Who has had a tank crash?

[larryandlaura]

I was wondering who has had a tank crash? What caused it? And what did hou do to prevent it from happening again?

[CableGuy]

This might be a good thread to let grow and then create another thread with the same title, sticky it and pull all of the good questions and answers out of it for people to reference in the future.

I'm counting my blessing as I've never had this happen.

[bigbill]

i crashed my 12 gal nano killed every thing but one coral and it was from over adding plankton about a half a bottle robed all the o2 from the water and every thing died over night only thing i can say is we learn from our mistakes in this hobby we all have done it our will have it happen to use at one point it sucks realy bad :doh:

[redemer123]

the two major factors that contribute to tank crashes IMO are equipment failure and a nitrate/phosphate spike. oh and over feeding but that kinda goes with nitrate spike. thankfully i am lucky enough to have not experience a disaster where everything died.

[demonclownfish]

L&L, the biggest crash i have seen has been MIKE's 270g when it went down. not sure if that is a crash or not since it was due to power failure but he lost ALOT and moved on and now has another great tank going.

[larryandlaura]

Good answers! But im wondering about total crashes.

[Captain]

My 180 crashed a few years back when it was FO. It was just too much too fast. Fish got some ich that they could not fight off and tank re cycled.

[slapshot]

Twice, once "someone" tossed a penny in my fuge. The other time I attribute it to old tank syndrome since the tank was up and running for 12 years.

My fixes....well my son knows better now, lol and I change 100 percent of the water once a year. I don't know if the later is a real fix but everything sure is happy after I do it. BTW I do it over a 5 day period. 1/3 at a time, yes, I know it does not get all the old water but it is still a major change.

Good question Cap!!


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[larryandlaura]

Nice Slapshot! Sounds like a solution.

[jimsflies]

I have. My old 50 got overdosed with kalk.

before:

http://www.jimsflies.com/reeftank/2009-03-22_fts.jpg

http://www.jimsflies.com/reeftank/2009-03-20_topdown_center_sm.jpg

http://www.jimsflies.com/reeftank/2009-03-22_topdown1.jpg

http://www.jimsflies.com/reeftank/2009-03-22_topdown2.jpg

http://www.jimsflies.com/reeftank/2009-03-22_topdown3.jpg

http://www.jimsflies.com/reeftank/2009-03-22_topdown4.jpg

http://www.jimsflies.com/reeftank/2009-03-22_topdown5.jpg

after:

http://www.jimsflies.com/reeftank/disaster1.jpg


In my case, I had allowed the auto top off reservoir to empty and display was probably a gallon or two low. When I refilled the top-off reservoir the tank called for 2+ gallons of water which ran through my kalk reactor. So it was 2+ gallons of saturated kalkwasser. It happened on my way out of the house in the morning and sat like that till I got home at 5:30. To make matters worse, I normally had an alarm set up my tank to tell me of a problem, but had recently got a new computer and hadn't configured it yet on the new machine.

In retrospect a couple lines of code to shut off the top off if the ph got too high would have been all it would take to prevent the accident.

Truthfully, my tank has never looked even half that good since and it has been more than 3 years since it happened. :(

[slapshot]

Whoa I remember that Jim. I almost cried for you. I know it scared the pants off of me.

[The.Maxi.Man]

I had a crash in my 70g from an OD on kalk.

Lesson learned? Don't do anything you're not comfortable with doing.

[jimsflies]

Looking at my old pics makes me want to cry. :crying:

Those were some happy jammin' corals...it literally looked the best it ever looked the days up to that event. I don't think a single polyp looked unhappy.

[larryandlaura]

That tank was amazing Jim. The colors blended very well. Sorry about your loss.