All my fish just died. Return pump failure.
- Thread starter Vincerama2
- Start date
jccaclimber
Supporting Member
First off, I'm sorry for your loss, that sucks. I'm going to tell a few stories and try to teach a few lessons. I hope this is interpreted as more educational and less poorly timed soap box speech.
I'm going to be blunt and say that there is likely some poor system design at play as well.
I've come home or walked into a friend's place to a dead or headed there fast tank three times in the last 25 or so years. The times I've seen this (in chronological order):
1. A house sitter who poured a huge amount of flakes in to the tank every day, continued to do so for the next two weeks as the fish started to die.
Did not remove any of the dead fish, and also didn't call me to say something was up. Two lessons learned. First, measure all food out in advance in weekly pill containers and, hide the rest. Second, educate them a bit about overfeeding, and leave strict instructions to call you if they have any concerns. If they do call you, even if it's about a non-issue, handle the call in a way that they are likely to still call in the future.
2. Learning CO2 on a freshwater tank. Elevated the value/got it stuck on/something like that. Gassed several, but fortunately not all, of the fish in the system. Lesson, go more gradually, have fail safes, don't run so close to the edge. Don't design systems with single points of failure.
3. Buddy declined to remove the large trash paly collection in his small tank. At some point his ATO ran low and shot a bunch of old kalk sludge into the tank. The palys got angry, did their palytoxin thing, and crashed the tank. Went from the nicest tank of its age I've ever seen to a cloudy puddle of murky sludge overnight. He also managed to palytoxin himself and ended up with visits to his GP and optometrist in short order.
First off, yes, I recommend running two return pumps when the cost of a return pump becomes acceptable insurance on your livestock. I happen to think that all drilled tanks should have a minimum of 5 holes, two for independent returns and three for drains. That said, reality often gets in the way. My current tank only has three, and that means among other things that I only have one return pump. Part of it is that it's a temporary setup, but more importantly a failure of my return pump will not take out my system. I'm fairly certain of this because over the years I've had return pumps fail, turned them off for maintenance and forgotten to turn them back on for a couple days, etc.
There are two things that can greatly reduce this being an issue, and I'd love to hear from the OP as to if either of these were in place. Perhaps they encountered a failure I have not yet planned for, in which case leaning more about it could help us all.
1. Have a heater in the display. It might not be enough heater to keep the tank at the correct temperature in the dead of winter (ok, we don't have winter in the Bay, but you get the idea). There are actually several benefits to multiple undersized heaters vs. one large one, but it should be enough to keep the fish from getting cold enough to start killing things, or at least make the rate of cooling slow enough that you have time to notice the issue. The heater should also be in a place that stays wet in the event of a return pump failure. Horizontally at the back bottom of the tank is a good spot, but inside an overflow box is good as well. The key is to make sure the overflow box level does not fall below the level of the heater with the return pump off. A simple standpipe will prevent this.
2. Have a wavemaker in the display. Just something to keep minimal water movement. It isn't ideal, but it will cover a lot of sins.
3. Be careful where your devices go if you have a feedback loop. For example, if you have a kalk doser that is controlled off of a pH probe (a risk for various reasons), then don't put the dosing line in the display and the pH probe in the sump, or the other way around. A heater without a built in thermostat in the display and the temperature probe in the sump (or the reverse) is also to be avoided.
I'm also going to ping @Alexx , I think we had a discussion a while about about the risks of having a heater only in a sump instead of having one behind the rocks in the back, this is a good example of what could happen.
I'm going to be blunt and say that there is likely some poor system design at play as well.
I've come home or walked into a friend's place to a dead or headed there fast tank three times in the last 25 or so years. The times I've seen this (in chronological order):
1. A house sitter who poured a huge amount of flakes in to the tank every day, continued to do so for the next two weeks as the fish started to die.
Did not remove any of the dead fish, and also didn't call me to say something was up. Two lessons learned. First, measure all food out in advance in weekly pill containers and, hide the rest. Second, educate them a bit about overfeeding, and leave strict instructions to call you if they have any concerns. If they do call you, even if it's about a non-issue, handle the call in a way that they are likely to still call in the future.
2. Learning CO2 on a freshwater tank. Elevated the value/got it stuck on/something like that. Gassed several, but fortunately not all, of the fish in the system. Lesson, go more gradually, have fail safes, don't run so close to the edge. Don't design systems with single points of failure.
3. Buddy declined to remove the large trash paly collection in his small tank. At some point his ATO ran low and shot a bunch of old kalk sludge into the tank. The palys got angry, did their palytoxin thing, and crashed the tank. Went from the nicest tank of its age I've ever seen to a cloudy puddle of murky sludge overnight. He also managed to palytoxin himself and ended up with visits to his GP and optometrist in short order.
First off, yes, I recommend running two return pumps when the cost of a return pump becomes acceptable insurance on your livestock. I happen to think that all drilled tanks should have a minimum of 5 holes, two for independent returns and three for drains. That said, reality often gets in the way. My current tank only has three, and that means among other things that I only have one return pump. Part of it is that it's a temporary setup, but more importantly a failure of my return pump will not take out my system. I'm fairly certain of this because over the years I've had return pumps fail, turned them off for maintenance and forgotten to turn them back on for a couple days, etc.
There are two things that can greatly reduce this being an issue, and I'd love to hear from the OP as to if either of these were in place. Perhaps they encountered a failure I have not yet planned for, in which case leaning more about it could help us all.
1. Have a heater in the display. It might not be enough heater to keep the tank at the correct temperature in the dead of winter (ok, we don't have winter in the Bay, but you get the idea). There are actually several benefits to multiple undersized heaters vs. one large one, but it should be enough to keep the fish from getting cold enough to start killing things, or at least make the rate of cooling slow enough that you have time to notice the issue. The heater should also be in a place that stays wet in the event of a return pump failure. Horizontally at the back bottom of the tank is a good spot, but inside an overflow box is good as well. The key is to make sure the overflow box level does not fall below the level of the heater with the return pump off. A simple standpipe will prevent this.
