Worst Catastrophe to Date, feel free to share yours.

[GaryZ]

Asd some of you know, I've been slowly building my tank up, learning as I go. Aside from the occasional minor overflow and a dead snail here and there, no catastrophes.

I've always been striving for better flow (arent we all). I even considered using a pool pump. Just so happened, the proprietor of my fav LFS offered me a nice Dolphin external pump for very cheap. I decided to hard pipe the entire thing. No flex whatsoever.

Time to shut the tank down, do some work.

Everything went great initially, miraculously bought everything I needed in one trip to HP. Time to fire it up. Too much flow, my dual overflows can't keep up. No problem, add a ball valve. Shut it down, run to HD, stop and get a couple coneys, get home, eat my coneys, stare at the tank for a few, get back to work. Total tank downtime: 2 hours.

My wonderful refugium:

I've been harvesting and nurturing my refuguim since the beginning. Started with a few rocks and a few strands of macro. Ended up with a 'fuge packed with inverts, pods, worms, little starfish and LOADED with grape caulerpa..........did I mention I also keep my heaters in the fuge?

Boiled my 'fuge, completely wiped it out. Worms: dead. Pods: gone. Inverts: vaporized. Starfish: vanished. Caulerpa: mush.

The ' fuge was so hot, that it actually hurt when I stuck my hand in the water. I never thought I would be so sad over the death of a bunch of worms and snails, but I was.

The 'fuge is on the comback. My grapes are already spreading and the pods are back. Nowhere near the life it once had, but I'm patient.

Moral of the story: Heaters and standing water don't mix.

[CSeaSee]

Wow. Sorry to hear that, Gary. I don't have anything that compares. I had a condy die once a few years back, and it stunk, but that was all that comes to mind.

[j_man]

Well I had something going on in my tank,that I couldn't identify. It started after DAV and I reaquascaped the tank and released alot of detritus. I did a W/C with some aged water I had left. This water was very old and I didn't bother to check the TDS as I was going to use it and the old LR in it to cycle the new tank. I noticed 2 days after the water change when I was setting up the new tank that my corals seemed really stressed. The water had a funky smell and I knew I had to do a large water change right then. I went and got some RO water (90 glns) and started mixing salt. In my hurriedness to fix both tanks at once I compounded the problem by misdosing my salt. I couldn't figure out why everything was sliming so badly. It didn't dawn on me to check the salinity for an hour. I was at abou 5 ppt salinity. It was awful. My little tank is still recovering. Fish were happy as could be didn't bother them. I have just mixed salt so many times that I know the rate by heart, and never thought I would miss dose it. Just had to many things on my mind. Thank God I responded better under stress when I was Over seas and under fire.

[Reefland]

Documenting My New Tank!

Need I say more?

[BubbaWPB]

Documenting My New Tank!

Need I say more?

What else can I say, but "Nice macro growth in your 'fuge!"???

[Reefland]

I wouldn't put that crap in my worst enemies fuge!

[GaryZ]

Well, that surely explains why you were so dead set against me using any red macro in my fuge. Glad I listened. Yikes.

[Reefland]

Stay away, stay far away!

[showfish]

Wow Reefland, I don't think I have ever seen a red macro take-over quite that severe. I have heard of this happening however, and I thought my Cryptocaryoniasis outbreak was bad. Great pics though.

[Reefland]

To say it was "bad" is an understatement.

[charlie]

Documenting My New Tank!

Need I say more?

That looks like a b-horror movie!

[vtec si]

Well I guess we all learn from our mistakes. Sometimes I repeat my mistakes then I remember why I was going to change my ways.

Martin

[mickey57]

............Sorry Man,That Sux..I run no heaters

[BubbaWPB]

I run two smaller heaters...so if one gets stuck in the "ON" position, it won't overheat as quickly and I'll have time to catch the problem.... also, if one fails, the fish won't catch cold as fast...

[blue_eyes53813]

My closest near catastrophe was when I had my 125 gallon with close to 1000 watts of lights on a canopy. My ex Husband was screwing around adjusting the lights or doing some dumb thing with lifting one end of the lights, The other end off my lights fell in the tank. The lights were on fan was running. All I heard was a ohhh **** and splash and I looked and the fan from the lights looked like a boat motor in the tank. My dumb ass ex is trying frantically to lift the lights out and I see him reaching for the bottom of the light in the water. I screamed for him not to put his hand in the tank. I pulled all the plugs to the lights and probably even more equipment. I just started unplugging things. To my surprise nothing was broke , hurt or even scratched. After the light dried out I was inspecting the hood and it had a crack in the metal ( aluminum) whatever it is made out of. I was so lucky the corner of the hood didnt hit the tank or it probably would have cracked my tank. No bulbs burst or anything. I and my ex was very lucky. I was expecting to see sparks flying . I shook for 2 days after the incident and to this day I am afraid to mess with the lights, lol

[jasutton]

i had a similar episode....years ago in my college days...and still dont know exactly how it happened. Only it was only a 20g and the stock flourescant lite, but my roommate would never clean the tank again and i couldnt blame him...