Over the years I have had a couple of nasty catastrophes.
I accidentally dumped a bucket of bleaching water for dipping plants with algae into my larger can of changing water. I put this water into two tanks. My 50 gal. with 100 amano shrimp in it where I would put algae coverd plants and the shrimp cleaned it in a few hours. The second tank was even worse, it was 20L holding 23 zebra plecos. I had a buyer who ask me for the price to nuy all of them> I was not sure i wanted them all to go to a single buyer and said I needed to think about it over the weekend. All the shrimp an plecos were kelled.
2. I had a breding group of rare wild caught Hypancistrus L173 in a 33 long. They were actively spawning and I did not pay proper attention to the tank. I went to clean it over a weekend and when I sat down on the stool in front of the tank and turned on the light I discovered it had crashed. I had become gross;u over stocked. I lost one of the breeders and then about 75 offspring from under and nch to some over 2 inches. The offspring wold have sold for well over $12,500. Fortunately, the 9 breeder that survived were still able to breed and the offspring were still coming out healthy I repalced the dead on with the largest of the surviving offspring. *sigh*
3. On two occasions I had a heater get stuck full on in a tank. The first was a 40B which held a pair of discus, one of which was wild, about a dozen rummy nose tetras and 5 Hypancistus L450. When I found the tank the discus were dead- one stuck to the intake of an AC300 and the other in the floating plants along with the rummy nose were mush balls. However, the L450s were all hunkered won in caves and alive. They spawned for the first time about 2 weeks later.
The second instance was even worse. I had a breeding group of Hypancistrus L236 (now identified as part of the Hypancistus seideli group) in a 33L. There were a dozen breeders and about 25-30 offspring. All of them were dead. When I discovered this the tank temp was 124F. Fortunately, I had 25 offsprig from earlier spawns in a grow tank and had sent another 27 to Rachel O. aka msjinkzd. She offered to send some back but I said no as I had another 25 offspring in a grow tank from from which I created a new breeding group.
4. I have had 2 or 3 tanks in my bathroom for over 20 years. We have a maid who comes in once a week and cleans the house. I had 21 smaller zebra plecos in a 10 gal. in the bathroom. She must have gotten some of the cleaning chemicals into the tank. I discovered this the next morning and there were 5 dead zebras. I removed them and then did 2 massive (90%) back to back water changes and managed to save the 16 still alive. As a result I began covering the tank with a towel or bathmat as I also had another 10 and a 25 gal, in the bathroom. Since then she knew to cover the tanks if I failed to do so and I have never had another similar issue again. The incident happened about 17 years ago.
I have had 20 full time tanks for 20+ years and fewer before that and am now down to only 12. Plus every summer set up 6-8 tanks from June - late Sept. - early Oct. on our screened terrace. I am surprised I have not had more such problems. Bewteen my planted communities and my plecos breeding tanks and then the added seasonal tanks I would guess I have had at least 2,500 fish pass though
my systems over the 25+ years I have been keeping and breeding fish. So losing about 125 fish works out to 5% or less in the above losses. The problem is from a dollar point of view those losses amounted to over $16,500 in either my cost to acquire them or what they would have sold for had they not died.
At least I learned not to repeat the same mistake so that was the good side of it all, if I can see any good at all in those losses. I began putting heater controllers on many of my tanks as a result of the heater failures.
