Ahhhhhh! My tank is dead!

[spider crab]

I came home from a four day trip away at the beach to find that the circuit breaker that controls my lights and powerheads for my 75G tank had tripped. It must have been down for at least 3 days, because mostly everything was dead or dying. Many of the fish were badly decomposed already.
I lost the following: 1 Diamond goby (my favorite and oldest fish), 1 Fiji Bar Goby, 1 Maroon Gold strip clown, 1 coral Beauty, 1 Six line Wrasse, 1 Scotter Blenny, 2 blue green chromis. 3 procelen crabs, 1 sally lightfoot, 1 black elephant snail (scutus), loads of snails and blue/red legs crabs, 1 green pink nudibranc, 1 sebea anemony, 1 acro frag, 1 montipora frag, 1 kenya tree coral, 1 umbrella mushroom, one frilly green/opal mushroom, 1 white gorgonian, 4-5 pulsing xenia frags, 1 tiger cowrie, 1 crocia 4-5inch, 1 derasa 4 inch, 1 maxima 3 inch, loads of bristle worms that I didnt know I had.
( I guess now that I have done an inventory I'm surprised I had that much living in the tank. It was probably overloaded)
The following appear to still be alive: 1 blue green chromis, 3 tube anemonies (go figure!), 2 sponges, 1 purple gorgo, several plate montipora frags, 1 green polyp rock, 1 colony polyp rock. several snails and crabs, a couple of leather corals that look iffy at best, and you guessed it... my aptasia seems to quite happy still. Most of the above got moved into my 18 Gallon, which hasnt helped it much. Amonia is up there as well now.
I did a 25 gal water change immediately and cleaned out everything dead I could find, but amonia is at 4-8 Mg/L today. I m
planning on another water change today.
Anything else I should be doing? I assume it will recycle over the next several weeks, but would like to accelerate that if possible.
I was wondering if I could use one of those products that you put into a canister filter that are supposed to remove amonia and nitrite? Can these be used in Salt Water on an emergency basis?
I am also looking for advise on how to create a backup system that would help avoid this in the future. Can anyone comment on backup power supplies and such that could be used to keep a tank up and running for during a power outtage?
I havent figured out the damages in cost, but I'm sure its in the hundreds of dollars.

 

[fishtanknewbi]

Sorry to hear about your losses. Hope everything else that is still alive will survive.

 

[harrysreef]

Man that sucks hope the rest turn around for you.

 

[melissa v.]

Now i am worried i am going to the beach next week for 6 days, i do have someone to come in everyday and feed my fish, dog, cats etc.. but if something happens to the tank she is clueless
i am so sorry for your loss where do you live in n.c.?
Melissa V.

 

[cb]

MelissaV- maybe you could leave an emergency number just in case most things can be solved in a phone call if minor (like a tripped breaker)Spider Crab I wonder if running a carbon filter for a little while might help. Not really sure but it was just a thought I had.

 

[lesa]

 

[zanemoseley]

this may be a stupid question but how did everything die in your tank in only 4 days, what do you use for filtration, skimmer only? or canister filter also, I would have thought the tank would be somewhat ok for 4 days

 

[aileena]

 

[blueabyss]

sorry about your tank.
when i changed tanks from a 55 to a 100 i had no top for the lights. took me about 4 days to get them going. i lost only an elegance. i still do not understand how that much could die in only 4 days.

 

[michaeltx]

oxygen deprivation and a chain reaction from there. one fish dies causes a spike the other fish are stressed from the O2 depletion the surcome that in turns gets the water chemisty out of wack that effects the corals. some tanks can handle it and others within a few hours its starts, many factors including tank size and filtration affect this to.
sorry to hear about your loss though.
battery backups or a generator are the only things I can think of.
with a UPS with a heater and a PH can halp if this ever happens again. I just dont know how long an UPS will last running them but will deffinately help.
Mike

 

[spider crab]

I think MichaelTX explained why the tank crashed so quickly. I was probably overloaded anyways which I am sure didnt help. Lack of oxygen was probably the main culprit. No water movement basicly killed it. I'm sure it would have been ok for a day but 3-4 was way to long.
I have around 150 lbs of live rock so I only run a protien skimmer.

