer was still gasping as well as my port jackson . We got them in some water and rushed out and bought a 220, but unfouratnetly they died a few days later.
i still cry about my fish list i had

18" stars and stripes puffer
16"vlamingi tang
20 port jackson shark
12" blue face angel
10" niger trigger
10" porcupine puffer
6" humu humu trigger
10" green bird wrasse
9" hippo tang
8" blue throat trigger


I still try to talk my wife into getting anohter big fowlr tank

bob

 

[mainereefer]

I lost a small tank. 20g long filled with sps about 4 years ago (total value about$4-5k)
my fault mixed to much salt in the water for a waterchange watched everything melt in like 3-4 hrs
in the first 1/2hr my picasso clowns died (back then they were a bit pricey!!)
then I started checking levels by then it was to late

I didnt get another sps coral till this year and I just bought my second I know it wasnt the fact it was sps what I did would have killed anything,but seeing sps in my tank still makes me want to cry

 

[64Ivy]

Spring of '07. Probably due to change in lighting scheme. I lost 10 years worth of work (and some SPS colonies nearly two FEET across) in less than two weeks.

 

[florida reef]

BUZZ KILL THREAD! haha, I'm just kidding...it's good to read an learn from others mistakes/misfortunes.

 

[ebohacek]

I broke my knee 5 month ago,so I could not do the water changes or any maintenance for 3 month. When I did change the water, i changed 25% and I shock the fish . I lost all my tangs. Now I am having serious Nitrate and phosphate issues. LSP told me to clean the sand bed, but I have to remove all the rocks. Not sure what to do.

 

[Gitsoe]

I posted this recently but I'll post it here

made a newbie mistake just Sunday, when I went to manually add ro water in my tank I accidentally added a jug of ro that had Kalk in it and my tanks PH raised to 8.8 so I freaked and remembered Vinegar lowers ph so I quickly poured some in and that was the biggest mistake I ever did, within seconds my ph dropped to 4.2 all my zoos retracted and looked horrible my chalices immediately started sliming up, pods started dying, snails on my glass started to pretty much melt there shells were hanging about a half inch below there foot right b4 they dropped to the bottom of the frag tank, i had to quickly transfer all the frags (prolly over 60) into my DT which had no space to begin with, i had no time or possible way to acclimate them so hopefully they'll make it.