End of a reef

[Dale]

Thanks all for the kind thoughts.
On one level I feel sorry for the livestock that I felt a sense of stewardship towards (a mandarin goby, pipefish and seahorse that all ate frozen food, a rescued unicorn and tang etc...) but these things do happen in the hobby. We think we can plan for every problem but sometimes sh_t just happens. In this case it was a perfect storm of sorts.
First a power outage that somehow tripped off the main powerbar (still haven't figured that out). That shut down my fluval FX-5, powerheads and evaporative cooling fan. Next, three days of hot weather where my tank would have probably gone beyond 90*F. I think this probably caused a drop in oxygen that may have killed something. The fouling from that, in those conditions, would probably kill something else and a cascade of unchecked die offs would then occur.
Fishytime has the right idea though. We are getting the tank up and running so the rock can cycle and then we will rebuild from there. I am leaning towards a seahorse/pipefish species tank filled with macro algaes so already the wheels are turning....

[muck]

Dang Dale.. thats really sad.

Im thinking that once I set up my new tank (and I will....eventually) I think I might have to get a house-sitter or just not ever go away for holidays again.