coral skeletons make me sad :(

Sorry to see Colin.. so very sad. :sad:

If I still had my tank up I'd send you a few things.

You can look at it this way .......Now you have more room to start cherry picking pieces and get the ones you couldn't fit in before. You got to admit it is the colour changes the pieces make that is exciting also the growth patterns.:biggrin:

Yup, been there too. Had a stocked 20g, my fish sitter messed about with my light timer, and I had 250w HQI blazing a 20g tank for 5 days straight. The smell was the worst. It's a tough time.. for anyone.

I'm sorry for all the losses man.

well as of tonight i'm at about a 90% loss of all sps i used to have. i have about 25 or so pieces left that are hanging on but struggling. i've tried everything. guess its more then the salt or something. if there is anyone that has a SERIOUS offer for a complete system, pm me. i'm not desperate so i'm not going to lose my shirt over this system but if its reasonable i'm open to your offer. i dont know what the :bad-word:**** else to do. i've tried to stay positive but this is the second massive disaster in 2 years and i am about at my wits end.........:twised: :bad-word:

I just recently came within a hair of loosing my entire reef tank due to a bad BAD bucket of Seachem salt. Thank you Reefer's Best, you saved *most* of my reef.

Don't do it! This is the downside of this hobby; however, the positives outway the negatives. Give it time to recover, don't throw in the towel!

Keep trying to stay positive. I know it sucks looking at the tank but maybe you need to just do the basics on it for awhile and ignore it. Worked for me, fish got fed, water got changed but other than that I just didn't look at it. I'm sure the good people of canreef will help you get back on your feet when you/the tank is ready. I know I've got lots of frags for ya.

Hang in there! You don't want to quit when your tank is like this, you'll always look back at your aquarium as a failure. You had a nice tank once, it'll nice again. I'm with Christy, stick to the basics, and find the problem that caused this. Turn this into a victory, you know how good that feels!

Just hang in there for now Colin. Having been in the situation more than once, my position on this is that this sort of thing is unfortunately inevitable. We do our best to prevent it, when it happens we do our best to mitigate the damage, we learn something to take away from it and we try again - and usually the result is something that gives you more satisfaction down the road.

In short - the downs are what accentuate the highs. Without the lows there are no highs.

Surely there are still things that are deserving of your adoration in your tank - work with those and from there work your way out. Fish? Clams? etc. Find a new happy place and from there it will get better.

i really appreciate the support guys. wow.

i forgot to mention and maybe you guys have seen it before but since this has been happening, the past 2 weeks the skimmate has been a dark green color like a phyto culture but darker. it has never been that color before. any ideas?

I think it just depends on the organics you're pulling out of the water. It could be that you're skimming a very heavy organic load due to all of the die off. I've had the dark green skimmate before as opposed to the normal brown gunk I usually get. Although I have never paid much attention to it nor have I linked it to any tank event.

I get greener skimmate when I have a higher bioload, or really dirty fish.

oh Colin this is horrible. I've admired your system for a long time. Well misery certainly loves company, my tank has nose dived as well. (Somethings bad in Mission I guess). I even lost my zoos, xenia & softies that were on the "nigh impossible to kill" list. Dispite my best efforts, heat got the best of me & a spiral of slow destruction has ensued. I am soo bummed out I have been looking at my system & seriously considered switching back to a heavily planted F/W set-up again. I am so tired of seeing my fish & corals die a slow death due to my ineptitude or my simple lack of dollars required for high end equipment. I love this hobby so much but I think I have some serious decisions to make. :cry:

well aside from alot more corals, in the past week i have lost a chocolate tang, mystery wrasse (my favorite fish), 2 bartlett anthias and a male bellus angel. i have finally gotten rid of all the cyano and have been very diligent and working on the system. but damn it is frustrating

I'm sorry Colin.

May I be so crude as to ask how their corpses looked? Open mouth, flared fins, etc?

tank troubles
 

Hang in there buddy! If you need any help just PM.
Keith.

to be honest they all looked perfectly fine aside from nibbles from the night time clean up crew. the bellus angel look rough almost sluffing off some skin or something

This is almost exactly what happened to Diana's reef...again, with Seachem as the culprit. She lost fish as well, days after the corals had died/were dying.....

