just found out about this Eric hada major tank crash I had the plessure of meeting him at MMC and all I can say is he isa very nice guy. Not at all what I had heard or would have thought. I know he is taking this very very hard to less then when a family member dies only for him he lost serveral hundred if not thousands of loved ones. in his own words he wrote on the marine depot forum the fallowing..
Eric 1st wrote
I went to lab this morning and had
Acropora palmata
thriving and corals over a foot across. Came home
tonight to the tank cloudy and
salinity of 15ppt. I
don't know if someone sabotaged the tank or what
because the autofiller was working. Whatever the case,
by the morning, almost everything in my tank will be
dead and I cannot do this anymore. Whatever is left I
will give to our local club. I hope the fish live.
I no longer feel capable of answering posts. My heart
and pride and joy was lost in eight hours and I can't
bear it. Thanks everyone for your support.
latter he updated with the fallowing
EB:
I promised myself I wouldn't come bck and read this
thread, but I love all of you and am sobbing as I type
this. Thank you all so very very much.
Depite everything I have done, it seems that something
was set into motion that was unstoppable. The only
corals to survive were all my Psammacora, a Fungia,
and a Pavona chip, Several others are alive but
continuing to die, no matter what I try. All the fish
lived, except maybe a wrasse - I think. The water is
still too cloudy to see through after three days of
skimming, carbon and 600 gallons of water changes.
Those that are still alive and hanging on are
bleached
white and many of those are loosing what tissue is
left. Basically, I have rocks. The coraline died, the
sponges died as did all the other life on them. Most a
sitting in a pile on my living room floor to stop
further fouling. Everything. I have never, despite
monstrous accidental faults of my own, power outages,
A'C failures and even a top off malfunction have I
seen anything like this. To bring the
salinity up
alone required 350 gallons of salt. My
skimmer drains
to the outside, so there would have been a pool of
some 400 gallons of water if the
skimmer was
overflowing and the
skimmer was at a perfect skimming
level that evening when I got home. No water in the
sump room from
sump overflow. Auto-top working
perfectly then and now. I hate to think somone would
do this, but as far as I can tell, that is the only
conceivable thing I can think of. I have cried daily,
and I am crying now. Some of the species I had can
never be replaced. I filled several curbside trash
cans with coral skeletons.
Thank you all so much for you beautiful words. I have
thousands of fragments in culture, sadly limited in
types, could never afford to restock the tank to what
is was, and it will be 5- 10 years before - and if -
it ever resembles what it did a few days ago. Thank
you for your well wishes and offers. Sadly, to see the
massive corals in my tanks replaced by chips and
fragments is too much to consider right now. I will
care for my culture system and my bedroom tanks and
let this tank stabilize for several months and see
what else lives or dies.
I do realize, however, that my love of this hobby and
corals still exists, and I will be here for you,
though with a very sad heart to help how I can, if not
only to help anyone else from ever experiencing
anything of this magnitude. So while I may have been
premature saying I am leaving the hobby, I won't. But,
posting without my inspiration behind glass sitting
beside me will be a heartwrenching task.
My dear wife, Brandee, said "when we restock, we
restock together so I can know everything there is to
know about everything that goes in the tank." I
promised.
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