# Came back from Vaca and...



## jeremyan7 (Nov 30, 2017)

So I went away for 5 days and had a friend "look after / feed" my tank. I got back and it looked pretty terrible. The Shrimp (cleaner) had died (looks like maybe got eaten by the 3 fish). 
The torches all looked terrible (closed) except 1 of the green torches totally lost it's head. Which is now floating around the bottom loose, but looks "alive". 

glass was covered in green dot algae.. 

SO I have cleaned everything up. looks "mostly normal". Tested water and all looks in line.. Did a water change.. 

Question: is there anyway to glue / attach the torch head (there is no HARD material, just flesh) to its original skeleton or anything else?


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## PCUSER (Jun 1, 2017)

jeremyan7 said:


> So I went away for 5 days and had a friend "look after / feed" my tank. I got back and it looked pretty terrible. The Shrimp (cleaner) had died (looks like maybe got eaten by the 3 fish).
> 
> The torches all looked terrible (closed) except 1 of the green torches totally lost it's head. Which is now floating around the bottom loose, but looks "alive".
> 
> ...


I don't get it. What could go wrong in 5 days with a straight feeding assignment that caused all this? Was the lighting and all necessary electrical equipment on timers if needed? Good luck with the repair

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## jeremyan7 (Nov 30, 2017)

*my guess*

Is he didn't feed enough and the fish went on attack and killed / ate the shrimp and the torch. the algae might be from a longish light cycle?


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## CoralConnoisseur (Mar 5, 2014)

Nothing good ever happens fast in a reef tank. Only bad things happen quickly. We had the same issue a couple years ago, except I think our tank sitter over fed instead of under fed. Everything was coated in algae and torches were hit the hardest. Lost a few, zoas were all pissed and closed, even acans had shriveled up an were not happy.

I have never seen a full torch head disconnect from its skeleton. I have read about it happening tho. Maybe search around on reef central for some tips. My only suggestion would be to put as much small rock rubble you have in a strainer or basket of some kind and throw the torch in it. Maybe it will connect to a piece and survive? I am not sure how their "stomachs" work tho... It might be a lost cause.

Sorry about your losses, I hope the vacation was fun tho!


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## tom g (Jul 8, 2009)

*vacation*

my guess is sitter overfed....or u had a power outage for a long time ...

this is my biggest fear , of going away and having someone look after my tank ...what I tell people is to go to shoppers and get the pill containers that say mon tues wed thurs fri sat and sun
put enough food in there that need to be and hide canister with dry food ...I would have top up water in pails with a jug for them to fill up canister and that's it .. not sure what was instructed to your sitter or what they did .. 
anyways it sucks and I am sorry for what u came home too


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## mrfishy (Sep 20, 2017)

jeremyan7 said:


> Is he didn't feed enough and the fish went on attack and killed / ate the shrimp and the torch. the algae might be from a longish light cycle?


 Fish do not need to be fed often. There are plenty of nutrients in an established tank.


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## mrfishy (Sep 20, 2017)

tom g said:


> my guess is sitter overfed....or u had a power outage for a long time ...
> 
> this is my biggest fear , of going away and having someone look after my tank ...what I tell people is to go to shoppers and get the pill containers that say mon tues wed thurs fri sat and sun
> put enough food in there that need to be and hide canister with dry food ...I would have top up water in pails with a jug for them to fill up canister and that's it .. not sure what was instructed to your sitter or what they did ..
> anyways it sucks and I am sorry for what u came home too


 How do you figure over feeding will kill fish ? You can put a whole can of flake food in the tank. All it will do is pollute the water and your filter will take care of that in time. FOOD IS NOT POISON !

Why would a power outage cause fish deaths ??????????????????? Let me guess ? Your power heads provide oxygen right ? NO. The power heads are for water motion. No motion water becomes stale, stagnant . Ever go by a lake with no moving water and it stinks ?

Climate control is a problem. Too hot or too cold.

You would think someone with almost 4,000 posts would know what they were talking about.


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## tom g (Jul 8, 2009)

*Enjoy*

Enjoy your tank......


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## Crayon (Apr 13, 2014)

mrfishy said:


> How do you figure over feeding will kill fish ? You can put a whole can of flake food in the tank. All it will do is pollute the water and your filter will take care of that in time. FOOD IS NOT POISON !
> 
> Why would a power outage cause fish deaths ??????????????????? Let me guess ? Your power heads provide oxygen right ? NO. The power heads are for water motion. No motion water becomes stale, stagnant . Ever go by a lake with no moving water and it stinks ?
> 
> ...


Woah, it's tough to talk in absolutes like this. Not sure where you are going with your comments.......

I can tell you from experience that a power outage can kill fish. It has happened to me. Not sure if your background is salt or fresh water, but a tank with no moving water and a high bioload will loose oxygen very quickly. A skimmer introduces oxygen as well as turn over between the Tank and sump. Moving water allows bad gases to escape to the surface and surface agitation keeps the O2 levels consistent. It's more than the fish that need oxygen, but they are the biggest consumers and the first to suffer if 02 levels go down.

The discussion in this thread is about what could have happened to cause deaths in a tank while on vacation. It is not about the expertise of the person providing advice.

And btw, I run a salt water system at 65 degrees as well as another system at 76 degrees. Climate control? Yeah, we will leave that conversation for now. Sudden change of climate will be a problem I agree, as will lack or oxygen and overfeeding.

To answer the original OP question, I don't think you can salvage a torch that has disconnected. It may have colour but the damage is done.
The algae on the glass is a result of 5 days being gone when the glass doesn't get cleaned. Nbd. If you clean the glass daily you would never notice the algae but after 5 days it is there.
Cleaner shrimp death won't be because of a fish kill, I suspect, but if it happened to molt and the fish were hungry, there is an outside chance. Depends on the fish, too. It may just have been the shrimps' time to go.
I find torches to be extremely sensitive to changes in nitrates and phosphates. A new person feeding could have been overzealous and fed a bit too much, but in 5 days, that would be significant overfeeding.
More likely the shrimp death may have caused a nitrate spike, so it all traces back to the one event.

It's hard on vacations to know what to ask people to do. I am away from my tanks for 3 or 4 days almost every week and although John can handle most of the tasks, if he is away as well, our fish sitter will not pull dead fish out of the system or know what to do if a coral looks bad.

I actually talked to our fish sitter yesterday and discovered he makes up the frozen food in advance to feed the fish for 3 days. A big no no, but he didn't know that the food would rot after 12 hours, he thought he was being efficient. So someone with no knowledge of keeping salt water fish may think they are doing something ok and not realize the possible impact.

Bottom line, bad timing on shrimp death. You will probably never know what happened to cause it to die, but don't let this shake your faith in fish sitters!


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## Reefy69 (Mar 8, 2016)

I had almost the same thing happen to me. I was gone for 10 days. came back to almost dead corals, algae and a fish died within a day or 2 when I was back. I never did figure out exactly what caused it, but next time I go away I vowed to hire someone who had experience. The amount you'll pay them will be a lot less than the amount you probably have invested in your tank.


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## wtac (Mar 17, 2006)

LPS polyps eject as a last ditch effort to get out of a "bad situation" and relocate.

One can recover ejected polyps and keep it in a basket and it will form a new base skeleton. Good water Q and gentle flow so that it's no longer blowing around is key.


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