Tank Sprung Leak!!

cdelaney

cdelaney

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Kind of an emergency. Stable condition right now. Red Sea reefer 250 started leaking tonight from front seam. Return pump alerts me with gurgle. not much water damage. I've used a new sump from another project to hold all live rock and attached coral. added heater to that sump and just have a pump draining to itself for some circulation. while doing this I realized I could use my auto top off system to catch the leak water and top off the display every few minutes or so.. should've done this first and not disturbed anything but it's all gonna get disturbed anyways... my sand is still in display with remaining water and circulation and heater. no lights on coral in sump.

looking for advice for anyone who has experienced anything like this.. what are some things you wish you would've done. how bad am I going to piss off the ecosystem and life and corals?

anyone have experience with warranty claims with red sea? I've had tank for less than two years. Best case would be pure reef can send me home with a new one tomorrow.

I have vermetid snails in my live rock already so this might be an opportunity to do something there like kill them all by crushing before I place each rock back..

are there any opportunities that I should take advantage of from this?

any words of wisdom?

ahhhhhh!! I also have a VERY expensive coral that i just got shipped this week that i am already babying.. i would hate to lose it.. 20221209_230445.jpg
 
Rip clean it. To avoid any mini cycle your going to either need to get new sand and rinse it well...or use your old sand and rinse the hell out of it. This means rinse the sand until you can stir it in water and it's ""snow globe" clear when you stir it. It takes hours to do this..and when you think it's done..rinse it 2 or 3 more times...lol. You can rinse with tap water and the last rinse or two with RO. The biological bacteria in your rocks is all you need so don't worry about losing any from your sand. If you have any unwanted algae on the rocks you can do a piece at a time and use some hydrogen peroxide and a toothbrush and or dental picker to go through and spot clean..then shake in saltwater to rinse off. Crush the vermitids whilst your at it. When reassembling I would add some DIY coral snow with microbacter 7 in it to take care of extra flocculants floating around from all the disturbance of the move.
 
They have a known problem with the lower front seam on some of their tanks/year. They even send people a reinforcement piece for this very problem so I would imagine they would do something about it.
 
Its very sad to hear this. Thats my worst nightmare tank leaking. But redsea is known for this. I was going to get a redsea on my last buils but i couldnt due to this exact problem. Sorry to hear but redsea will get u a new tank its happened on arc to a few members already
 
@cdelaney I went thru this exact same thing a few years back and as long as you're the original owner with proof of purchase, they will get you a replacement pretty quick. For me, I was a secondary owner, but because I had all the paperwork and proof of purchase, they did offer a replacement at 50% off. They ship quick after I jumped through a million hoops. I had to provide a video with my ID and the tank issue. What a joke.

Never again with Red Sea tho, they knew about their issue with their product, especially the first few generations on some models, and they should have offered free replacement for anyone that had these issues. The tank I got was less than a year old and this happened. Yeah, never again with RS. I would never support their product again.

I put all my livestock in some brute containers while I got the replacement tank. Just put water pumps & a heater in there.
 
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how long is brute heater and circulation sustainable? should I try to get some light over corals?
 
got one of the lowboys filled and all the livestock in there now. Everything is super stressed and I'm sure something(s) will not come out of this in the same condition they were. trying to look at the bright side. I get to reboot my main display tank and the new one won't have those couple scratches that only I can see that bother me so bad.


I've never ran a setup with no sump. I currently have circulation but no real filtration per se besides the live rock. I'm gonna kiss my sand goodbye for now and deal with that later. what should I watch with water parameters the closest? I'm assuming manual water changes if this lasts more than a couple weeks? should I drop a protein skimmer in? me main skimmer is probably too tall for this shallow tank.
20221210_234046.jpg
 
also.. it's amazing what you find when you pull everything out.. things growing on the back and bottom of rocks or hiding that you thought were long gone or not sure where it came from.. found a couple zoas I've never seen, a pom pom crab I haven't seen in almost 2 years. coral skeletons. handful of brittle stars...
 
cdelaney said:
also.. it's amazing what you find when you pull everything out.. things growing on the back and bottom of rocks or hiding that you thought were long gone or not sure where it came from.. found a couple zoas I've never seen, a pom pom crab I haven't seen in almost 2 years. coral skeletons. handful of brittle stars...
Click to expand...
If your worried about some of the coral, like the newest purchases, see if someone in your area will hold them for you. That may be the best option for the smaller pieces.

