Cooling Again
The air conditioner is cooling again. 
It took three hours for the guys from Service Experts to correctly diagnose and alleviate the problem. It seems the original installation back in 2001 was done poorly, and an underground wire was shorted out.
As far as the fish, I lost a Coral Beauty last night. Today, I know I lost a Niger Trigger, a Yellow Tang, and a Spotted Hawk. Several crustaceans are history. There was just no way to keep the brine cool enough. We tried baggies of frozen distilled water floated on the surface, but it wasn't enough. On the bright side, the Clownfish, the Picasso Trigger and several Damsels survived. A brown Trigger of unknown origin survived, although I wish he had succumbed. I still have not located the Clown Trigger. The max temp on the tanks was 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The mean temp was 84 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tonight I will perform mortuary duty and remove the live rock to get to the dead out. For now, I just want to get cool.
It took three hours for the guys from Service Experts to correctly diagnose and alleviate the problem. It seems the original installation back in 2001 was done poorly, and an underground wire was shorted out. As far as the fish, I lost a Coral Beauty last night. Today, I know I lost a Niger Trigger, a Yellow Tang, and a Spotted Hawk. Several crustaceans are history. There was just no way to keep the brine cool enough. We tried baggies of frozen distilled water floated on the surface, but it wasn't enough. On the bright side, the Clownfish, the Picasso Trigger and several Damsels survived. A brown Trigger of unknown origin survived, although I wish he had succumbed. I still have not located the Clown Trigger. The max temp on the tanks was 86 degrees Fahrenheit. The mean temp was 84 degrees Fahrenheit.
Tonight I will perform mortuary duty and remove the live rock to get to the dead out. For now, I just want to get cool.
Labels: Fishkeeping, This Damned House
posted by Xavier at 3:27 PM
4 Comments:
I'd always heard doing salt tanks were amoungst the hardest to keep stablized...good luck Xav,
hopefully triage wont find any more victims
Xavier-
I'm sorry to hear that you lost some fish. It's never easy to lose fish, and I know it can be a real pain to get them out.
Have you ever looking into getting a chiller? I know they're not cheap, but replacing fish isn't either! I don't even have a reef setup right now (too small of an apartment :(), but of course I'm already planning my next, which will include a chiller.
PS: When you get around to it and everything is back to normal, could you please post some pictures of your tank? I know I'd love to see some and I bet others would too!
Didn't this happen to you last year too?
At some point you are going to reach the break even cost point for a chiller based on the price of the fish/inverts alone.
Gee whiz - sorry about your tank - that's painful on many levels. I'll bet that brown trigger will be with you always.
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