Kessil

So angry right now ... cleaning lady unplugged aquarium pumps (by accident) and my last two fish are dead.

Vincerama2

Vincerama2

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I can't express how frustrated and angry I am right now. After my main tank suffered a broken return pump impeller and all my fish died. I had my little QT left that housed two special clownfish that we won at a frag trade. My daughter (the same one who discovered the main tank death) just came down and told me the pump was off (HOB skimmer) in the small tank and that the fish were on the bottom of the tank. I went and looked and found the pump unplugged and ... the fish were dead. The tank has more than one pump, but the skimmer was the one that churned up the surface and provided oxygen.

I'm angry because I had placed that new skimmer in there to replace an older one and HOB filter that was just there for surface movement. And since my entire main tank's fish died, I wanted to make sure the sumpless QT tank was OK, this includes power-outage battery pumps. But it doesn't matter because if someone unplugs your pumps, and you don't discover this for a day (the lights were still working, etc). Then what can you do.

I'm angry at the cleaner, but I know she didn't mean to do it.

My daughter is now just sitting in her room ripping up paper. I'm so angry right now, I had to share this.... two total tank losses in a span of two months. And for the same reason. I'm angry because I knew this was a danger and didn't have enough redundancy built in. I predicted the power failing or that power bar failing (which would trigger the loud B-11 air pump) but I didn't think that someone would unplug pumps or knock plugs loose, leaving everything running except the skimmer.

V
 
Thanks guys!

In my large tank, I placed a propeller pump up near the surface to keep the surface moving and if the return failed it's high enough that it would make some noise as the main tank water level dropped to I could tell. The small tank had no sump and two pumps in it, but the surface was not agitated enough it seems.

In any case I hope that people reading this take my double whammy to heart and look into failsafes and near surface pumps.

The thing that bugs me is that I replaced a Remora skimmer and an old HOB filter with this new HOB (Cones-S) skimmer, but the new skimmer didn't leave enough space in the tank rim to also keep the HOB filter. If I had both of those and one failed, the other would have kept the fish alive until we noticed the problem.

V
 
I'm not thinking that ... although it's not a total solution, I might invest in an Apex controller system so that I can know when these things happen, monitor ph, dissolved oxygen, etc, etc. I mean you can't 100% rely on stuff like that, but it would have been nice to get a heads up if things suddenly change, you can take a look and see what's happening.

I mean, we're home 24/7, but the fish have no way of telling us there is trouble.
V
 
Sorry to hear this Vince. How big was the tank? With only 1 day with the pump (skimmer) off but another pump was on should not kill the fish that quickly. I mean it can take a fish a full day to get to wholesaler in a small bag. Maybe test the water to see if anything else was wrong?
 
Yeah I don’t get it either. I don’t see how a few hours or even days of the skimmer being off should result in fish death in any sparsely populated tank, much less a small one. People leave their skimmers off for days sometimes. Fish ship in little bags as Arnold said. At trade shows fish are often alternated between skimmerless transport and skimmerless overpopulated tanks. Lots of people don’t even have skimmers, air stones, or anything other than pumps. I think more investigation is warranted, but I completely understand if you don’t have the stomach for it right now.

Very sorry for your loss though Vince. Two big gut punches in such a short time. Totally sucks.
 
Sorry to hear that this has hit you a second time. I also suspect something is up. I turned my return and circulation pumps off earlier this week...and remembered many hours later. I went back and nothing was out of place other than a few partially closed zoas. This isn't the first time I've left my reef without flow, and it never seems to result in mass death.

If you do decide to chase down the Apex for dissolved O2, consider that the dissolved oxygen probe is another $90 for the PM3, $700 for the probe, and another $60 for the 5 membrane kit. You'll need the latter because you need to replace the membrane every few months. I consider it every now and then, but that's one expensive piece of information.