I would also try and get a carbon reactor running on the lowboy or any other storage containers. All the movement that is stressing coral could get them releasing toxins.
 
cdelaney said:
got one of the lowboys filled and all the livestock in there now. Everything is super stressed and I'm sure something(s) will not come out of this in the same condition they were. trying to look at the bright side. I get to reboot my main display tank and the new one won't have those couple scratches that only I can see that bother me so bad.


I've never ran a setup with no sump. I currently have circulation but no real filtration per se besides the live rock. I'm gonna kiss my sand goodbye for now and deal with that later. what should I watch with water parameters the closest? I'm assuming manual water changes if this lasts more than a couple weeks? should I drop a protein skimmer in? me main skimmer is probably too tall for this shallow tank.
View attachment 68912
Click to expand...
How many fish in there? There are plenty of tanks out there with no skimmer and just doing water changes. Nice quick work.
Sorry you have to deal with this.
 
Atalien2005 said:
Another RedSea tank failure and this one was captured on video. Absolute nightmare what RedSea has made their customers endure. 🤦‍♂️

fb.watch

Thinking of purchasing a Red Sea Aquarium? Please watch this video before doing so. Our client had a Red Sea Reefer 650 Pennisula, loaded with corals,... | By Big Kahuna Tropical Fish | Facebook

Thinking of purchasing a Red Sea Aquarium? Please watch this video before doing so. Our client had a Red Sea Reefer 650 Pennisula, loaded with corals,...
fb.watch fb.watch
Click to expand...
wonder if this issue is seen on the RS Max 170 cubes




cdelaney said:
got one of the lowboys filled and all the livestock in there now. Everything is super stressed and I'm sure something(s) will not come out of this in the same condition they were. trying to look at the bright side. I get to reboot my main display tank and the new one won't have those couple scratches that only I can see that bother me so bad.


I've never ran a setup with no sump. I currently have circulation but no real filtration per se besides the live rock. I'm gonna kiss my sand goodbye for now and deal with that later. what should I watch with water parameters the closest? I'm assuming manual water changes if this lasts more than a couple weeks? should I drop a protein skimmer in? me main skimmer is probably too tall for this shallow tank.
View attachment 68912
Click to expand...
Really sorry this happened to you but looks like you got it under control.
 
So ... Red Sea was pretty helpful. I filed warranty claim on Saturday and was first contacted by email on Monday requesting pictures of full system and close up of seal. I also provided serial number. After a bit of back and forth.. on Thursday was finally approved for a full system replacement including new sump and cabinets. Also this is the newer g2 version which is hopefully built a little better.

I and red sea arranged with pure reef to ship them a new reefer 250. Pure reef gave me store credit for the value of the 250 which I put towards a reefer 350 which is currently 15% off. So I got a larger tank for the difference of about 400 bucks picked up today.

Casualties.. hardwood floors not destroyed but damaged however I will be covering them up with new tank for now. All of my hammers aborted their skeletons. my Sunkist bounce melted away. Everything else though looks really happy in a 50g lowboy I was able to put together in a hurry after transferring things around a couple times. I even have two polyps of stratosphere I just got last week that had to rough it in a home depot bucket for half a day but now look the best since I've had them. That was a close one!

I'll be setting up the new tank and on the bright side a reset is kind of welcomed. I had a few things I would do differently this time around and I wanted a bigger tank anyways.

I think I'm gonna start with new and different rock and cycle through then move my fish and frags of my favorite corals up to the new display. The rest of the corals I will use to populate my frag setup in the basement.

Thanks for all the support.
 
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