Disaster!

Ok so yesterday I got home from dinner and a rock had tipped to be unstable, and when I went to fix it another rock fell over. While trying to repair the rockwork and protect corals, the whole aquascaping came down. Luckily I had a 20 gallon tank sitting around empty, so I moved everything into it and am running a light and skimmer on it as well as my MP10 at low flow. Everything has made it through the night and all the fish and inverts seem to be ok. The sand bed has been completely stirred up and is just a total mess. I'm planning to replace all the sand and water today, and let it settle for a day and try to get the rocks back in and let that settle for another day before putting all the fish and coral back in. Any suggestions?!?!

That's totally backwards from what I would have done.
Everything gets stressed and prone to get sick by moving.
This is not a goldfish bowl and these are not goldfish.
Total clean up spoils a reef tank.
Use the LS don't replace it. Use most of the water, don't replace all of it.
Removing LR from the water opens it up to the air which fills tiny holes where important organisms are living. The tiny holes do not refill with water. The air spoils the LR, causing pollution - not immediately, but within a few days things start to feel the effects of rising pollution. It takes weeks for it to recover.
I would leave the LR in the water in the tank and just re-stack it, using the tripod principle.

i had a similar episode when i tried to get my anemone out of my tank. i just stacked it up as good as i could for the night and let the filter sock do its thing. then 3 or so days later re-scaped the rocks.

Kind of agree with above.  Don't think I'd go to crazy on this.  I would have just restacked everything.

I think you overreacted. Stirred up sand and fallen rocks isn't that big of a deal. You just restacke it. I don't care to know how many times I've moved a rock or a coral and another rock falls and Ive ended up restacking. Stable rock work is the key here. Marks tripod reference is what I use. You put three small rocks down and a larger one on top, this opens up a lot of your sand and is great for flow, if done correctly you get a very stable rock scape.
   The damage is done already, don't over think it.  The longer your rocks are out of your display the more your display will suffer from being deprived of the bacteria still residing in your LR.  Restack your rocks and be prepared for a mini cycle. All the stirred up sediment and detritus will resettle. Don't vacuum it out, you'll just be pulling out stuff that's vital to our tanks. Once it's restacked it will settle down in a couple of days.

Edited by SkylerS - April 28 2012 at 2:25pm

Yep I kinda figured it was an overreaction at about 3 this morning, when my brain actually kicked in. So far everything is doing fine in my little rescue tank and I'm working on just cleaning the sand of detritus by running the water through a filter sock and occasionally stirring the sand bed. So far it's starting to get cleared up, and I'm going to be putting everything back in very soon before it gets too clear and all of the organic material is out (don't want to remove too much of it!). Also, I went up to Aquatic Dreams to get some more water because I already know I will need a little more, and since I don't want to have to keep making the drive for water changes over the next two weeks. So all I am doing now is getting the sand cleaned up a bit and the water cleared, putting everything back in and gluing/puttying the rockwork together. Surprisingly I really haven't had too much damage to corals, but I will be reattaching a ton of corals that have broken off.

Thank you all for your help and advice, and for helping me to train myself not to listen to my first instincts when it comes to a "major tank disaster."

-Adam if you still want a frag of these palythoas, they've sort of fragged themselves.

Awesome Ann

Looking good - keep us posted

Linn

npatching wrote: scape looks awesome

Thank you! So far everything is doing great, and the scape is extremely stable (thanks to a TON of coral glue and Mark's tripod method). I actually am liking this aquascape much better than the old one because it looks more natural, allows for better flow, gives me more options for coral placement, and allows a lot more open swimming space in the front for the fish.