?

well to a major relief for me, the tank is recovering. it was a LONG battle, way longer then last year and with a ton more casualties. i even lost 6 fish with this wipe out. i'm down to maybe 10 or 12 sps from the 40 plus i had. 'im getting some color back in what i have left and some signs of growth again. the tank overall is looking 'healthy' finally. its been on this track for about 2 weeks i guess, with no losses or anything. it is just REALLY bloody hard to think of the money i need to spend again to get it back to where it was. i've decided this time though that i'm stickin to only frags, no colonies so i can place the coral exactly where i want it and not where it will fit. through it all my GSP grew strong. :biggrin: i even made a big frag rock out of it today.

Great to hear you're on the road to recovery! :mrgreen:

Did you use any of the advice you received from everyone? If so which piece of advice do you think helped the most?

Just curious just in case we see another disaster like this.

well i dont know if it was any one thing. although i respect everyones advice, i'm not one to use additives. i used alot of carbon and changed it about every 2 weeks. regular water changes. changed my rowaphos every 3 weeks in the reactor. brought my mg up to snuff and finally put mg in my ca reactor. eventually i used red slime remover to destroy the cyano. some advice that i did take was to not worry about was dying and concentrate on what was alive and do what i could to keep them that way. this was really hard some days but i had no choice. each day the color is getting better and tank looking better. i actually get a smile again looking into the beast. last night and this morning i have been picking out spots to put new frags and wanting to start getting some.

Good To hear Colin sounds like you are well on the way to recovery. I went through a bad stretch about a year ago it is hard to go though I was ready to throw in the towel as well but fought back. Looking forward to seeing some new pics of your tank with lots of new corals

That's Great! I'm so glad you didn't throw in the towel. (many would have.)Before you know it your tank will be looking as good as it used to. (maybe even better.) Hopefully decades of trouble-free reefing await you.

tank
 

Great to hear you haven't given up Colin. For A while there it seem like every one I started this hobby with was packin er up. I have picked up some sweet acro colonies out of A. A. lately along with what I managed to salvage from the seem letting go on my tank. My coral et su coral. Man my French sucks.
Keith.

i may have to come raid your tank keith :lol: i still need to check the beast out too. i could always bring some wobbly pops too

As I recall...I have a few of your old coral, so someday when you come over you can take a few of them back.

Brad.

i may take you up on that brad. well today i made the jump back into it and went out to aquatic addictions. they really hooked up me to get me going again. thanks guys. but i picked up some sps, rhodactis, acans and blasto. i would have come home with a ton more but i had to stop myself. i also grabbed the healthiest achilles tang i have ever seen. its a juvenile which i'm glad for, no pics though cuz he is still hiding out but no one is bothering him so far

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC03055.jpg

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC03056.jpg

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC03057.jpg

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC03058.jpg

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC03059.jpg

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC03060.jpg

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC03061.jpg

http://i114.photobucket.com/albums/n...f/DSC03062.jpg

i got some for ya too

that would be awesome, thanks

Colin,

I would be happy to donate one of my popular Rhodactis mushrooms to help get you back to loving your tank!

:mrgreen:

that would be sweet, let me know when. i'm definitely going to collect rhodactis and ricordeas this time around

PM me when you are coming into this neck of the woods and I usually have at least a few pieces around. I will donate a few frags as well to help you get back that stellar tank.

It was great to see you today Colin! Glad to see everything settled in :smile: We are so thrilled you didn't throw in the towel!!
It's been a long road from your 30G till now and it sucks to think that the hobby almost lost you. We are happy to help you get things back and going strong! You've had so many offers from others to get some of your original coral and new ones, that I guess it was just ment to be! Your a lifer now!!:mrgreen:
Can't wait to see more pics and updates as things progress.

Nikki

Hey Colin great to hear that you have stuck it out. It would have been a terrible loss if you would have shut down. Just so you know, the few corals I got from you, are all doing very well. If you don't remember, I got the rainbow monti, cali tort, and the lime in the sky. I don't know if any of those survived the big crash, but if not I can get you a frag of each when they grow out a little more. Keep in touch. If you ever need a hand with anything, just let me know.

Hope to see you at Aquatic Addictions soon!!

thanks seanoman, those survived except the cali tort, and it was my favorite coral and KILLED me to have to pull it out so i would LOVE a frag when ready.