Nightmare

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So guys just thought i would find out if anyone else has had a really bad wipe out.
Picture017.jpg

This one happend begining of the year due to unknown circumstances.
Just came back from work and this is what greeted me.
The pain was bad as most of the fish were caught only bought one was a plebius
Since sold the tank and started a reef tank, but recently bought a new 2.4m tank for a fish only system, just making a few mods to it.

share your stories about your loses.
:yeahdude:
 
Wow, that's terrible, most of those are fish I am currently looking for, hectic man.

I've only lost one or two from jumping out and then of course there was my "killer anemone" that everyone knows about.
 
:( :( :(

Was the culprit perhaps the box fish looking thing bottom right?
 
lol dude i have lost some great fish but luckily mostly to size, never had a tank big enough, till now. short from that pic is another three hennie's and a big cressi.
had the cressi for almost 8 years. well season is around the corner let me know what you after always have surplus, most of my mates reckon i gt a magnet at the end of my net.
 
Rory, nah dont think so had plenty of them and they only really give of a toxin when really threatend. had one of those in a power head before and he survived but still did not let off any toxins
 
Damn Tridan sorry for your loss man, glad to see you stuck with the hobby, many people give up after a hugh wipe out. There are many horror stories here i am sure the guys will jump in and tell them, tanks bursting, leaving top up water [from a tap] running just before going away for a week end, tanks over heating, chiller sticking and water chilling to low temps etc.
The biggest worry here is the no reason part as we all learn from mistakes and a mistake like this is really one to be avoided, are there still no conclusions to this?
 
No reason just all gone, have tried to figure it out even had my brother in law's mom test my water, she is a municapal scientist at our local sewerage works , so i had proper testing done, no alarmbells all parametres were fine.
the reason i lean mostly to is a external polutant like a detergeant of some sorts( household spray's ) just not sure how.
 
did you by any chance have an ambi pur air freshner installed in one of your plug points near the tank?
 
read the back of the label it says harmful to aquatic species and i had a customer who lost his fish due to this....
 
1) Killer carpet nenny that ate my Foxface.
2) Same killer nenny that ate my Nervacus.
3) Copperband who's beak got caught in the LR (very sad :( )
4) The missus topping up with SW last week, SG went off the scale. Lost 80% of my LPS and all my SPS many hermits. Carl and Reefer AGAIN to the rescue. (Did I mention how much I'm enjoying Polokwane?)For time being the home tank will be FOWLR.
 
Hi all - not sure how many of you actually heard of my tank wipe-out in the beginning of this year (January 2007).

Went away on holiday in December, on a SCUBA diving trip where we drove (because of all the SCUBA kit) firstly to KZN South Coast (Port Shepstone/Margate) for a few days. Then drove to Sodwana for a few days, then after that to Pretoria.
We would just have slept over in Pretoria, but then right then, one of my wife's younger aunts were killed in a car accident. So we had to stay longer for the funeral.

In the meanwhile, we have asked that someone look after the house and the aquarium (feeding the fish).....

What happened? There were 2 power-outages in the 3 weeks we were aways for, where the 1st power outage caused the sump to overflow, which caused flooding all over the plugs/leads supplying electricity to the tank... This caused that the electricity trip when the power came back on.

By the time we found out about the first power outage, which was 3 days later, we already lost out Yellow Tang, Bicolor angel, anemone, rose-lobed leather coral....

BUT, if this was not bad enough, the auto-topup system kept on dripping fresh RO water into the tank. So when the electricity was restored (we called someone else to assist with "cleaning up" and getting the electricity restored), there was already a considerable amount of fresh water in the tank, and the SG has already dropped somewhat.

Now, here comes the "killer" - a second power-outage occurred (all this while we were away) JUST before we were about to return home.

EXACTLY the same story - this time, we lost ALL the invertebrate life in the tank, with the water flooding the sump, the auto-topup system replenished the lost salt water, with fresh RO water, when the electricity was restored.

We came back home to a aquarium without ANY invertebrate life (except for ONE SINGLE APTAISIA - whish survived ALL of this - can you believe it), and all my hermit crabs - they all survived as well..... I was amazed at this.

I had 9 fish in total at that stage - we list 4 of the 9 fish. My first Mandarin also survived, but only for a very short while afterwards. Without ANY pods in the tank, my poor mandarin also died. BUT the funniest thing was it was completely bloated with the fresh water it took up (you could see funny looking "bubbles" under it's skin due to the fresh water).

Moral of the story - ENSURE that you have some plans for power outages, keep the plugs FAR FAR away for where they could get wet, and ensure that you do NOT have a auto-topup system on at that time, OR set the auto-topup to supply FAR less water, and ENSURE that you do not have TOO much water in your tank, that your sump overflows.....

I was left with a tank devoid of ANY corals or any other invertebrate life for that matter, and far less fish than I hoped for.

Otherwise the trip to Sodwana was quite good - got some very nice diving in :)
 
it is always sad when something so nice dies it almost feels to me like they should live forever
 
hey i was so sad when i had that wipe out lost so many cool fish.

Blind thing is a mate of mine just phoned me and he has velvet in his fish only system,
lost his maddie, gussie, hennie and lt surgeon so far.
 
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