 

[richard rendos]

Carbon, Carbon, Carbon. Run it for a couple of weeks and change it out every couple of days. This will remove any toxins from the dead corals and such. Partial water changes every couple of days over the next couple of weeks will help significantly also. Good luck!

 

[spider crab]

Thanks, I'll give the carbon a try as well.
I live in Raleigh, Mellisa. I didnt notice you had asked in your previous post until tang replied to it.

 

[crazy8]

I have a friend of a friend that this happened to as well. Had a 120 gal tank and lost power a year ago. Lost it all. Only thing I can think of is to actually be prepared with a generator. I would say this seems like a ridiculous expense for something you hope never happens, but with the amount of money tied up in this hobby, this expense is cheaper than lighting!

 

[melissa v.]

tangsfornuttin,
thank you so much that is so sweet of you to offer, but since this post i have hooked up with someone else that can handle anything that goes wrong, BUT THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR OFFERING (it's strange how friends that you meet will offer to do more for you than family members will ) you guy's are kindness in itself.
Melissa V.

 

[spider crab]

Yeah buying a generator does sound a bit crazy, but i bet I could have bought one with the money I lost on this tank. I'm up to around $600 in lost stock already and figure I have a similar amount still in jeopardy at the moment.
I'm already building a business case for my wife to convince her that buying a generator would be a good investment. It would come in handy for other emergencies as well.
I sure am glad I just bought an RO unit recently. boy has that come in handy with this emergency.

 

[lesleybird]

Next time you go on vacation I would pay a friend to come in and check on your tank. If your friend is not a fish person then maybe you could find a company that does aquarium maintanence to come by daily to check the tank. Or, at least have the fish maintanence companies number handy in case the friend sees a problem with the tank. We have several aquarium maintence companies here in Houston that maintain fish tanks for businesses that have display tanks.
You might also befriend some low payed fish store employee to hire them to come by and check your tank. I know it is very difficult to find someone to come by that you trust with a key to your house!
Lesley

 

[crazy8]

That extention cord idea only works for a blown fuse. Won't help you much if you lose power completely. I only have a 55 gal right now so no matter what happens, I will be limited in my loses, but I still worry about it. If I ever get a very large tank I will look into a backup generator of sorts. Now, I am lucky in that I have family in town that would feed the fish so I would know if I lost power. If you go out of town and nobody is watching then there really isn't much you can do.
I remember 1 year when we lost power due to ice and downed trees for about 2 weeks. Not much you could for that period of time without a generator. Plus, like you said Spider, you could probably get lucky and get some other use out of it sooner or later. $600 would easily get you a decent generator, but you still need to be there to operate it. I know I couldn't count on my mom to be able to shut off the main breaker (so you don't kill the poor guy from the electrical co!!), fire it up, and keep it full of gas.
Just never leave your house again I guess is the best solution!

 

[dburr]

Sorry for the loss.
I have my main tank w/ power heads on 1 circuit and my sump/refug in the basement with the main pump on another circuit. It wont help if the main breaker or if the whole street goes down, but if one or the other trips I still have water movement.
Dan

 

[spider crab]

Yeah, I agree with you there. Having someone come by and look in on the tank is the best bet. A generator would only work if your there to hook it up. In this case all that needed to happen was to flip the circuit breaker switch back on in the garage.
I wonder if there are any monitoring devices that could send a page or something when it detected a problem? I guess they'd be fairly expensive.
I have a simple alarm setup on my automatic topoff switch/top off resevoir so that when the resevior starts to get low, it will go off to remind me to add another 10 gallons.