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Old 10-21-2009, 05:26 AM
Coleus Coleus is offline
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Originally Posted by sphelps View Post
Well I have an update but it's not good

All I changed was the skimmer which was set to a 0.5 duty cycle (12am to 12pm). Sunday night was fine and no problems where presented but last night proved different. I never checked the tank this morning so I'm not sure when this went down but I can home from work today to find that the skimmer had overflowed, it was off by the time I got home but the sump was still foamy and the skimmer cup was full of clear water. I emptied the collection cup Sunday and virtually nothing was in the skimmer on Monday so I don't think a lot of skimmate was dumped in the tank.

The bad part of this story is that virtually all my fish are dead, including my seahorse and lionfish which I've had for close to 20 months. All corals, clams and other inverts seem the same. Overall the tank looks normal, I'm going to test amonia and nitrite right away but I'm guessing these will be normal.

Skimmer is back on regular full duty cycle but I'm completely clueless what happened. This is likely the last straw for me and this hobby at this time, obviously I don't have the proper time and patience to spend on it right now and I just can't handle the extra stress. More than likely everything will be up for sale soon enough but if you have any ideas on what happened please still share them because I would still like to know.
Sorry to hear your lost.


What level nitrate is considered high nutrients?
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Last edited by Coleus; 04-30-2011 at 05:16 AM.
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Old 10-21-2009, 05:35 AM
mr.wilson mr.wilson is offline
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Originally Posted by Coleus View Post
Sorry to hear your lost.


What level nitrate is considered high nutrients?
Nitrate levels over 25 ppm will adversely affect coral health. Anything above 10 ppm will cause nuisance algae growth. I would shoot for 2 ppm.

Phosphates should be 0.05 ppm. Corals will be adversely affected if it goes above 0.10 ppm.

Nutrient levels on natural reefs are zero, but they are always bioavailable. Captive reefs don't have as much organic phosphate and nitrogen available due to a lack of plankton. As a result zero nutrient tanks are only suitable for sps corals. Good lighting and heavier feeding must also be implemented.
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Old 10-21-2009, 12:42 PM
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Sheez Steve. Sorry for your losses. Figured it had to be something besides the skimmer & oxygen, as many dont run skimmers and IMO, the overflow/down stack provides more than enough o2.

Sometimes I look at my controller, {RK2} and wonder.
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Old 10-21-2009, 02:29 PM
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sphelps sphelps is offline
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I know what you mean Doug, you spend all this money on these devices that are suppose to make things easier and safer but all they really do is add more complication which can result in more human error. I tried to make this system as simple as possible to avoid these kinds of things but I guess I should have maybe left the controller out as well. Oh well. Your RK2 is probably a little better since it's not translated from German, things are probably a little more clear.

It still makes no sense to me, "when active then feeding pause", wouldn't one assume this to mean if device active then include in feeding pause? The other way doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

Anyways, I haven't decided what to do as far as selling or staying in yet. I feel bad about the losses and there's a lot going on in my life right now so much more involved than this last disaster, but knowing the exact cause really helps. If it was up to me I'd probably just sell it and start up fresh a few years down the road with things stabilize. However like most of us I have a better half who always seems to have 51% ownership and gets the final say and she's against selling so.....

Since I know the cause I decided to continue with the experiment, the skimmer is set back to the 0.5 duty cycle. I'll have to figure out a way to program it the way I want it but for now it's just a timer combined with a filter so it shuts off during a feeding pause but doesn't have the extra delay I want. I will continue with things as planned and report back with results. I'll be testing Nitrate and Phosphate weekly in an attempt to track results but likely the real results will be all visual.
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Old 10-21-2009, 03:08 PM
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well, this sucks, how are the corals doing now? it always sucks when we loose stuff, but for the most part I would rather lose fish than corals, even though I would still be choked losing fish I had a long time.

as for deciding weather you stay in or not, this is a relitivly minor setback, if the corals and rock is fine, you can do a big water change to speed up the stability. It sounds like you have figured out what caused it and it is a preventable issue so there shouldn't be a repete. when my heater stuck on and wiped out everything, including my rock (was nutrent pluged after the crash) I almost stopped also, as it would have cost about 5 to 7K to replace the corals, rock and fish to exactly how they were, so I know how you feel.

Steve
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Old 10-21-2009, 04:48 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by StirCrazy View Post
well, this sucks, how are the corals doing now? it always sucks when we loose stuff, but for the most part I would rather lose fish than corals, even though I would still be choked losing fish I had a long time.
Thanks Steve, the corals are doing fine, well some of the LPS are still unhealthy but basically this little disaster had no effect on the corals or inverts.

To me it's not about the money, but some things can't be easily replaced. The seahorse and lion together were, without a doubt, the center piece of this tank. The lion could be replaced with some effort on training a new one but the seahorse will be especially hard to replace since I haven't even had another importunity to buy a mate since I purchased the original. As far as I remember it was a special captive bred type from Australia and from my experience the only type worth keeping and the only type I will keep. In particular everything in the tank was chosen around the seahorse and to loose that particular piece of livestock results in the tank making little sense to me now. It also just sucks to loose stuff like this when you're making efforts to improve the tank.
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Old 10-21-2009, 06:15 PM
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To me it's not about the money, but some things can't be easily replaced. .
sorry wasn't trying to make it about the money, for me that wasn't the issue either I was just trying to show the size of loss I had. for me it was about the corals, I had a tri color milli that was almost 24" dia and about 3 other very large corals which would have been impossible to find in that size. I can relate to losing the showpieces of the tank you designed yours around a couple fish, I did mine around corals and my fish were secondary. Anyways now you have the opertunity to change a few things or find something else you wanted that maybe wasn't compatable with what you had... always got to look at the bright side, is my way of thinking.

Steve
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Old 10-21-2009, 05:15 PM
mr.wilson mr.wilson is offline
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Quote:
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However like most of us I have a better half who always seems to have 51% ownership and gets the final say and she's against selling so.....
Normally I wouldn't say this but... listen to your wife
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