Slow partial tank crash

[rygh]

Well, the last few weeks have been rather bad.
One problem after another.
And several days of pulling dead things like this out of the tank.

Problem 1 : Heat
I only have a fan, not a chiller. Worked well in the past, but garage has been super hot lately due
to car issues. Blowing hot air to chill a tank just does not work so well.
So corals were pretty stressed.
Fan moved and increased, so better now.

Problem 2 : Big dead shroom.
This big brown guy in the middle fell down off the rock.
I put it back up. ... A few days later it fell down again.
I waited several days, annoyed, then tried to put it back up, and it basically disintegrated in my hands.
Obviously heavily polluting the water and stressing corals.

Problem 3: Sand bed blowup
As part of my cleaning, I must have banged a powerhead.
The next morning, half of my rather dirty sand bed had been moved by the water.
Releasing all that built up crud.

Results:
Big hard coral loss.
ALL of my plating type corals are dead.
Most encrusting type corals are dead.
A huge old prized war coral is half gone.
A few hard corals are still hanging on, but time will tell.
Most softies on the other hand, look better than ever. Go figure.
In fact, even with losses, my tank does not look all that bad. Lots of softies.

Interesting side effect:
I have an algae scrubber. During this mess, it grew like CRAZY.
So I tend to believe it possibly saved a lot more die off, including fish, by wiping out the nitrates.
But it did not do so well on phosphates. (That answers that old question)
So I now have high phosphates and low nitrates.
Which the Cyano LOVES.
I now need to turn down scrubber, and add lots of GFO.

What now?
Things are recovering.
I know what to do. Keep things stable. Carbon. Lots of GFO. Water changes. The usual.
Long term...
I think I might take this as an opportunity to re-landscape the tank.
I might eliminate most of the sand also. Tired of that hassle.

 

[Apon]

this happens- live and learn. its fun to restock : )

 

[Coral reefer]

Suck it sand! Long live flow!

 

[rygh]

Suck it sand! Long live flow!

Yeah.
I really like the look of a nice bright white sand bed among the corals.
"It is more natural"
But so many down sides.

 

[neuro]

damned dude, sorry to hear!!! i'm sure things will be better soon. i've never had sand, so i don't know how how to care for one, but i imagine getting rid of it will help a lot...

 

[Kensington Reefer]

 

[gimmito]

Hang in there!

 

[Geneva]

Mark - sorry to read about your losses - that was your big toadstool that disintegrated initially, right? Are all your fish ok - especially your beautiful desjardini sailfin??

 

[HiFidelity]

Ouch! sucks to hear about this Mark, though if anyone could do a good job at recovering it should be you
hope you don't have any further losses with livestock.

 

[rygh]

Mark - sorry to read about your losses - that was your big toadstool that disintegrated initially, right? Are all your fish ok - especially your beautiful desjardini sailfin??

Yes, big toadstool went first.
Fish are doing great. No concerns there.
Mostly it was just the hard corals that took a hit.

 

[sfsuphysics]

I feel you man, I'm having a hard time dialing the tank in for SPS. And just had my big clam die on me that I've had for 7-8 years, not sure when it died, there was still a "slop" inside, so I yanked it out before it completely died but geezus it smelled like it was dead for a while... similar smell to a dead snail, just imagine a softball sized snail... PU!

 

[monkeybiz]

Sorry to hear about the loss

 

[denzil]

Sorry to hear about your loss. Do you have things kick up the sand bed regularly for some good turnover or do you really just have a ton of sand?

 

[650-IS350]

sorry to hear, I feel your pain. I've been through that a couple times. had to restock, regrow corals, etc. almost made me quick a couple times.

 

[Kensington Reefer]

Getting new stuff is always fun!

 

[rygh]

Sorry to hear about your loss. Do you have things kick up the sand bed regularly for some good turnover or do you really just have a ton of sand?

I have about a 3/4 inch sand bed. Thin, but does add up when you have almost 20 sq ft of bottom.
I tried a few things to move sand bed, like a fighting conch. Did not do that much.
I thought about a diamond goby, but hear the dump sand everywhere.
I thought about a sand sifting star, but with a thin sand bed, I hear they starve.

---

I pulled out some sand this weekend from the back. YUK!!!
Totally full of detritus.

 

[650-IS350]

Tiger Tail Cucumbers good work horse but I think they only get the top layer of my sand. But I have tongan Nassarius that burrow and rummage in the mid to bottom layer, but I only have 1-2" of sand thickness. I would get Conch's but not much space for them to roam my tank, mushrooms have taken over the bottom of my sand bed area.

 

[denzil]

I have about a 3/4 inch sand bed. Thin, but does add up when you have almost 20 sq ft of bottom.
I tried a few things to move sand bed, like a fighting conch. Did not do that much.
I thought about a diamond goby, but hear the dump sand everywhere.
I thought about a sand sifting star, but with a thin sand bed, I hear they starve.

---

I pulled out some sand this weekend from the back. YUK!!!
Totally full of detritus.

Yeah, I use Nassarius and find them to do the job fairly well. I have a similar depth of sand bed. Maybe you could add Nassarius of various sizes to fill in the size gaps around the tank? The diamond goby does dump sand everywhere but some more than others. Some are pretty tidy and some aren't. I, personally, wouldn't get a sand sifting star... just personal preference.

 

[rygh]

Yeah, I use Nassarius and find them to do the job fairly well. I have a similar depth of sand bed. Maybe you could add Nassarius of various sizes to fill in the size gaps around the tank? The diamond goby does dump sand everywhere but some more than others. Some are pretty tidy and some aren't. I, personally, wouldn't get a sand sifting star... just personal preference.

How many Nassarius snails per gallon do you have?
I tried them, and they mostly remained buried and unmoving until I fed. Then they would eat and go back to sleep.
So I gave up after trying them.
Perhaps I had way to few and it takes some critical mass before they work well ??
I only started with about 15 for a 240G tank.

 

[HiFidelity]

my two strombus snails aka "nano conch" get to about 1" into the the sandbed and they move around a bunch when they're not in it, they are very gentle considering their size so they don't go around knocking things over.

If you find some let me know