2. Have a wavemaker in the display. Just something to keep minimal water movement. It isn't ideal, but it will cover a lot of sins.
3. Be careful where your devices go if you have a feedback loop. For example, if you have a kalk doser that is controlled off of a pH probe (a risk for various reasons), then don't put the dosing line in the display and the pH probe in the sump, or the other way around. A heater without a built in thermostat in the display and the temperature probe in the sump (or the reverse) is also to be avoided.
I'm also going to ping @Alexx , I think we had a discussion a while about about the risks of having a heater only in a sump instead of having one behind the rocks in the back, this is a good example of what could happen.
great suggestions.
i think everyone should own an icecap battery backup. It’s like $150 and will run you dc powerhead in case of power failure. I have one that has worked great (and I have three battery air pumps).
Also TEST your backup systems. Unplug everything and ensure your stuff works.
For instance if the backup is on a gyre up high in the tank if the return dies and dt drains water below the gyre the gyre can’t push any water to save anything!
When Mike and I (okay Mike) plumbed my tanks we used two returns just for this reason. Redundancy is good in this hobby.
Vincerama2
Guest
I run two heaters in the main tank and one in the sump. The sump was really very warm because there was no return to the main tank, which tells me that heater is either broken or set too high. I do have a Rango PID controller for the main tank which is ... not set up.
I think putting a water level alarm (or even just a well placed water alarm) in the sump would help. The water level of my sump always rises when the return pump is off for water changes.
Also, my lights come on in the afternoon til night and not in the morning. This is because of our PG&E plan with tiered metering and the fact that mostly we were not home during the day. I think if the lights were on, we would have noticed the dish in distress sooner.
I really think that either the dual return pumps or simply putting a hang-on-back filter/skimmer/refugium on the main tank would be enough to keep oxygen levels high enough to sustain life until the issue was discovered.
Even after doing this for 20 years, there's something to learn.
I highly recommend people think about failsafe situations. Relying on a single thing can lead to disaster.
V
Vincerama2
Guest
I have two Vortecs, in random wave mode. However I think that you need the surface of the water to have more movement than I had. I had a Korallia near the top, but it gets clogged up and that's what happened in this case...it ended up being useless.
V
sfsuphysics
Supporting Member
That still seems quite odd, unless you have a huge over population of fish there should still be sufficient oxygen. Do you have an anemones (other than aiptasia?) sometimes they can get blendered and then all those stinging cells go into the water column where they still sting and end up killing anything that inhales them, or somehow some palythoa went nuclear... just seems kind of odd for that to happen.
Coral reefer
Past President
Must’ve been not pumping for days I would think is the tank completely covered?
jccaclimber
Supporting Member
I’m a bit puzzled too. What is the sticking and what size system? I’ve had a return pump down for a couple days without issue, but I also had very light stocking.
Fox_reefing
Guest
I’m a bit confused. Defeats the purpose of having a backup battery if the wave pump didn’t do its job.
Vincerama2
Guest
Return pump was broken. How long, I don't know. Tank is 180 Gallons, many BTAs, 3 tangs, 2 large damsels, candy hog, two clowns, clam. I know the fish were alive the day before. And as I said before, I've had the fish be in distress before when the power went out for a few hours... No idea how long, but I went to work and we all got home late that day, around 8pm and one fish was dead, the rest were gasping.
Wave maker is a pair of Vortechs, they are not close to the surface.
Power outage failsafe I use after the power outage instance is two battery powered BT11 air pumps. They kick on when power fails. I do not have battery backups on anything.
If you don't have BT11s, you should get them, they'll run 8-15 hours on D batteries and are quite loud so they warn you if your circuit breaker pops or PGE is up to their tricks.
Going 76 hours without power only stirring the water is amazing. Like I said, maybe 8 hours and I was losing fish.
In anycase, this is something we should all look out for. Best alarm would be a water sensor alarm to go off when the sump water rises.
V
Wave maker is a pair of Vortechs, they are not close to the surface.
Power outage failsafe I use after the power outage instance is two battery powered BT11 air pumps. They kick on when power fails. I do not have battery backups on anything.
If you don't have BT11s, you should get them, they'll run 8-15 hours on D batteries and are quite loud so they warn you if your circuit breaker pops or PGE is up to their tricks.
Going 76 hours without power only stirring the water is amazing. Like I said, maybe 8 hours and I was losing fish.
In anycase, this is something we should all look out for. Best alarm would be a water sensor alarm to go off when the sump water rises.
V
Vincerama2
Guest
Sorry guys I said the wrong airpump name, the backup airpump is the Penn Plax Silent Air B11
It's called "Silent Air", but believe me, it is NOT silent. Get some easy peace of mind for under $20. You put batteries in it and plug it into the wall. If it detects no power on the plug, it turns on. You can also not plug it into the wall and use it as a battery powered air pump if you are transporting fish.
V
Amazon.com : Penn Plax Silent Air B11 Battery Operated Aquarium Air Pump For Power Outage Automatic Turn On Keeps Fish Safe : Pet Supplies
Amazon.com : Penn Plax Silent Air B11 Battery Operated Aquarium Air Pump For Power Outage Automatic Turn On Keeps Fish Safe : Pet Supplies
www.amazon.com
It's called "Silent Air", but believe me, it is NOT silent. Get some easy peace of mind for under $20. You put batteries in it and plug it into the wall. If it detects no power on the plug, it turns on. You can also not plug it into the wall and use it as a battery powered air pump if you are transporting fish.
V