tank wiped out???

[Amstar]

well I came home from my second final exam today to find my nano tank (16 gallons) looking strange.  I looked closer and noticed that three of my corals were dead, my fire fish was dead, cant find my six line wrasse, and the rest of the tank look like crap.  I went to check the salt level, and other parameters and noticed right away how hot the tank was.  I then looked at my digital temp (on the side of the tank) and it was 95.4.  needless to say I had some water made up quickly to drop the temp in the tank. 

I have left the lights off, and have everything running, except the wonderful heater which malfunctioned even though it wasnt even turned up to temp because the house was warm enough. 

anything I can do to help out the remaining corals/fish or is this a wait and see what dies off and what lives?? 

with 17 hours of school classes, working 40 hours, and baby coming in july the tanks have been pushed to the side a bit, but i still check on them daily, and this was just a shock to me.  almost defeating me to taking down the nano. 

[slandis3]

IM sorry to hear about this. I would try to bring the temp down slow and see what happens.

[verper]

anything I can do to help out the remaining corals/fish or is this a wait and see what dies off and what lives?? 

Pretty much a wait and see.  Try to bring the temp down slowly.  Unfortunately, 95 degrees is pretty high so the outlook is not promising.  Let us know how it turns out.

[Joel]

Watch your water quality closely too. With the temp getting that high, lots of organisms, including beneficial bacteria may have been lost. Things that may survive the high temp could be lost from ammonia / nitrite poising. Might be a thought to move the existing living things into your other tank or it's sump until you see what the nano is going to do.

[Amstar]

I might just move everything to main reef tank.  I have to move the nano tank anyone in the next few weeks.  its in the room that is going to be turned into the nursery.  I will monitor the tank until I take it down

[Riderc82]

Sorry to hear about you tank, I hate heaters, I've bought about four different ones and I still can't find one that keeps a very consistent temperature.  My two heaters are now on my night time outlets of my coralife power strip that way I know they won't turn on once the lights are on. 

[Amstar]

well at this point everything is moved to the main tank, well everything that is doing well.  Before I placed everything in the main tank I decided to catch the flame "i love eating your corals and chasing the other fish" angel from the main reef.  So after pretty much removing everything from the tank, live rock, corals to catch him I re-aquascaped my main tank, then placed the corals back in the tank, turned off the lights for the night.

while attempting to catch the flame I dripped the remaining fish that lived a yellow goby and a clown fish.  so in the main reef I have the clown, yellow goby and my manarin that I have had for 3 plus years.  So everything is just relaxing and in the main tank, and after things clear up I will re-arrange a few more things and start to place the corals in all of their new places.

With the nano, there are a few CUC left in the tank (hard to catch all of the little hermits) the live rock, sand, and the refigium.  I did a partial water change, today on the tank as well.  I will continue to watch the parameters and hope that a water change or two more will take care of the tank.  Then I will decide if I want to even re-stock it (I have to move it anyway to make the room its in, into a nursery)

So in the future what can you do, to make sure this doesnt happen??? 

[Amstar]

this was the nano tank.

[Amstar]

dead



dead

six line wrasse dead.  blood shrimp dead.  fire fish goby dead. 

candy canes dead

xenia dead

mushrooms dead

believe the cup coral is dead

finger leather/ mushroom leather/cabbage leather  almost completely dead but hanging on.

spaghetti finger,  just a stump of flesh right now (going to be dead)

zoa's haning in there

[Riderc82]

Man that was a nice looking nano 

[MechanicalEngineer]

Man, that hurts to look at.  I'm sorry for your loss.

[Amstar]

so what can you do to ensure or better protect yourself so something like this doesnt happen.  I think part of the reason it went so bad soooo quick is that it happened in a  nano.

But other than not running a heater what can you do?  what can you do to make your tank safer from incidents such as this.

I think my nano WAS my favorite tank I have ever had. 

[verper]

Redundancy.  Use a heater set for just above your favorite temperature plugged into a heater controller (like a Ranco, AquaController, Reefkeeper) set at your favorite temperature.  If either fail, the other still does its job.  Every once in a while, you check each on its own to make sure one of the two have not failed and need replaced.

I had this happen about two months ago.  Came down on a Sunday morning and my AquaContoller Jr read 125 degrees because the temperature probe failed.  I had my Ebo Jager heaters set for 1-2 degrees higher than my set temp so they took over and kept the tank from cooking.  No worries other than having to replace the temperature probe which Neptune did even though it was out of warranty.

[rmstevensiii]

It must be the season for heater probs!!!

When I was topping off my tank this AM, I noticed that my zoo's were closed more tightly than normal and checked my tank temp and it was 84+ on 2 separate thermo's and the water was warmer than normal to the touch.  The main lights are not yet on and the only thing running are my 2 Koralia 3's, the return pump, and the fuge lights.  The pumps all appear to be running just fine and the fuge is lit by 2 PC flood lights so they don't put out much heat.  The heater was plugged in but did not appear to be running.  I've unplugged the heater, turned off the fuge lights, kicked on the hood fan and will be floating a bag of ice to bring the temp back down.  This tank is normally rock solid @ 78 till summer so it must be the season for heater failure.  This was just weird so I thought I'd share. 

[Amstar]

Im just glad you were able to catch it in time.  I think what didnt help with me it was a nano tank as well.

hope everything is okay with your tank

[Lizlovesjustin]