Our 90 Gallon Tank Crashed

[rhyno36]

We left for the weekend and the guy watching the tank noticed that our three anemones were looking sad, under statement!!!! We returned home early today to find that all three died as well as everything else in tank. The ammonia level was off the chart. I figured that those anemones died and rotted. We cleared out the tank and did a fresh water wash of the LR. Now about 4 hours after changing out the whole tank, water and all, I am still getting a very high ammonia level. Any reason why?

 

[saltwaterkid]

The only thing I can see is that your substrate is causing the problem. All the living organisms hiding in the substrate probably died too with the crash and that would be causing your high ammonia levels. Just a guess though.

 

[t00le]

Hi.
I had a similiar thing happen to me over a long weekend when we went to europe year before last. I had a really big anenome die and rot. It ended up spiking the ammonia level as high as putting uncured LR in the tank. It ended up killing a good majority f the coral and fish. After I removed all of the dead stuff I noticed that the ammonia levels were continuing to rise with nothing hardly in the tank but some base LR and the substrate. It turns out my LS was the cause of the ammonia spike. I ended up starting over and being more careful with the management of my tanks.

 

[rhyno36]

One good note is that we saved our Clark clown. We moved him to another tank we have set up. Also for some reason I moved our Purple Tang there before the weekend, don’t know why but just did. We have decided to start over and cycle the tank. Should we just let it run it's coarse?

 

[t00le]

If you have moved everything out of the tank I would probably allow the tank to cycle again while doing your normal routine with water changes and such. My tank was screwed and I wanted to buy some LS and other stuff so I just started over. If you have no such plans I wouldn't bother doing a complete teardown and starting frm scratch again.