I recently went out of town for a week. Naturally, I had asked my wife to feed the fish and keep an eye on things. Long Story short, I get a call from my wife (May 3) as I'm heading to the airport to fly home with her frantically saying "The lights are off and the pumps aren't turning on the tank". We had some storms roll through, and apparently something popped the breaker for my aquarium dedicated 20a in the basement. She resets the breaker and I log into Apex Fusion to see what's up.
My tank is a 180G tank (2'x2'x6') with a 30G Sump/Refugium underneath.
April 28... That was the day it lost power. A full 5 days of no light, no flow, and no fish feeding apparently. I had shut off Apex alarms a while back due to a lot of false positives and never resolved the actual issue. I saved 2 fish... My Black Onyx Clown and a Chromis that I used to "cycle" the tank when I first set it up. Everything else is completely lost. Tons of corals, 2 tangs, my angry little yellow watchman goby, various cardinals, a few wrasse, etc.
I have a 10G emergency hospital tank setup with a few snails, hermits and the two survivors. I decided to drain the tank and re-plumb everything with a new basement sump setup (Hey, if there was ever a time, it's now). I have a few questions for the more experienced reefers in post-crash scenarios.
My tank is a 180G tank (2'x2'x6') with a 30G Sump/Refugium underneath.
April 28... That was the day it lost power. A full 5 days of no light, no flow, and no fish feeding apparently. I had shut off Apex alarms a while back due to a lot of false positives and never resolved the actual issue. I saved 2 fish... My Black Onyx Clown and a Chromis that I used to "cycle" the tank when I first set it up. Everything else is completely lost. Tons of corals, 2 tangs, my angry little yellow watchman goby, various cardinals, a few wrasse, etc.
I have a 10G emergency hospital tank setup with a few snails, hermits and the two survivors. I decided to drain the tank and re-plumb everything with a new basement sump setup (Hey, if there was ever a time, it's now). I have a few questions for the more experienced reefers in post-crash scenarios.
- Live Rock - I've pulled it all and have set it on my patio to dry out. I'll be blasting it with fresh water/power washer to clean out any nastiness. I will then re-cycle the rock in a brute for a few weeks with a small circulation pump and heater at 80*. Is this the correct course of action? Is there anything else to do here?
- Sand Bed - I have left about 2" of water whilst draining. Should I completely replace the sand bed, or should I finish draining the saltwater down to the sand bed, sift out any dead snails/hermits/etc on top of the bed or just under the surface, and blast some fresh water through it a few times? Any other recommendations?
- New Plumbing - Now that everything is toast, I'm moving all key plumbing components to the basement where it will be quieter than it is in my home office. I've done some initial design work, and am wondering if I'm missing anything in this diagram.
- The 35G Saltwater Reservoir for pre-mixing for water changes is a Norwesco Horizontal Leg Tank
- My Sump is a 100G Rubbermaid Stock Tank
- I've ordered a second return pump for redundancy or handling any additional load I may need in the "fish room".
- I'm going to order up a 2'x4'x10" frag tank and grow out some coral frags to see if I may be able to recover any cost, or send stuff out to newer reefers looking for some basic stuff. I have a pair of unused Radion Gen 3's I can put above it, as well as an extra MP10 and MP40 for flow.
- I want to be able to do quick water changes by draining out 30-some-odd gallons at a time from the Sump and filling back up from the SW Reservoir with a simple turn of 2 ball valves. I'll mark out lines in the sump for the "drain-to line".
- Am I missing anything obvious here, or is there something else "neat" I can do with a basement setup? I will have a capped T or two for future expansion as necessary.
