Temperature crash

[captincd]

Last night I had my tank heater go out on me and wasn't here to notice it. The cold wyoming winter brought the temperature in my tank down to around 60F. I caught the problem around 11:30 this morning and immediately replaced the heater and began re-heating the tank.
Anyway...two seperate species of brain coral don't seem to be faring too well. Both colonies are retracted to their skeletons. My open brain is covered in a floating white mucus and the moon brain colony is expelling globs of white goo from its various mouths. I'm wondering what their chances of survival are after an overnight temperature drop of that magnitude. Also, any advice on recovering the temperature would be appreciated. (ie: should I try to speed up the heating or just let it recover on its own with the tank heater, or should I let it recover more slowly over a period of days?)

 

[sexyshrimp101]

I believe that you are supposed to slowly bring the temp back up or everything will get temp. shock (someone correct me if I am wrong). This is what I have read on this forum. As for everything surviving, I am not sure since I am still new to the game. Hopefully someone else will have an answer for you. I hope everything pulls through

 

[turtlegirl933]

I hope your corals end up ok.

 

[anonome]

Slowly bringing the heat up is the key. But, if you didn't I would strongly recommend running new carbon in the system to absorb any of the coral warfare that may go on now. This would be from the stringing substances excreted from the corals. A minor water change would also help. Don't do anything too drastic. The corals you list are fairly hardy and may regenerate.
I would recommend investing in two heaters. What size tank are we talking about?

 

[captincd]

The tank is 100 gallons with a 20 gallon sump. I acquired the tank from a friend who inherited it from his new home's previous owner. (I assume because the previous owner didn't want to move it out.) My friend basically let the tank slowly die off because he didn't care about it. When I got it the only things still alive were hundreds of zoos and 3 fish.
I've only had the thing 3 months now and it is now clean enough I feel to support life once again and began restocking it. Fortunately, my restocking so far was limited to the above mentioned brains.
Due to a recent and heavy algae die-off (I replaced the original bulbs that had been in use for who knows how long) I am already running carbon filtration. The carbon in the system now is approximately a week old, and I'm wondering now if I should replace this with fresh carbon.
Two heaters is a definate consideration. Unfortunately, the nearest LFS is a 4 hour round trip. But it's something I'll be picking up the next chance I get.
Any other considerations?

 

[natclanwy]

I just had the same thing happen, the breaker that my tank and the furnace are on blew while I was away for christmas when we came home our house was only 50 deg and so was my tank plus all of the pumps weren't running. My clowns were laying on the bottom of the tank gasping. I added enough hot water to make up the evaperated water about 10 gallons and started heating saltwater on the stove to try to get my temps up. I was successful and didn't lose anything but some zoo's even my clowns perked up once I got the temp above 60. All of my corals put off some serious mucus and my skimmer went crazy for a little while and now all is well.
Where in wyoming are you?

 

[fishy7]

I would run some carbon for 3 days or so to absorb any toxins the corals are putting out.

4 hours is a long ride. Buy on line and save yourself the $50 in gas.

 

[captincd]

Well here's a morning after update...
All my fish seem to have recovered and my zoos had no problem. (I have about a million and they're all one species...this is about the only that could have died and not bothered me) The moon brain was spitting up globs all night but also had some tentacles extended, so I assume that's a good sign. This morning he is just about back to his normal fluffy self. My green open brain doesn't seem to be doing so well. He's starting to develop a small hole in some of his tissue and his mouths are both completely recessed inside the skeleton and his skin as all the way contracted. No improvement at all.
Last night I took Anemone's advice and added some more carbon to my system. Unfortunately, my system was very poorly designed (it's a third hand system, so I can't take any blame here) and there's not really a reliable method of adding carbon filtration. So what I did was to replace approximately half of the media in my fluidized bed filter with rinsed carbon. Is this a good idea??? (Turnover from this filter is pretty low, I have to guess but I'd say somewhere between 50-150 gph)
I'm glad your tank recovered Nat, that gives me some hope. As for where I'm living, I'm in Kemmerer. The nearest LFS is in Evanston, but I boycotted that place after the old lady running it yelled at me for asking advice on killing off algae. That place never has any live-stock anyway, save for the occasional sad looking dichromis and one species of very brown mushrooms. But I can almost certainly pick up some cheap chinese-made heaters from Wal-mart or something.

 

[nanoreef]

also a good idea is to run two heaters so if one kicks out you have some backup till you get new one !

just a thought