Christy's Reef

Yet another bad report. I went away on vacation for 10 days. I had 2 people taking care of the tank. You'd thinkwith two people things would go swimmingly. However I didn't take Mother Nature into account. Typical. The weather got really hot here towards the end of last week and the tank room temp was stifling. Chiller fuse blew and the tank shot up to 90F. Both on Friday and Saturday fuses had to be replaced but the damage was done. Thank god there was someone to replace the fuses or I would imagine I would have lost much more. I lost about 17 different frags and colonies. Pretty disappointing. Losses included 3 bali colonies, my new pink table, an 8 headed frogspawn, purple cross, turaki colony :(, and a lovely teal blue piece that was really taking off. I'm pretty disappointed about the whole thing. Seems like I'm tied to this tank no matter what. We had purchased an AC unit for the house and mounted it in the kitchen because it just made sense there, the kitchen is at the back of the house (less chance of a break in) and part of an "open room system" to allow more flow of cooled air throughout the rooms. However, we didn't really want to leave it on while we were gone. But arriving home on Sunday night to at least 95F+ in the fish room was enough to convince us to move it. The fish room is now a cool 77F.

Yet another victim was the nano tank. Sunday night the temp was 94.5F. The water was stinkin hot. All ricordea are dead, some still remain as gooey puddles which need to be removed. Snails are dead, brittle stars are dead. Both my neon goby and cleaner shrimp are dead. I'm at a loss as to what to do here. Some zoos are attempting to open, I'm not sure whether their tissues are cooked though. Of course the caulerpa is still growing strong. Damned stuff. I suppose I'll yard everything out, do a big water change and just leave the tank to settle for a bit. I'm not sure what to do about a bioload though. I dont' think there is any life left in there. I'm pretty bummed about the goby though. I've had him for quite awhile and he was quite the character.

Lesson learned. When heat is involved, don't assume things will be okay. Ridiculous that I need a $300 AC unit to chill a $500 chiller.

*sigh* hopefully next week things will return to "normal".