Almost cooked tank over vacation!!!

J

JSB

Last weekend we went down to Galveston, and I had my neighbor watch my tank, and dog for me. When I got back I had noticed a few Atheala(sp) stalks dead, and the others were not looking good. My Kenya tree was leaning over, but my mushrooms, and rics looks okay. Fish looked good too. I was thinking dang what's wrong. I made sure the water was good before I left, and even did a nice water change. Cleaned the skimmer, and made sure my auto top off had enough water. Parameters were find when I left. We left Thursday morning, and got back Sunday evening. Well after I unpacked I checked out the tank. I thought I need to test the water or something. I opened the stand and the first think I looked at was the temp. 91 degrees :shock: :shock: :shock: :shock:

I forgot to turn the fan back on after all my tinkering. My gosh I wondered how long it was up there. I opend the canopy, and got another fan to blow on the water. So I had two fans working, and I was filling my skimmer section of my sump with ice...RO ice of course. I frig is attached to the RO setup. With in the hour I had the water back to 79 degrees. Whooo 8)

Hopefully, everything will recover. the Kenya tree is stand up now, but has shrunk, and the Atheala(sp) stalks are starting to look normal again.

This might not be the best place to ask, but I've heard people dosing Phyto for corals. Should I do this. I don't really dose much of anything, besides kents coral buffer.

Thanks!
 
It's good that everything is doing good, but in the future if anyone has this problem I wouldn't recommend such quick and drastic temp change in less than an hour. That quick of a temp change has the definate possiblity of stressing some stuff pretty badly. You were actually only about 6 or 7 degrees above acceptable summer temp.

Just my 02 cents, but Steve Weast (Oregonreef.com) comes to mind. A perfect example of how even the most experienced can jump the gun and do something hastily with very bad results.

Once again, glad to hear that it came out OK. :D
 
I owuldn't dose anything. I would do a couple large water changes and run carbon just in case some dieoff happens but dosing phyto won't really help anything in this scenario.
 
ToddLaCo
I never really thought about that, but I guess your right, all I could think about was how to get it down, with out thinking of how that might cause even more problems.

kwl1763
But in general should I dose phyto, or anything else to help corals thrive? I've done FOWLR for so long, I never really dosed anything. I started adding corals when I upgraded my tank a while back. Just softies for now, but they don't seem to grow very fast at all.

Thanks for the comments!
 
Only things you need to dose are things to keep the calcium and alkalinity up. Several different options here. A 2-part such as B-ionic, homeade (baking soda and pool hardener), kalkwasser, etc.

Also keep your MG up at around 1300 (several things available to dose that also)

Other then that there is usually little reason to dose anything else!
 
Best advise is not to start messing with your tank when you are about to go on a vacation. I did the same. clean everything, change water and all but forget to turn MH light back on after cleaning the bulb. Came home with a few dead sps.
 
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