got ethical husbandry?

I guess this is a disaster thread.

Mario thanks for the water, much appreciated.

Arnold, sorry but I think the nepthea is dissolving. I know someone who has additional pieces of it and can try to get you one through them.

I've got the survivors in a rubbermaid tub. 2 fish and about 5% of the coral are still showing signs of life. The rest is wiped out.
 
kalkedfuge.jpg


And a shot of the refugium to show how badly I screwed up. I had JUST filled my 50G ATO reservoir with fresh kalk a few days before. While filling it, I even had the idea to only partly fill it, because I wasn't planning on going on any trips and the reason it's so large is because I travel for work. Somehow I convinced myself to fill it all the way. :(

deadacros.jpg


I grew the valida in the back from a 2" frag over three years. The one in front was a Mr. Ugly red table colony from the 2010 club swap. Now they aren't. :(

In spite of two large water changes, the tank still looks (and smells) absolutely terrible. The coral mucus smell is strong enough in the room to make me sick. I had been doing water changes on the main tank but it's so far gone it's a lost cause. Thanks to Mario bringing me water and kicking me in gear, I pulled all the live and semi live pieces out and hopefully a few make it. The Rabbitfish and the Fridmani are the only two fish survivors. I'm open to suggestions on how to handle the tank. It is in for one hell of a massive cycle at this point. When I discovered the problem, the skimmer was packed solid with foam, and the tank had foam about 6" out of the top. There is a LOT of material that is going to rot, and water changes don't seem to even hardly dilute it, even when I got it as close to a 100% water change as I was able to with today's change, when I refilled the tank it was cloudy and disgusting like I hadn't even done anything. I'm starting to think I will have to tear it all out, rinse each rock outside the tank, pull the sand, and start 100% scrubbed out. The skimmer is still going nuts, I have to empty it about once an hour when I'm home.

Anyway, I'm probably rambling too much, kind of still in shock. As far as what happened, John nailed it in his description. A small snail crawled through the cut out teeth in the overflow, and into the homemade durso/stockman pipe, causing a partial blockage. The blockage was enough to slightly overflow the tank, and as water trickled out the ATO pumped in kalk. I was at work for about 30 hours, so it had plenty of time to soak the corals in high PH, by the time I found it the damage was done. Sucks sucks sucks sucks. :(
 
Still sorry for your losses - I'd take the 'opportunity' and do a complete restart. Empty it out, clean everything, plumb it the way you want and start rebuilding from the ground up. I'm not sure there's a point or if there's anything left to make it worth trying to salvage. :/
 
I can get you the nepthea again, same lineage. Your welcome to any frags of my stuff :)
 
Sorry to hear about the terrible loss, Gusty! :( Seems like there is still die-off occurring in the rocks and sand - let me know if you need a hand with rinsing everything.
 
don't worry about me Gusty, take care of your tank...did you add any carbon? the reason is still smells and looks bad is because stuff is still dying. when I had my crash due to power outage and clam spawning event I had to do 50% water changes for like 5 days...ask Ian, he came by and helped me with some water and was shocked tp my all white tank. Hold strong it can recover. if you need a frag from me let me know....or that box of coral : )
 
You know I always got 100 gallons on hand... Look on the bright side, now maybe you can set up the closed loop with the holes from the overflow you took out...
 
Got to mix more sw today an got the drain pipe out of the basement; I even got to clean a little the fish-man cave.
I even found things I forgot I had, like an Oceans Motions 8W !!
I'll try to get some plastic rain gutter guard to place on top of the OF box.
I agree with Mike; closed loop time !!
 
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