Out of curiosity, what temperature did it end up at? Did the water feel unusually cold in either of these circumstances (ie are your heaters in the sump only)?
 
jccaclimber said:
Sorry to hear that this has hit you a second time. I also suspect something is up. I turned my return and circulation pumps off earlier this week...and remembered many hours later. I went back and nothing was out of place other than a few partially closed zoas. This isn't the first time I've left my reef without flow, and it never seems to result in mass death.

If you do decide to chase down the Apex for dissolved O2, consider that the dissolved oxygen probe is another $90 for the PM3, $700 for the probe, and another $60 for the 5 membrane kit. You'll need the latter because you need to replace the membrane every few months. I consider it every now and then, but that's one expensive piece of information.

Out of curiosity, what temperature did it end up at? Did the water feel unusually cold in either of these circumstances (ie are your heaters in the sump only)?
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I have heaters both in the sump and in the displays. You're right about the DO probe! Whoa! MUCH cheaper to just add a maxijet or something near the surface of the tank!
My main tank had lots of very large fish. I know for certain it was due to the return pump failing. I know this because upon discovering the failed pump (A DC return pump) I put a maxijet into the tank with the venturi air hose and literally within a minute or two all the fish which were floundering at the bottom of the tank started moving again and in about 5 minutes they were swimming normally again, except for one that died. The only thing I did was add that pump for movement and bubbles. I'm not even sure the bubbles were necessary (??) maybe just the surface movement and the flow of surface water down to the depths of the tank (??). Of course it might be that my water, which has always had pretty high nitrates contributed to this. It's possible that the combination of high nitrates and lack of air was way worse than a tank with near zero nitrates (Note; My ammonia and nitrites are near zero, but nitrates are very high, which I'm dealing with) and low air.

The QT tank surprised me since it's 29 gallons and there were only two small clown fish (plus live rock and marine pure blocks) and tons of britsle worms. But I guess maybe the same situation...high nitrates, low oxygen?

The high nitrates are mostly due to my daughter over feeding and my fault for not vaccuuming the detritus along with water changes.


To Ashburn2k and Robin, Thanks for the offers! I think I'll get the tank up and running and deal with the high nitrate issue before restocking fish. Mostly also my daughter is still upset about it and not ready for new fish.

Robin, my girls (13 now) are still in those twin beds I bought from you!


V
 
sfsuphysics said:
Maybe cleaning lady used cleaning chemicals around the tank?
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This is likely as well. But the most obvious thing is the unplugged skimmer. I think maybe that and the high nitrates from overfeeding and undercleaning made the situation worse that it should have been.

I'm in agreement with folks who say that the water should not have "gone bad" for the fish so quickly, but maybe the combination of bad chemistry and low water movement/dissolved oxygen just made it way worse than is should have been?

In any case, I'm going to try and get this all under control before restocking fish. A thorough vaccuum/water change should help. I've been running a sulphur denitrator (which brought nitrates from around 200+ ppm down to 20-50 (based in an original lab test and then subsequent impossible-to-read-yellow-orange-red home test kits) and have added an ATS recently.But of course ... lack of fish and therefore lack of fish food and poop will help. Plus as you may have seen in another thread ... the 3 inches of poo in the sump removed.

It's a reboot.

V
 
Vincerama2 said:
In any case, I'm going to try and get this all under control before restocking fish. A thorough vaccuum/water change should help. I've been running a sulphur denitrator (which brought nitrates from around 200+ ppm down to 20-50 (based in an original lab test and then subsequent impossible-to-read-yellow-orange-red home test kits) and have added an ATS recently.But of course ... lack of fish and therefore lack of fish food and poop will help. Plus as you may have seen in another thread ... the 3 inches of poo in the sump removed.

It's a reboot.

V
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Oh man, must have missed that post about the 3 inches of fish poo in the sump. Yeah, that's definitely an over lazy problem.

But yup, if there's no fish, a series of water changes can bring down the nitrates, or if you don't have anything too delicate I'd just go balls to the wall and do a 100% water change.
 
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