I believe the problem with the berlin method (and I do think with this new proposed method) was neglect and lack of husbandry. A pure berlin has liverock and bare bottom. I rely on the DSB for aerobic and anaerobic bacteria (you should have smelled the substrate that haven't been disturbed when I broke down my tank!), so I only vacuum the front part of it, pull out some and replace with new every so often (maybe a bag every 2 years or so). When you run berlin, if you do anything like forget to do a water change, or forget to empty the skimmer, there is no buffer except the rock, and things can change too quickly.
My crash was a flood/overflow which knocked out the GFCI, while I was on vacation in Mexico. I had dual drains and both failed at the same time (that's why the new tank with 4 overflows!!). The guy looking over the tank for me freaked out at the low water level and water all over the floor so took a bucket of water (that I left to refill the ato), and dumped it into the tank. So 5 gallons of RO/DI water right on top of my best sps, and the power wasn't restored for a couple of days....
So the coral I had left was still alive, but was definitely in shock. To this day a couple of them haven't totally bounced back, and that happened 2 years ago almost. I could just go and try to find new frags, but the challenge is in restoring them
Now the tank has 2x power supplies, 2x large UPS backups, an always on internet connection, 2 wet and 2 dry overflows, and a few other things to make sure it never happens again. As long as there isn't failure to the overflow boxes or the glass itself, I think I'm pretty much bulletproof at this point
