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FIrst major tank crash...

J

jonathan.

And it was completely my fault. Routine water change. Had the water mixed up for a few days and added the salt in last night. My dumb self forgot to check to see if it was mixed completely.

Poured it in and out comes TONS of un-mixed salt. Lost about $450 worth of acros (possibly more to come!). Montis and LPS look fine...for now. Also lost a twin-spot hog and one of my blue gudgeon gobies is MIA for now. Possibly fine, but who knows. Countless micro stars lying along the tank dead and a few snails.

What a disaster. Could've been completely averted if I paid half attention to what I was doing.
 
J

jonathan.

Baxreefs said:
That terrible! Start doing water changes to stablize things ... bummer!
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I have been. Everything looks good salinity wise and levels wise. Pristine as it was before. Just with lots of particulate matter and dead SPS tissue flying around the tank. :'( :'( :'(
 
D

ds4x4

sorry to hear that as well.. I woke up this morning to find 2 hermits dead and the salt at 1.030. did a quick 5 gal change and brought it down to normal. It can happen in a flash to say the least
 
Phyl

Phyl

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Jonathan, Sorry to hear about the water change gone wrong. I try to let SW mix for at least 24hrs before moving it into the tank to make sure the water gets mixed well enough.

Brandon, make sure your doing your top off with RO/DI (not salted water). That can easily cause high salinity over time, especially in a little tank.
 
J

jonathan.

Phyl said:
Jonathan, Sorry to hear about the water change gone wrong. I try to let SW mix for at least 24hrs before moving it into the tank to make sure the water gets mixed well enough.

Brandon, make sure your doing your top off with RO/DI (not salted water). That can easily cause high salinity over time, especially in a little tank.
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I figured out what it was, Phyl.

It was a bag of salt I picked up at work. There was a minor defect in the bag (slight hole).

Well, I usually take the salt that is ripped open or a hole poked in it. I used that to do the change.

I smelt the bag today since I wanted to take a look at the salt.

Smelt like bleach. Looks like someone screwed with the bag at work and poured bleach in it. I don't have a chlorine test kit, but I'd imagine it would be off the charts if I had one to test the water with.

So far, nearly every coral in the tank is dead after another major water change with new salt.

Everything (barely) alive is being moved over to a 20G hospital tank.

Disaster. Absolute disaster.
 
Phyl

Phyl

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Oh my gosh. What a terrible nightmare. I'm so sorry that happened to you. Was that salt available to the public, or did you pick it up from the store room?
 
Hawkeye

Hawkeye

jonathan. said:
It was a bag of salt I picked up at work. There was a minor defect in the bag (slight hole).

Well, I usually take the salt that is ripped open or a hole poked in it. I used that to do the change.

I smelt the bag today since I wanted to take a look at the salt.

Smelt like bleach. Looks like someone screwed with the bag at work and poured bleach in it. I don't have a chlorine test kit, but I'd imagine it would be off the charts if I had one to test the water with.

Disaster. Absolute disaster.
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Is it possible there was a hole in the bag and when the cleaning crew came thru they accidentally spilled some into the bag?

If it was purposeful - man that really is terrible.

sorry to hear about this.
 
JRWOHLER

JRWOHLER

Wow that has to scare the crap outa everyone. Yeah you have to hope it was a honest mistake not some action of a pissed off fellow employee. I wouldn't even want to think that someone would do that intentionally.
 
C

concept3

sorry to hear that jonathan-

it was probably something other than bleach since if i'm not mistaken, salt mixes have a natural dechlorinator in them; not effective though if there was a lot of bleach that seeped in.

sorry for the loss~
 
J

JerseyWendy

Gosh, I'm so sorry to hear about your tank crash, Jonathan. That has to be a reefers worst nightmare. My sincere sympathies. :'(

Did anyone survive?
 
C

chaoscat

Sorry about your crash

But, at least you know how and why it happened. Far too often I see people posting for help on a crash where they had a stable tank, acceptable water parameters, good equipment and everything just suddenly went south for unknown reasons.

All you have to do to prevent a recurrence is to kick your own butt. :p
 
J

jonathan.

I think it was an accident. We've been cleaning the crap out of the store lately due to lots of visits from the Regional Manager (not that we have a dirty store in Howell, quite the contrary!). Pretty sure that the bag was slightly open when we were cleaning and a bit of bleach that we were rubbing the shelves down with must've gotten into the bag. Well, more than a bit as it certainly does stink!

Definitely think it was an accident after thinking about it for the last multitude of hours cleaning the tank.

I saved a large Orange Crush Acanstrea colony so far along with most of my LPS (the small bubble I had was long gone, unfortunately).

The beautiful pink chalice also is gone. Along with my Acan Bowerbanki.

Well, it happens to most everyone at one point in their reefing. It's a shame it had to happen now after I had so much invested in the tank rather than the beginning.

So, word to the wise -- never buy/take open bags of salt and double check them before you buy them!
 
J

jonathan.

concept3 said:
sorry to hear that jonathan-

it was probably something other than bleach since if i'm not mistaken, salt mixes have a natural dechlorinator in them; not effective though if there was a lot of bleach that seeped in.

sorry for the loss~
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It could've been, but it's the only thing I can think of due to the fact that my tap water has little to no chlorine in it and that we were using it to clean up near where the salt was.
 
B

BobCReef

wow this is terrible and so disheartening. I can feel your pain. :'( I know how i feel when i lose a coral or fish. Can't imagine a crash like that.
 
D

ds4x4

At least you don't believe it to be malicious now.. i could imagine the hate if it was.. Bax has some awesome frags for ya if that cheers you up any. good luck with the restart
 
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