I've had some scares over the past 3 years with my latest tanks, but I finally got hit hard. I came back from my Solomon Islands trip and the tank looked great- new growth on a lot of corals, and even enough to mount 10 new frags of green slimer for people for the next meeting.
Just 4 days after I got back, though, I shot myself in the foot. The last time I had reloaded my kalkwasser / Neilson reactor was about 6 months ago. I took it apart, added about 5 more cups of kalk to the reactor, and closed things up.
The problem came in the how I normally run it vs. the initial loading. Normally I keep the reactor going 24x7 to keep the alkalinity up. This works fine because the vast majority of the kalk is packed at the bottom of the reactor; stirring it only saturates the water with the very top layer of kalk. However, when I was loading it, I decided to just keep the stir bar going to keep it from clogging, and closed it up after adding my new kalk.
I filled the reactor and left about an hour later. I came back after running some errands and found the tank all cloudy and my fish gasping at the bottom. It took all of 3 seconds to realize what happened. The past I didn't think about when filling was that the kalk was still suspended, resulting in my automatic top off adding a slurry of kalk directly to the tank for 4 hours. I evaporate about 5-10g per day, depending on the ambient temperature, so I added a couple of gallons of straight kalk solution.
The pH of my tank was 9.8 (!!!) when I got to it. In a panic attempt to get things under control, I added almost a gallon of vinegar to bring it back down to 8.2ish range (I have a 350g system - takes a lot to do anything). I overshot and then added 8.3 buffer that I had sitting around to bring it back up. It's been at 8.1ish ever since.
Then I setup a quick hospital tank, found as many of my fish as I could, and dumped them in, but it was already too late.
My losses so far:
power blue tang (~5" - had him for almost 3 years :sad
blonde naso tag (~9")
sohal tang (~4")
yellow tang (~3")
about half my acros, including:
a bright blue tort that had just started taking off
an acro I've had for almost 3 years - was almost 10" across
about half the flesh from my 12" wide green slimer
about 10 new frags for ARC members
yellow millepora
What has made it so far:
two percula clowns
one firefly goby
all six of my clams, from 2" to 8"
my large BTA
most of my LPSs, including frogspawns, hammers, and others
my 8" yellow fiji leather
those d*mn green zooanthids (figures)
I've done two 60g water changes so far, and maureen3177 and tsciarini have lent me their RO/DI filters; I can make about 140gpd of RO right now, and have about 500g of salt on hand - I'll probably keep doing 60gal water changes per day until I run out of salt.
The financial loss, while still fairly large, doesn't bother me near as much as the time and attachment that I've had with the fish and the corals.
I may also add (and make a big warning to everyone else with a kalk reactor) a pH controller to my auto top off, so that the kalk won't be used when the pH is over 8.4 or something.
It's an interesting lesson for everyone with a kalk reactor. You're dealing with a chemical that has a pH of 13. To not have a controller on it is just waiting for a disaster...
Just 4 days after I got back, though, I shot myself in the foot. The last time I had reloaded my kalkwasser / Neilson reactor was about 6 months ago. I took it apart, added about 5 more cups of kalk to the reactor, and closed things up.
The problem came in the how I normally run it vs. the initial loading. Normally I keep the reactor going 24x7 to keep the alkalinity up. This works fine because the vast majority of the kalk is packed at the bottom of the reactor; stirring it only saturates the water with the very top layer of kalk. However, when I was loading it, I decided to just keep the stir bar going to keep it from clogging, and closed it up after adding my new kalk.
I filled the reactor and left about an hour later. I came back after running some errands and found the tank all cloudy and my fish gasping at the bottom. It took all of 3 seconds to realize what happened. The past I didn't think about when filling was that the kalk was still suspended, resulting in my automatic top off adding a slurry of kalk directly to the tank for 4 hours. I evaporate about 5-10g per day, depending on the ambient temperature, so I added a couple of gallons of straight kalk solution.
The pH of my tank was 9.8 (!!!) when I got to it. In a panic attempt to get things under control, I added almost a gallon of vinegar to bring it back down to 8.2ish range (I have a 350g system - takes a lot to do anything). I overshot and then added 8.3 buffer that I had sitting around to bring it back up. It's been at 8.1ish ever since.
Then I setup a quick hospital tank, found as many of my fish as I could, and dumped them in, but it was already too late.
My losses so far:
power blue tang (~5" - had him for almost 3 years :sad
blonde naso tag (~9")
sohal tang (~4")
yellow tang (~3")
about half my acros, including:
a bright blue tort that had just started taking off
an acro I've had for almost 3 years - was almost 10" across
about half the flesh from my 12" wide green slimer
about 10 new frags for ARC members
yellow millepora
What has made it so far:
two percula clowns
one firefly goby
all six of my clams, from 2" to 8"
my large BTA
most of my LPSs, including frogspawns, hammers, and others
my 8" yellow fiji leather
those d*mn green zooanthids (figures)
I've done two 60g water changes so far, and maureen3177 and tsciarini have lent me their RO/DI filters; I can make about 140gpd of RO right now, and have about 500g of salt on hand - I'll probably keep doing 60gal water changes per day until I run out of salt.
The financial loss, while still fairly large, doesn't bother me near as much as the time and attachment that I've had with the fish and the corals.
I may also add (and make a big warning to everyone else with a kalk reactor) a pH controller to my auto top off, so that the kalk won't be used when the pH is over 8.4 or something.
It's an interesting lesson for everyone with a kalk reactor. You're dealing with a chemical that has a pH of 13. To not have a controller on it is just waiting for a disaster...
