Went on vacation.. disaster..

[john007h]

Hey guys,

I went on vacation this past week and just got home. I entrusted my aquarium which housed my porcupine puffer with my mom for feeding. I did a water change and checked to make sure everything was fine before I left and fed them as I would normally feed them.

Apparently while I was away (on the second day), for whatever reason that would be impossible for me to discern now, one of my fish, I suspect my yellow tang, died and with it all of my other fish including my puffer.

To make matters worth my parents chose not to tell me out of empathy... and to make matters even more worse, they took out all the water without consulting me about what to do and left all the live rock (100lbs) to completely dry over a whole week, which I assume now is a useless expensive paperweight.

Not the kind of thing you want to hear when you are on vacation.

There is still water covering most of the sand and some of the live rock that's buried more so than others but the water is completely stagnant.

Is there anything I can do to salvage the aquarium or is basically everything gone and I'm back to starting all over again? I can't afford that expense and as much as I loved having my puffer I think I'm out of luck to replace him.

Anyways, moral of the story, don't trust anyone with your aquarium.

Thanks for everyone's help on this forum over the past year or so.

[J-P]

hey John,
Sorry to hear about that... it happens to all of us at some point. I am sure you'll step up to the plate again and have another swing at it.

[LilGreenPuffer]

That really sucks.

Given time, you can re-seed your dead rock from a small amount of live rock; I think that's your best hope for salvaging. You'll have to wait for the dead stuff on the dead rock to decompose, just like if you were curing live rock. After that, you can start restocking.

[john007h]

Can anyone point me to a resource on how to clean the dried out rocks and prepare to reseed them?

[jus85411]

sorry to hear

since you already have the entire setup it really wont cost you a great deal more to restart. the initial cost would pretty much be salt and whatever water costs you incur while curing the dead rock.

from what i believe, you can essentially use the dead rock and all the BB that died off, as a start to the cycle again. it sucks but it will be worth it and you can learn(the hard way) about other people keeping your tank. what i would do is fill back up with water, stir your substrate really well and use that ammonia already present in the water to start the cycle and keep an eye on your parameters and dose with more ammonia as needed. hopefully if im wrong someone will correct me. any questions you have, just like the past, people will help you out and make this process a little easier

[john007h]

hmm, I could try to do that jus85411, the filter still has water in it and the bacteria may have survived, the substrate is still submersed and some parts of the live rocks are under water.

Should I fill the tank back up, turn on the skimmer and filter and do water changes every day to get a new cycle going?

Or should I do anything special to the dried out live rocks like take them out of the tank into a big bin or something?

I'm in no hurry, if it takes 4 months for the cycle to complete because of the organic matter built up on the dried rocks then that's fine by me. I'd rather start stocking again during my may - august summer.

[jus85411]

i believe the bacteria needs some sort of current to keep it alive over an extended period of time. in motionless water it will still die off but at a slower rate. i doubt any are still alive though. i would wait on refilling and such until someone that might know better comments, but thats what i feel could be done because all that die off is essentially ammonia now anyway. so why not use it to your advantage and start cycling again?

i had a complete die off in my last and only tank, heater malfuntion i guess electrocuted my entire tank. and i definitely regret not having a tank anymore, but extra time for care is hard to come by for me now a days so at the same time im glad i didnt start it back up just to have a tank and puffer again.

what size tank is it? i imagine its a good size since you have approx 100 lbs of rock in there. since its obviously a nice size i would definitely wait to go through all that trouble of refilling until someone else chimes in and gives their opinion of what you should do between refilling or breaking down and putting rock in a different bin

[john007h]

I think I'm going to buy two 30 gallon bins and cure the rock in them with a power head and heater for 5 or 6 weeks as i watch the water parameters. I'll scrub the rock though to remove any dead matter.

I noticed that all the rocks are still pretty moist, that may be a very positive sign that some bacteria have survived.

I think 2 100% water changes weekly is recommended for this process, but I may be wrong, if someone can chime in that'd be great.

I'm going to completely replace the sand substrate.

Any advice on how to preserve the canister filter media? Or is any beneficial bacteria in there dead too, the water is still in there but the filter has been off for a while.

[Pufferpunk]

IMO, a week isn't enough time to completely dry out every bit of that rock on the inside. I'll bet there is still live bacteria & even LR "creatures" deep inside the rock, where it's still wet. I'd treat it as uncured rock & just cure the rock. It'll be a stinky mess but I've done it. Has the sand stayed wet at all?

[john007h]

The rock is still very moist, so I'm curing the rock in a bin now, I've been scrubbing the rock from debris and placing it in a bin with saltwater, a powerhead and a heater.

The sand is completely submerged with water left over from when my parents siphoned it out. Little pink worm like organisms seemed to have come up to the surface, they all appear dead. I'm not sure if I'd trust the substrate and don't mind buying new sand unless you suggest otherwise.

OH.. and FYI... the culprit behind this whole mess is a Aqueon ACP 1250 power head that failed the two days into my vacation... it was responsible for surface agitation and dissolved O2 must have dropped killing my yellow tang first then the maroon and puffer, I think it happened all over night because my mom swears they were fine when she went to bed and the tang was dead the next morning and the water "wasn't moving".

I'm very upset that I wasn't here to prevent this from happening or catch it early on since I probably check my aquarium 3 times a day, just really bad luck.

[Pufferpunk]

All it takes is 1 dead fish. Without a good amount of cleaning crew to eat the carcass, it can quickly poison the entire system with it's rotting flesh. You c take the sand out & rinse well, in small amounts, in a bucket with a hose. It's all going to take some time...

[sevenyearnight]

My condolences, I'm always sad to hear these kinds of stories.

[john007h]

Since this is basically going to be a new tank set up, should I just remove the substrate and put the rock in the tank without substrate to cure? I can dilute the water much more than the bins I am using that way.

I'm still on the fence if I should just spend all afternoon tomorrow rinsing all the sand in small amounts and setting up the aquarium again to cycle without fish for a few weeks or months if necessary, I think the live rock is still in very good shape after cleaning and inspecting it today, I have a huge source of bio material and ammonia to cycle the tank that way.

[Pufferpunk]

You can cycle the sand with the rock.

[blackghostknife]

I'd say it's gone but try again. I would not trust my parents with my tank