[Toyfreek]

In the last 24 hours I have had three pumps fail.
1 for my skimmer
and two power heads.
I caught the skimmer pump fairly early I think, the other two I have no Idea how long they were out.
Every orange coral in my tank is pink.....
I lost no fish so far
all corals shrunken and polyps in
small zenia patch lost all its feathery ends and looks quite bald.
My Squamosa Clam was gaping so bad last night I thought it was dead I could see all its internal organs, today it looks better.
I replaced all the pumps and am doing a series of smallish water changes, I am running carbon.
Tank specs:
Am= 0
Nitrite = 0
Nitrate = 20
Ca= 390
Alk = 2.8 Meq/L
SG = 1.024
Temp 82.2

Everything was going so good I am really bummed
just thought I would cry on your respective shoulders...thanks for listening.
Matt

 

[geshields]

Ouch...remind me to stay away from you...good thing I am not a mathematician because I would say you have the 1000 year luck.

J/K


Hope everything turns out fine..

 

[Toyfreek]

Thanks greg,
I am really sad about the orange monti frag you traded with me, I hope he pulls through. The most affected corals in the tank were Montipora digi and Cap all orange. so far three are a translucent pink color I expect them to loose thier flesh sometime while I am at work tonight hopefully not, we will see.
matt

 

[SawCJack00]

Matt, that sucks, I hope things pull through. Monti's are pretty tough.

 

[Asbjorn]

Matt, I am sorry to hear about your tank. It seems like this is hapening a lot lately, I hope I am not next (major lighting change).

 

[Ben Nicholls]

It was Friday the 13th after all.

I almost had another tank disaster. I was in the next room and I heard a pump making a lot of noise. Went in to the living room and the sump was nearly empty and the tank was overflowing. The nylon I had the reef carbon in got sucked into the overflow siphon and stopped it. If I had nor been there, I would have had two fried pumps. As it was, I had to take apart and clean my return pump to get it to start again.

 

[Toyfreek]

OMG!
I didn't even think about the dreaded Friday The 13th effect!

he tank has appeared to stabilize however the clam is still struggeling and the orange monti's are still pink, they did keep thier flesh and polyps are still present wait and see I guess.

on another completely different note while scrutinizing the tank with a flashlight last night I saw something I have never seen before in my tank. Tiny yellow tick like bugs on my acropora colonies. The only two frags I have recieved are one orange montipora digitata from Geshields that has no bugs on it and is now pink... and a large staghorn colony from Stonyreef which also does not seem infected they arent the red ones that graham had all the problems but I have no idea if they are detremental to coral health or not.

 

[Tommy]

Matt
Hope all recover for you.How is the yellow leather taking it?
Tommy

 

[Toyfreek]

Yellow leather brought out its polyps yesterday the other leather is still withdrawn.

 

[scuba]

toyfreek

really sorry to hear about the crash.. your is the 2nd tank in the last couple of weeks that has crashed... Boy I'm getting nervous...

Do you think the warm weather has anything to do with it?

 

[Toyfreek]

The pump failures seemed to be unrelated:
Rio 2500hp casing swelled and froze the impeller
Dolphin 270 just hums but impeller moves freely
Rio 800 just clicks, impeller seems to be broken so the shaft spins but not the propeller part

I am not sure aboput heat being the factor but the tank has never been above 84 since I set it up, so I really dont think that is it.

 

[roon21]

bad thing about rio's is they blow *** ,had one blow out on me in 97 and am still pissed off killed every thing

 

[1coolvw]

Another one

About a month ago, i put my hand in the tank and got a little tingle, not enough to set off the gfi, but enough that i started working on the tank with rubber gloves or the power off. I didn't diagnose the problem right away, like a big dummy. Anyway, I lost 4 SPS, (2 montipora digitata and 2 acro frags from bill and dave) and two more that have looked better. Just found stray voltage as a mj 1200 crapped out. Took me a month to troubleshoot that it wasn't temp, wasn't any water parameters (100 gallon water change in the last month + alk and Ca testing fine) or anything else.

I agree with scuba, it has been alot of issues lately. Any other theories on root cause, or is it just our turn for bad luck?

One more thing, any one ever see the Tunze device that can diagnose electrical issues (7609 i think is the device #)

 

[Lunchbucket]

go figured it is the dreaded RIO. sorry to hear man but at least it wasn't a return pump or a heater...everything should be fine. did the pumps release anything into the water? if you need a clam taker i am up for it

Lunchbucket

 

[Toyfreek]

what I think happened goes like this:
Rio 2500hp goes bad and the casing swells thus stopping the impeller, then the thing starts to get really hot cuz there is no cool water flowing through it. Now the casing cracks and the copper for the coils is exposed to salt water, the copper is released into the tank and inverts go downhill. Maybe

Or it could have been that there was only two pumps running instead of five and the lack of flow and disolved O2 made a mini cycle happen.

I saw no "oil slick" that has been mentioned with the bigger Rio's failing, however the casing had many small cracks in it and if there was a chemical/agent in the pump it could have been released.

Everything looks much better, all corals recovering, fish never seemed affected everyone even the baby bangers were fine. However three days before I noticed the bad stuff happening my skunk cleaner died, so there could have been cracks and copper present for a few days at least Dunno realy this is all guesses.

Matt