completely unforseen

[islander671]

So i recently lost 2 orinos and an ocellaris..

I am running a 24 hour drip on my 7x2x2 and my 6x3x2 that overflows into individual sumps then excess water is displaced via overflow drainage in each sump that flows outside. I've been dripping 1/2 gph into each tank pure cold water all winter and my heaters were able to keep the water at about 86 degrees. What had happened was one of the orinos apparently jumped up and bit the drip emitter (maybe dripping triggered a feeding response?) and pulled it of the irrigation hose. It was still lodge in his mouth so im pretty sure he is the cullprit. this of course caused a steady flow of COLD water into the tank. I have no idea how long the stream of water was flowing into the tank but i got home at about 4 am to find the three fish upside down. as i touch the glass of the tank its ICE COLD. temp dropped from 86 to about 60 degrees. Other fish were quite lethargic but pulled thru. my 3 fav pbass however did not make it.


Lesson being, keep those drip emitters out out of reach. Or dont drip pure cold water. I suck.

 

[koop171]

wow that sux why did you drip COLD water can't you drip a happy medium or were u just tapped into the cold water pipe?

 

[islander671]

wow that sux why did you drip COLD water can't you drip a happy medium or were u just tapped into the cold water pipe?

Yea i was tapped directly into the cold water pipe. I ran it that way for several weeks to monitor the temp while i was cycling the tank and the temp never dropped below 85-86 degrees so i assumed it would be safe. It never crossed my mind that the drip immiter would be pulled off by a fish. I'd like to drip warmer or room temp water but our water heater could barely keep up with the 6 in my family showering on daily basis...lol

 

[islander671]

I should add too that there may be other possible causes of the three deaths, but water params were still steady, there was a slight spike in nitrites several days later which i attribute to a slight BB loss from the incident. Since then the paramater are back to what they were 0 amm 0 nit and 15-20ppm nitrates. Additionally, i have an inline carbon filter after the pressure regulator and i drip diluted prime into the tank to match a 120 gallon water change weekly. So im 99.9% sure it was the rapid temp drop that induced shock or some physical reaction that led to there demise.

 

[delight537]

that sucks , i forgot to close a window last night right by my tank and when i woke up the tank was at 66* ! i quickly ran and threw the heat on and closed all the windows. i did not see there was a frost alert on the news the night before . thank god no casualties

 

[USMCtanker]

sry to here and thanks for warning