Small Nightware to Reef Tank While on Vacation

labas39

labas39

Active member
So, yesterday, I got back from a week's vacation in the Dominican Republic and I put my trust in someone with no aquarium experience. Wow, that was a mistake.

Looking back at the history of my Apex, things appear to have gone bad 3 days after I left, 5 days before I got back

When I got home, I hear a pump that was running dry. The sump had only about 1 inch of water in it and all the buckets I left full of RO/DI water were pretty much all still full.

The person knocked out the ATO hose so it was never filling.

I only have about 100 gallons of water and I had to fill about 15 gallons of water.

The parameters were:

Specific Gravity: 1.031

Temp: 76.5

Alkalinity: 6.7

I'm assuming the temperature dropped because the flow was so restricted. Due to my Apex program, when the water temp goes below 77, my metal halides turn on to provide a bit extra heat. Looking again at the Apex history, the lights were on most of those 5 days. The acro growth was pretty crazy!

Miraculously, the only corals I lost were the tips of my green slimmer and green monti cap where were both above the water line, which had dropped 1 inch.

I've been dropping the specific gravity slowly and after 36 hours, it's currently at 1.028.

I guess this showed me that SPS are more resilient that I thought.
 
Yeah, NK! I freaked when I walked down and heard the pump. It took me 2 hours to kind of stabilize things then every few hours, I'm putting in a half gallon of fresh water and taking out an equivalent amount of tank water.

Oh, I forgot to mention that the pump that failed was a TAAM Rio 2100. It was driving my algae turf scrubber which had dried up. The return pump was fine even though there was barely any water. It's a Jeboa 12000.

The vacation was great! 20's here, 90's there! The water was perfect as well.
 
keep us posted. sometimes sps will continue to deteriorate a few days after parameters go out of line, especially your low alk and high salinity. hopefully for you, the worse is over.
 
Well, more drama! It ended up that my float switch for the ATO failed. I think I actually knocked the hose out as I tried to shut pumps off.

So, while I was gone, it was stuck in the off position, hence, no top-off was added. Last night, it stuck in the on position so it was even worse, the temp got down to 72.4.

I turned the lights on and the corals looked happy! They all had great polyp extension and no signs of stress.

I replaced that float switch, modified my Apex program for the lights and I'm going to put a heater in the main display instead of having it in the sump since the sump was off, the heated water never got to the DT. I'm crossing my fingers but things still look awesome.
 
ColaAddict said:
keep us posted. sometimes sps will continue to deteriorate a few days after parameters go out of line, especially your low alk and high salinity. hopefully for you, the worse is over.
Click to expand...
It:s been several days now and everything still looks great!
 
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