90 degrees! Heat wave in the ocean?!

michelle13

michelle13

Member
I recently did a stupid thing and ended up with my tank reaching 90 deg. Anyway, I only lost a frogspawn, bubble, and maybe my brain. My clam, fish, and other corals all survived. One of my questions is did this also kill my biological filtration? I haven't seen a trace of ammonia, but was just wondering. My second question is when is it safe to begin replacing the corals? I have been running carbon, which cleared the water up and I have done a 4 gal water change and will do another tomorrow. Do I just need to keep testing levels for awhile or can I order new corals? Thanks for any help!
 
krishj39

krishj39

Active Member
Sorry about your losses. I doubt you killed your bio filtration, bacteria are usually super tough to kill off. As for more corals, I'd wait a week to see if your nitrogen cycle goes off a bit from the deaths in the tank. If everything still tests normal after a week, you should be fine for those corals.
 
nm reef

nm reef

Active Member
Probably no serious long term after effects. I'd wait a few days to insure everything settles back down...as long as the water chemistry is stable and the temp is constant you could replace your lost live stock...but definitely avoid such radical temp fluctuations in the future.:cool:
 
michelle13

michelle13

Member
Okay, that's what I thought but wanted to make sure. Thanks for the help. Luckily I learn from my mistakes so it won't happen again!
 
bang guy

bang guy

Moderator
Michelle - I have some curiosity questions if you don't mind. Generally the corals you mentioned should have survived 90F for a couple of days.
1 - What is the temp you normally maintain your temp at?
2 - How long did it take for your water to get to 90F?
3 - How fast did you lower the temp down to normal?
4 - When did you notice the corals were not doing well and when did they die?
Thank you!
Guy
 
michelle13

michelle13

Member
I normally keep the tank at 78-80 deg. When I changed water at about 3:00 I put the heater in and plugged it back in, not noticing I had moved the dial to 95. I left and when I came back at 10:00 all the corals were closed so I began checking stuff to see what was wrong. The temp in the tank was about 91 when I started trying to cool it. The MH had just turned off, so I took the top off the tank, opened the doors to the sump, and put a box fan about 3 foot away from the tank so it would blow across it and hopefully cool it with evaporation. My house was pretty warm that night, because we had the windows open. I also took one of those little polar ice packs and place it in a zip-loc bag and placed it in the sump. It took about 3 hours for it to cool down. The next morning my water was milky white and I noticed the bubble was falling apart, so I took it out. I left for work so I had my husband run some carbon and do a 5 gal water change. When I came home for lunch the frogspawn was falling apart as well so we removed it too. Then he ran some more carbon and we crossed our fingers! The only thing that looks bad now is the brain, but it wasn't doing well before this incident. What do you think, did I do something wrong?
 
bang guy

bang guy

Moderator

Originally posted by michelle13
What do you think, did I do something wrong?
No no no... you did nothing wrong at all. I just know that lagoonal corals like Frogspawn, and Bubble corals often survive temporary increases in water temp. I'm just trying to understand why they survive in the wild and not in captivity. There are a lot of factors so the more information I have the better. Perhaps there's a way to save coral after a temp spike like that. I don't know what the answer is right now.
As a wild guess I believe than in captivity an increase in temp causes a bacterial bloom. The warmer water holds less oxygen and this causes the bacteria to die off just as quick as it bloomed. Just guessing in the dark for now though.
 
dburr

dburr

Active Member
I understand that some corals are exposed, I was wondering how much temp flux, on average or the most extreme case.
It just seems that I have read people posting about not to let the water cool to fast (for SPS mostly). I was just wondering.:rolleyes: I didn't know it was diferent for other type of corals.
 
bang guy

bang guy

Moderator
13 degrees in 3 hours is very extreme for anything except a tide pool. A fring reef might change 1 degree a day at a fast rate. A lagoon might go a degree an hour.
From what I understand rapid temp flux that's not temporary (a couple minutes) really messes with their enzymes.
 
bonermeister

bonermeister

Member
She may have been better off letting it cool naturally. From what I have heard tanks that are overheated and cooled to quickly suffer more casualties than tanks that are heated quickly and cooled slowly.
 
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