Hurricane Jeanne kills coral reef

[Guest endymion]

I started a salt water reef aquarium in 1999 in my office. A 40 gallon vertical upright (one of the most impressive but most difficult shapes for a reef because of the small water surface area, slow gas exchange) that cost a few thousand in hardware and many more thousand in livestock. Corals, a couple of giant clams, soft corals that pulsate and move around and fight each other, things that puff up and eat things, hermit crabs, big green crabs with evil claws, a million snails, worms, cleaner shrimp, starfishes, brittle stars, sea cucumbers, live rock with a zillion species of little microscopic things that you can sit around watching for hours with a magnifying glass, the whole deal. Oh and a couple of little fishes.

When I moved to Miami we broke the thing down and moved it three hours to Melbourne, not a simple task. A living reef is an extremely complex thing in a delicate balance that gets just all screwed up when any little thing gets disrupted, even a power outage for just an hour or two. So we get it set up in Melbourne, it lives for another couple of years with my dad.

During hurricane Frances, my dad cycled the generator between powering the fridge, the deep freeze, the entertainment system, and the reef. He did that for more than a week and the reef came out on the other side sickly and offended but alive. The lights hadn't been on enough for the photosynthetic livestock to feed, chemical levels were getting out of whack from the pump being off and the water stagnating, it was a big crisis.

Now after hurricane Jeanne the power has been out there for two days. Entire patches of live rock are exposed because soft corals are dying off and shriveling up. Invertebrates like the shrimps and the crabs are dying or just vanishing like they do when they are at the end. The corals are all closed up and won't eat for weeks after this. The giant clams are past being closed up, they are 'gaping', which is what they do when they are really really really stressed and irritated with something in the water and about to die. Even the fishes are showing signs of stress, they are the sturdiest things in the tank. Algae growth is getting out of hand and diatom dust is all over the glass. Situation critical.

So this reef is going to die after five years. There is just no way for it to live through three weeks without power.

:(

[ryan2772]

they'll rebuild, man.

[Guest endymion]

Nah it's toast. My reef is a goner.

[ryan2772]

well then, you'll rebuild