Whelp, my tank crashed...

[Reesetricted]

<ol>[*][I was out of the country for 3 weeks and my auto fish feeder got stuck.  I have a refrigerator with a dosing pump in it and a chunk got lodged in the line. A few fish died which, Im guessing, lead to a coral or two and then domino effect.  I came back to algae thick on the glass and very few corals alive.  Well, I travel a lot for work and immediately had to go out of town to catch up from vacation.  I did a water change, cleaned the skimmer, removed algae, etc hoping to mitigate the fallout.  I had a 30 gallon trash can setup as my ATO for vacation and didn't refill it. No big deal, the gf always refills the ATO if/when she hears the pump suck air.  Well, either she ignored it and it went away, or didn't hear it at all.  When I returned, a week later, the return pump was dry, the tank water level was about 3" low and I had zero circulation through my system.  I have 2x75s with a 30g sump.  So, zero filtration on either 75, zero oxygenation in either 75,  1x75 had a heater, didnt help anything, every single coral died in there, as did the fish, except a blenny.  I had 2 blennies survive, my juvi imperator, a melanarus, an aussie clown, and a watchman goby.  Lost most of the inverts, about half the fish, and 99% of the corals.  I had mostly sps but, a lot of zoas and shrooms and LPS as well.  I lost all the zoas, all but 1 mushroom(an orange Florida ric), 2 favia frags(same species), 2 heads of bicolor frogspawn, a whole colony of Duncan's(totally unfazed) and a German blue digitata that doubled in size since then...but is brown as can be.   I've decided, with my travel schedule, I should avoid sps(save for the obvious exception )and stick to softies and LPS for, at least, the near future.  My tanks were completely full and are now extremely bare.  Secondary 75 has nothing but, a blenny and a bunch of asternias.  It has been about 2.5 months since all this went down and I've got everything back to normal.  Algae growth has subsided and all is testing normal for a month, now.   I'm thinking, just stick to beginner corals for the time being.  Looks like it's GSP, xenia, and Kenya trees....sigh.  although, i had some gsp and even it died.  I was shocked when the purple mat disintegrated.  Im guessing the temp was the biggest factor.  Any thoughts, insight, experience/strength/hope? ]</ol>

 

[BrianC]

... Why italics? Is this a quote or did it happen?If it did happen, I'm sorry for your loss.Sorry to say this a catastrophic crash likely requires more than just moving to simpler corals.You likely allowed elements into your water column and sandbed that don't belong in a closed environment. Specifically sulfar is the one I have had bad experiences with.Think of it as an opportunity to reaquascape. There is a frag event coming in February I think - great opportunity for a rebuild!If I were you; Vacuum the sand heavily if you have sand. I have a pretty decent vacuum from Petco and I get deep in the sand bed and pick up very little sand in the bucket. You need to break up the anoxic region and suck and bad element out (warning this will cause your tank to recycle - hello algae - but that will likely happen anyway).Any live rock with dead coral at the minimum remove and rinse with rodi. Sun bleach if possible.  

 

[jccaclimber]

I'm sorry about that, it sounds pretty miserable.  Depending on what is still alive, and what the tank looks like today I would do one of the following:1) As stated above, tear it up.  Make a cleaning system with a tank.  You need a tank of salt water, a return pump, and a hose.  Hose off all of the live rock to blow off loose detritus.  Clean out the sand with a siphon or MANY rinses in salt water.  You can filter the water through a big sock for re-use, or just let it settle.  It takes a lot of rinsing to do this.2) Suck things clean in the tank.  I've done this in tanks before with success.  Get a macro algae that is easy to remove like chaeto.  Put a bunch in the display, blast the lights.  Assuming the macro takes off, and it should, you'll be able to export all sorts of nutrients during that time.  As the display starts getting full, trim half out.  Once the macro growth slows down you'll be back in the clear.  I picked chaeto because I think it is easy to eradicate from a display.  If you're planning a lot of tangs you might consider something that will be a bit harder to remove, but will feed your tangs for a while. On the rebuild side, make sure to put some sort of circulation pump/powerhead inside the display tank.  This will at least help keep things alive if the return pump fails due to low water.Pictures, however ugly, would help us.

 

[Reesetricted]

Woaw, it just did it again.  I think my phone doesn't jive so well with this forum. I do have 2 circ pumps in my main display and 1 in my secondary.  That didn't help very much but, it did save some of my fish. To be clear, my parameters are normal for all standard tests but, I didn't test for sulfur.  I believe the algae took up a lot of the nutrients and i always remove as much of it as possible.  Ive also been running gfo and carbon for the past 2 weeks as a kind of finishing touch.  I wanted everything to come back to equilibrium as naturally as possible before I took to ways of selectively and synthetically removing nutrients. I have not, and absolutely will, remove all the rock and rinse/hose it down repeatedly.  Same goes for the sand in the main.  The moving to simpler corals wasn't due to the excess nutrients in the tank, it was due to my potential for neglect due to travel.  When I setup this system I knew I shouldn't go sps due to my travel but, it happened anyway.  Colorful sticks are just so desirable...  I want to stick to virtually unkillable corals.  I ve had reefs for about 20 years now and the only other time I've had something like this happen was when my X poured bleach in my 5yr old tank. Killed everything except a psammocora.  

 

[Reesetricted]

Forgot to take a pic. I'll do it tomo.