Post vacation tank meltdown

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#1
Came home from vacation and house sitter made a well meaning but critical error on my top off...salinity through the roof. Fish and nems look fine. LPS (frogspawn, holy grail torch, gold torch, green w/ blue tip torch all look gone); all of the expensive zoas look melted...hoping they come back...we will see. Pink Nepthea looks bad...montis look done...only had one SPS but I think it's gone....Ughhh.

Figured it was therapy to talk about it out loud and start again. We will see what comes back. Been slowly bringing salinity back in line
 

Smite

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#3
Ah that's a bummer! Easy mistake for someone who doesnt know the hobby well too.

I dont have a huge variety of zoanthids anymore but if you end up losing them and youre in the OC area hit me up and Ill cut you some of what i got.
 

djrice69

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#5
Sucks bro. What was the final salinity?
 

EyeReef

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#6
Sorry to hear about the crash. I think most of us have been there at one point . How many many gallon was in your reservoir?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 
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#7
Thanks, guys. It was an 8 gallon reservoir but running a fan to keep the heat down caused more evaporation. I am guessing the ATO auto shut off to make sure there wasn't overflow when the evaporation was really bad one day and didn't get turned back on. Then they topped off with Saltwater on accident.

Salinity was about 1.040. It is back in line now. We will see how things look tomorrow when the lights come on.

And Thanks, Matt. No need for that but I appreciate the offer.
 
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#8
Sorry about what happened to your tank and lost. I just had a top off issue during the heat couple weeks ago too, and most my corals died. Tunze ato controller failed, so no topping off. Good thing Tunze have taken care of me, and I just run my tank back again slowly. I still have some common zoas if you still want some to startover your tank. Just let me know.
 

reefes pieces

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#9
Yeah sorry to hear that happened. Some things I've done when I had to have someone tank sit is keep an extra 5 gallon jog of RODI next to the tank and mark it with instructions. Also, I've used color coded tape and tape it to the sump where the water line should be, and the ATO tank where the lowest point should be. It's always a risk unfortunately. Hope everything recovers for you
 
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#10
Yeah I always leave out extra RODI. Did they have access to your saltwater? Sorry to hear. Total bummer. Stressful leaving on vacation being reefers hehe
 

reefes pieces

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#11
Also, hope you have some fish nerd friends around your area. If not, I'm sure there are some on this forum in your area. I know I can call on some of the guys on this forum to help in case of issues while I'm gone. Just in case I get the text or call from fish sitter "hey your tank is making a gurgling noise". Then I can say don't touch ish I'm having someone come over.
 

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