95% tank crash after move.. What's next?

[ashr]

So I moved over the weekend. Took time to take the tank down.. about 6 hours or so. Bagged all the corals. Live rock with in bins (with wet paper towl) and all the fish were in buckets...

****ty thing is I guess I had more die off on my rocks than I thought. After setting my tank up around 10pm the next morning was a disaster.. the house smelt like death and I knew something had gone wrong.

In all all but two fish lived.. and the tank was milky white.
Due to the murky water I could not see my SPS melting away..
All in all I lost 95% of my tank... some of the nicest, 4 years of growth and some of the best SPS I have seen around. I felt terrible.

Now I must rebuild.. but where to start? Do I start over with SPS or try something new like a predator tank? Any thoughts on where to go from here?

Thanks for listening.. It's been a rough couple days.

[Dearth]

That is supremely s**tty man. I've often thought what I'd do if my tank crashed I know I went over board on my rock so I would still go LPS and more open tank with way less rock and more swimming fish.

FOWLR tank is somewhat appealing but after having coral for this long I don't think I could handle a tank with bare rocks...

[ashr]

That is how I am feeling right now.. I had some very large colonies and Ijust couldnt do it over.. I am thinking of going with a bit less rock and pack some frags of SpS again closer so it's more swimming room for fish but with some nice SPS. My LPS and clam lived.. So I have that going for me I guess haha.

Just one of the worst days I've had in this hobby.. 4 years of work and money gone with in 24 hours.. FML

[straightrazorguy]

Oh, man, that sucks! Can you frag whatever's left of the SPS to try to propagate them? Do you have a spare tank? There's empirical evidence that frags have survive better survival rates than whole colonies.

[miuYH]

Any idea what lead to the die off?

[ashr]

I tried to frag off the main colonies.. They all melted away.. which was strange. I also had a few frags I tried to save in a diff bucket that died, along with a friends tank.

All LPS and zoa's and clam are ok.

Ammonia spike
Lack of o2
lack of flow the first night ( pump wasn't turned to full blast)

I think I made the perfect storm