Tank Crash! Why & How To Prevent?!

infinite abyss

infinite abyss

New member
Has your tank ever crashed?

Why Or How? What happened?

What could you have done to prevent this?

Hope some people can share their experiences.

I always hear "tank crash" and wonder what exactly causing all these crashes.
 
I would't call this a tank crash per say, but this could have been bad if it was a reef tank and not just a mixing tank.
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My detective skill tell me that the heater blew up!
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I did have a tank crash a few monts back.
My 2 year old dumped a whole jar of flake food into a 29 gallon biocube. And the food sat there for over 6 hours since I was at work:\
To prevent this from happening again I got a new tank with a taller stand and a glass lid. I went bare bottom so if it does happen again someone else could clean out to food.
 
Never route your in-sump skimmer collection to a container located anywhere near a power source. I did (and then went on vacation...of course) and had to come home a day early. The in laws, whom were house/tank sitting, called me frantically saying there was smoke coming from under the aquarium, everything had shut down, and the floor was soaked. Turns out something tripped the skimmer and it went crazy. It kept filling the container, which overflowed. The ATO turned on and kept running because the sump level was draining. This went on until the 5 gallon ATO jug was empty. In the meantime the water in the sealed stand bottom got high enough to overtake the surge protector (that I was dumb enough not to mount up) and shorted it out causing a small electrical fire. The outlet tripped shutting everything down. For the sake of time...long story short...I got VERY lucky and didn't lose any livestock or corals (I did however lose hours of sleep and vacation). Lesson learned...keep electrical outlets/surge protectors off the floor and keep the skimmer IN THE SUMP! Or at least route it away from power sources.
 
BigBarnacles said:
Never route your in-sump skimmer collection to a container located anywhere near a power source. I did (and then went on vacation...of course) and had to come home a day early. The in laws, whom were house/tank sitting, called me frantically saying there was smoke coming from under the aquarium, everything had shut down, and the floor was soaked. Turns out something tripped the skimmer and it went crazy. It kept filling the container, which overflowed. The ATO turned on and kept running because the sump level was draining. This went on until the 5 gallon ATO jug was empty. In the meantime the water in the sealed stand bottom got high enough to overtake the surge protector (that I was dumb enough not to mount up) and shorted it out causing a small electrical fire. The outlet tripped shutting everything down. For the sake of time...long story short...I got VERY lucky and didn't lose any livestock or corals (I did however lose hours of sleep and vacation). Lesson learned...keep electrical outlets/surge protectors off the floor and keep the skimmer IN THE SUMP! Or at least route it away from power sources.
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That's crazy! This is the reason why I'm planning on drilling a hole through the wall into the boiler room where we have our drain and put the tube that drains my skimmer into that drain. It can skim all it wants then without me worrying about the gallon jug its currently draining into overflowing and spilling everywhere.
 
Good idea. We not only need to learn from our own mistakes, but also tell others what we did wrong so that they avoid making the same mistake.
 
there are so many things that can cause this. you are trying to prevent it all the time. everything we do is to keep our tank "in-line" but yeah i had a crash an anemone blew up killing everything. it was a huge gbta. it was bad.

next was my acan dominated tank. 90 different acans. not just frags. there was about 30 large big 100 polyps colonies. i cried. literally. it was some kind of infection. always dipped. nothing stopped it. i tried everything once it started. i would consider this a crash.
 
Mine was on my 58. Had a huge colony of xenia which grew in the path of a power head. The PH died. I think the xenia was so used to the high flow that it quickly melted, poisoning the tank. I came home to cloudy nasty water. Wasn't much i could do. I quickly setup my 10g with new water and saved what i could. Some survived, most didn't.
 
I had copper-tainted carbon, killing all my inverts, including a pink sea cucumber, who's poison slowly killed my fish even after 100% water change over the next two days.
 
This didn't happen to me but it happened to someone I know. They bought a GBTA and left the powerhead on and uncovered. The next morning the tank was anemone stew.
 
Human error is 90 percent of tank crashes over doseing thing water changes, being impatiet . Always messingcwith tank not leaving it be
 
BigBarnacles said:
Never route your in-sump skimmer collection to a container located anywhere near a power source. I did (and then went on vacation...of course) and had to come home a day early. The in laws, whom were house/tank sitting, called me frantically saying there was smoke coming from under the aquarium, everything had shut down, and the floor was soaked. Turns out something tripped the skimmer and it went crazy. It kept filling the container, which overflowed. The ATO turned on and kept running because the sump level was draining. This went on until the 5 gallon ATO jug was empty. In the meantime the water in the sealed stand bottom got high enough to overtake the surge protector (that I was dumb enough not to mount up) and shorted it out causing a small electrical fire. The outlet tripped shutting everything down. For the sake of time...long story short...I got VERY lucky and didn't lose any livestock or corals (I did however lose hours of sleep and vacation). Lesson learned...keep electrical outlets/surge protectors off the floor and keep the skimmer IN THE SUMP! Or at least route it away from power sources.
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WOw....thanks for sharing this!
 
capysolo said:
Mine was on my 58. Had a huge colony of xenia which grew in the path of a power head. The PH died. I think the xenia was so used to the high flow that it quickly melted, poisoning the tank. I came home to cloudy nasty water. Wasn't much i could do. I quickly setup my 10g with new water and saved what i could. Some survived, most didn't.
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This is what just happened to me.

Sent from the 3rd Galaxy
 
My advise is to have some kind of battery back up in case you lose power when you are not home, or sleep at night. I came home one day and almost had a hart attack! No power, and close to $1000 in fish dead. Next day I bought a battery backup for my vortech pumps.
As far as corals go I've seen a lot of people having problems with dosing pumps. I would recommend cleaning them on regular basis. This happened to a friend of mine. His pump over dosed alk and his corals turned white.
 
I always have a 33g Brute can with salt mixed, ready for any emergency. As soon as I use it for a WC, I make up a new one.


Only crash I ever had was when I left Hubby to care for my tanks over the weekend. He thought the puffers looked hungry all the time (they are excellent beggars) & kept feeding them. I came home to bloated puffers floating at the top, mouths sticking out of the water, gasping for air. Multiple WC & Bio-Spira saved them.
 
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