a couple of pics

[mojoreef]

Sryder sorry for the delay in repling. The first thing I would look into is if you introduced some kind of parasite, so check the the hammer and the skeliton of the brain if you have it for holes or a brown jelly like material.
Leathers also can be a pain as they release teripins (sp?) and other simular type of chemicals to control thier neighbors. So beware of that.
On a side note your nitrates are a tad up, so work to control that as well.



Mike

 

[sryder]

thanks mike, I did look for the browning and it looked good. i will look for holes tonight when i get home. im curious as to the nitrates though. awhile back my trates went up to around 40. i did a couple of say 40 % water changes a few days apart and brought them down to the 10.my daily water changes do not seem to have an effect on them and they remain at 10. my thoughts then were to move around the rockwork and blow out and siphon up as much detritus as possible. I have good flow around the rockwork and i believe a good pattern to the overflow areas. I also have added water volume via a rubbermaid sump of around 40 gallons. the old 30 gallon sump has now become a fuge in which i will add some algae to soon. all top off and make up water is r/o and tests clean for phosphates and or nitrates. i am wondering if the terpenes are the answer. 1) the water params other then the trates seem pretty good. 2) the leathers seem unaffected to any sort of problem and are actually doing quite well. 3) the fish i lost were realy healthy the days before. the other thing that has me stumped is the algae. could there be phosphates that are being bound but are not reading or maybe silicates. any ideas would surly be appreciated again. steve

 

[sryder]

ok all i believe i found the solution just wish it was sooner. but i do believe this can be something that others can also look for. you have read the problems i was having with the tank. all params seemed good exept for the trates. After beating my head against the wall over and over and watching my corals and fish die off i kept asking myself what had changed when these problems started. one was the introduction of a couple of corals.my thoughts were some kind of disease or parasite. too high nitrates and possible toxins. after many water changes and cleanings nothing seemed to work. a few days ago my wife was cleaning the tank off of the ladder. with her hands in the tank one of her metal studs on her pants touched the ladder and gave her a small but noticeable shock. i began immediatly unplugging all of the devices on the tank and found that the tunze i introduced to the tank right around when all of this started was giving off electrical currentand killing my tank. since the tunze was removed i can see noticeable differences in the fish and corals that are left. everything seems to be getting better. this would definetly raise the trates as it was killing everything. hopefully this can help someone else out there. steve

 

[nasher8860]

Awwww...poop magoop...that suks man. Did you get the tunze used or something or was it just a bad make.That is a real bummer I'm glad you found the problem..

 

[sryder]

no nash that was a brand new one....steve

 

[wrightme43]

Wow that is the first problem I have heard of with a tunze. How did the company handle it?

 

[sryder]

steve, i havnt contactd them yet. im not sure if i should contact them or the lfs that i purchased it from.

 

[NaH2O]

Wow! Glad to hear you found the problem. Maybe start with the LFS, and see if they will replace it, and then they can get in touch with Tunze.

 

[Detri]

I am curious how Tunze reacts over this situation. It sounds like a manufacturer defect. I would contact them directly and see what they say.

 

[Dieselbreath]

keep us informed what they have to say. I was just looking at buing one. Not too sure now, well see their response.
Jason

 

[sryder]

sorry for the delay guys. I had emailed tunze and they were a little surprised at my problem. one solution they gave was that something else inside the tank was ungrounded and because the tunzes are so well grounded that it was acting as a ground to the tank. they also had said that lighting is almost always the culprit> well after scratching my head for a while at what he had said. (not being an electrition) I went to the local hardware store and bought an amp meter. upon placing one end of the meter into the ground of the outlets and the other in the tank, i got nothing. I was still getting shocked though. i removed the cover on the outlet to find that when the previous owner in the house ran the ground wires he never connected them to the outlets themselves. after running jumper wires to the ground and putting all of my gizmos into 2 heavy duty stanley surge protecters with free gfi's everything including the tunze seems to be working fine. I also added a ground probe for added protection. now its hair algae to fight offf......lol steve

 

[NaH2O]

Glad to hear you have it figured out, and are no longer getting shocked! Now, go get that hair algae!

 

[sryder]

hi nikki, I dont know if this is good or bad but it seemed everytime i tried to remove the algae from inside the tank it would only get worse. Yesterday i removed every piece of rock one by one and scrubbed them off. I siphoned all the crud off the bottom rinsed and returned the rock. man the tank looks good when you do that. I just hope that it did not hurt the biological aspect of the rock. I have a few patches on the overflows and on the back which i am now afraid to touch. I am off tommorrow so i will probably turn off all the pumps and scrape and siphon it the best i can. Ive heard that certain types of urchins and or nudibranches are good for hair algae. do you know which ones? nudibranches kinda worry me after what i just went through. steve

 

[Krish]

Hi sryder! Foxfaces and tangs love hair alge. I'm sorry to hear about the problems you are experiencing. I've had the same problem where I scrubbed my rocks clean to only have them come back full blown in 2-3 days with hair algae. I beat it though...I took the tank down and threw all of my rocks and sand in the yard for 6 months! I don't suggest that for you though(LOL). One thing to keep in mind...You could scrub off all of the hair algae all you want, but if you still have nitrates etc in your water, they will only grow back. My problem was my bio-balls and not using ro/di water. Things have changed since and knock on wood never been better. I hope you get all sorted out. I wish you all the best...

 

[sryder]

thanks for bringing up the foxface krish. i had bought one for my son a couple of weeks ago and he got sucked into my maxijet face first. that was the end of him. my kole tang that left for better places was a great algae eater I see another in the future. i still have my red sea sailfin but he just picks. the lawnmower blenny is the fattest little bugger you ever did see. lol i sometimes dont believe that he will make it fromm rock to rock without sinking.....lol steve

 

[NaH2O]

Steve - how are your nitrates doing? Rest of the parameters? I believe you are using RO/DI and skimming really well. I added a Lettuce Nudibranch to my tank. She had babies, and I only have 1 alive still.....that little bugger I watched grow and grow. I don't know how long I've had it now...8 months or so. Rabbitfish are nice, and I believe your tank is a decent size....you could probably add a long spined urchin (watch the spines!). I have both in my tank (rabbitfish and urchin). The urchin has grown very large, and the rabbitfish picks at algae constantly (although she's not paying much attention to the caulerpa...grrrr). The only other thought I had is you are sporing out the algae when you pull it from in the tank, so that's why it seems to spread. Does the hair algae look like bryopsis?

 

[sryder]

it gets kinda one stalk then long clumps if that makes sense. it is stringy not ferny like bryopsis. Ill try to post a pic for you. all params seem normal exept for the nitrates. 20 ppm. i have been water changing like mad for a while now. The only place it can be coming from is the rocks. I had a lot of die off during this situation. I would imagine rock dwellers as well died off. I think i am going to add some of the copepod to the tank and new fuge.

 

[sryder]

maby these will help with the id nikki.

 

[sryder]

its on the back overflows and as you can see the tips of my finger leather. here is some better pics not thinking of algae.

 

[sryder]

couple of more