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failure to launch

T

TheGuyFromNJ

Woke up bright and early today and fed the tank some cyclopeze after turning off the sump return pump and letting the circulation pumps do their thing. Right before I left for work I turned everything back on.
Well, sometime during the day my power strip tripped with the switch in the on position(as in never to work again) turning the sump return back off.

I came home to no swimming fish. All but the blenny were belly up on the bottom. I am guessing suffocation. Everyone is accounted for except for my tang (baseball size) i am guessing is somewhere behind my rock out of sight. I am thinking I can either destroy the entire aquascape to get him out, or let the cleaners get him and keep a very close eye on the parameters.

I guess I am looking for some input here, what would you do?
 
Phyl

Phyl

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Depending on the size of the tang I'd probably just leave him in there and watch parms. I've almost never pulled a dead fish out of my system. They seem to... go... without my help.

How long was the power off? How much water and how many fish did you have in there? Is it possible that there were too many fish for the amount of water that you have? You'll want to make sure that the system is stocked so that it can handle a 4-6hr power failure without significant losses.
 
T

TheGuyFromNJ

I am guessing at most the power was off for 12 hours while I was at work.

To give some inside as to the tank:
65 gal, 80# LR
only 5 fish, the baseball sized tang being the largest
30-40 corals (soft, hard, shrooms, etc)
700gph circulation w/o sump running

There is nothing to break the water surface when the sump isn't running so I am guessing they just used up all the O2.

The only reason I am concerned is because of the size of the fish, had it been a damsel I wouldn't be worried.

reefitup: I'm near the Del Bridge
 
J

jazzsam

I would want to do a water change anyway because of the death to begin with so I would just watch the parameters and keep up with the water changes.
 
C

chaoscat

Wimpy a** saltwater fish. I can keep 2 dozen shiners ina 1 gallon bucket ALL DAY, and only lose 1 or 2. You'd think 5 fish ina 65 gal tank could survive for a measly 12 hours. They musta all had panic attacks and hyperventilated. What can you expect from fish that half the time have to DECIDE what sex they are? :p

Sorry to hear about your fish. Part of what keeps me from expanding my reef, is the potential losses from a power failure start to skyrocket as tank size increases.

Convincing my wife that I need a $1,000 worth of generator/electrical work to keep my fish breathing is not a conversation I want to have.
 
C

coralnut99

I too am sorry for your loss, but I'm equally stumped. With only 5 fish in the tank, it shouldn't have been that bad. You mentioned a lot of corals, were they large? Honestly, even with no power for 12 hours, my head tells me this shouldn't have happened. Since this was a case of the powerstrip malfunctioning, it sounds like you should at least have the powerheads plugged in separately so it doesn't happen again.

If you have enough hermits in the tank that survived, I would let them take care of the Tang. You'll probably cause more water chemistry issues by digging him out of the back or the rock work.
 
T

TheGuyFromNJ

I appreciate everyone chiming in with advice, thanks a lot.

coralnut: There is 700gph worth of power heads running on a different circuit that didn't fail, however with nothing to break the water surface I wouldn't expect much gas exchange. Theres about 30 hermits/5 emeralds/3 astraea snails in my crew so far. None of the corals are big, mostly frags except for the saucer sized anemone.
 
Hawkeye

Hawkeye

First - really sorry about the losses...the subject line made me think you went to see a NASA rocket launch and it got canceled due to weather or something. Anyways - now that I've digested it...


this may be way out there as a guess - but have you ever checked the water to see if it is CO2 saturated?

That is, take a cup of tank water, measure the PH, then vigorously aerate the water and see if the PH rises...

If it does - the tank is more saturated with CO2 than desirable.

I'm no expert in chemistry mind you - might google it and verify if what I stated above makes sense.
 
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