Outdrsyguy's 940 gallon DT Build

[Reefchef]

cross post from my other post trying to figure out if my tank was poisoned by something.

Okay, so thanks again to all who participated in the conversation, just wanted to follow it up with what I believe happened.
Short and sweet, then more detail for those of you with short attention spans
Not enough water changes, trace elements got too low. Reactor got disconnected causing random bouts of septic water being flushed into the system, 4 LED lights went from 90%+ to 5% for month+ without noticing and the whole thing was kicked off by lack of maintenance reducing water flow and lack of feeding causing me to lose a few fish (auto feeder ran out, and life got insane... like once in 30 years kinda thing insane).

Longer version:
Corals were likely low in health from lack of strontium, potassium, and possibly iodine but not nearly as likely. I don't think magnesium plays a big part but it was also low and i could be wrong about that as i'm not a chemist. Had some things happen to my wife which put life in the $hitt#r for 4 months. My eductors and power heads got clogged and had a LOT less flow. I also had a HUGE forest of digi and corals all over the tank and on the bottom. The spyglass reactor I got from that reef pirate company came loose and sat there full of stagnant water until a power outage would happen and then it would drain into the sump. 4-5 fish died (sorry, hard to notice when there's 50 of them in there hiding and such) likely from lack of food though i never noticed any other than 1 which was gaunt. That one was a bartlets anthias that was being forced into a cave by another male and there's absolutely no way i could catch either of them.
Probably started with the reactor sumping some septic water in which killed a few corals and fish dying around the same time. Actually, the power outage would have happened then because the battery backup (watch battery things) in my lights must have gone dead because for some reason the clocks on a few of them weren't right. I fixed the clock but didn't realize the power had reset to 5%. Then with low coral health from lack of trace elements, low flow, low light on 15" round colonies, and the occaisional hit of septic water once in a blue moon, the dominoes started falling.
I thought I had it under control but just couldn't get things to recover.
After my triton test results came back with basically just low magnesium and trace elements and no smoking gun, I decided to buy about $300 in trace elements and start dosing (if i used triton and bought all the recommended ones it would have been around $1000-$1200). I went with the strontium, iodine, magnesium, potassium, and a little bit of manganese. My belief is that strontium and potassium were probably the culprits. I probably hadn't changed more than 10% of my water total in 6 months+, if that honestly. Corals were just too exhausted to handle the trauma.

Once I started dosing the trace stuff, which took about 10 days to get it all in, things started looking better. I'd say within 1 week of completion or less things had recovered and started actually growing new branches/tips which I hadn't seen in a long time. In that time, i don't think i even did any water changes. Also, i still had a couple acro's that were slowly dying back and those stopped dying and started to look better. So with that said, i firmly believe that some trace elements are vitally important and if you don't get them in there one way or another, you'll eventually end up with exhausted corals at the end of a marathon waiting for that one pot hole to end their careers.

Oh, and fyi my 3 hammerhead pumps are still leaking a tiny bit (even the one i fixed) so I don't think that they likely had a hand in poisoning in case anyone was curious. Also i've been dosing vibrant for 10 weeks now and it's slowly getting rid of my bubble algae (and cheto too unfortunately). But i'm absolutely certain that vibrant had nothing to do with the turn around as i was 8+ weeks into dosing at that point.

Hope that helps a few of you out there learn something to avoid it for yourselves!
thanks again,
Happy reefing

Thank you for sharing your struggles with us. I enjoy reading all of the stories good and bad, as I feel you can learn from every situation. Im glad its finally turning around for you. Good luck.

 

[Dmitri]

@myaquariumpro do you happen to have a list of all the fish you bought or at least an idea for your DIY fish food? Also, how do you store it so it's usable easily and not one monstrous frozen block? I definitely want to try that sometime. Thanks!

As far as my fish list:
8 chromies
20 yellow tail damsels
2 blue damsels
1 six line wrasse
1 goldflake angel
1 copperband butterfly
2 Maroon clowns and 1 black & white clown
1 lawnmower blenny
1 magnificent foxface

everything else tangs:
11 yellow tangs
2 blue hippos
2 tomini tangs
3 scopas tangs
1 powder blue
1 gem
1 purple
1 unicorn tang
2 vlamingi tangs
1 naso tang
1 sailfin tang
1 convict tang

diy food I followed reef chilli recipe from brs and fish food recipe as well. Store them in the large freezer zip bags

Works well so far

 

[Adam]

@outdrsyguy1 glad to hear you've figured out out and things are turning the corner!

 

[Dmitri]

Rusty, any new updates on the tank?

 

[yrevanth]

Omg.. following this thread and seeing those beautiful colonies go was heart wrenching man! But glad you made the right choice and focused on your family.. hope you and your tank are in a better place now..

God knows, I have had a few crashes where I lost a ton of coral which I loved!

 

[codesensei]

nice build