Tank Is Crashing Please Help!!

[Ditchplains2]

Guys, I'm having a major issue. I'm not new to the hobby but I don't have an answer for this problem.


Here goes:


4 days ago I notice my blue linkia must have died or was dying in my aqauirum, I did drip acclimate him for a few hours, but he may have starved in the 2 months I kept him. So I did a large water change. I grabbed a rubbermaid container I put out back for trash, I washed it, etc...

I did a large water change maybe 20 gallons out of my 65 or 70 that's my total tank volume. I use a Sybon refractometer to measure salinity, everything was fine, I didn't wait the 24hrs of allowing the water to balance Co2 wise but I made sure it mixed for a few hours.



A day or so later, everything started to look bad. Then 2 days later coral polyps rectraced, then STN'ing and RTn of certain corals. I though because they were newly added ( less then a month old) that maybe the flow was tearing the flesh off, I was wrong. So I cut a few frags of good material andthrew the rest out.

Today, all snails are dead or dying, trochus, and astrea, nassarius seem ok relatively.

All fish, clowns, clown tang, flame angel doing poorly, slow moving, not eating.

The Ph did spike a little during that time from 8.2 to 8.6 and so today I did a second water change.

Mind you during this whole time both my Tunze skimmers are puling out white or greyish foam or suds.

I am seeing precipitation yet, I am mixing the water properly to 1.026 its Seachem reef salt.


I'm FING STUMPED!!! HELP!

Secondly, I woke up today and my friggin ORP ( lab grade) stopped working, it read 000 and it wasnt dried out or above water line, it just stopped working.

I think I'm loosing my God damned mind here, sorry for explatives, but I'm about to have a mental breakdown here.

Please any suggestions

btw mytank parms are temp 79.8 Ph is 8.02 as per aquacontroller III, ORP is fubared so I unplugged it.

Tank is just crashing.

any help appreciated
David V.

 

[trido]

Have you tested the water since this has happened. What is your ammonia, nitrites and nitrates? Also what is your Ca. and alk?

Id bet the linkia started to rot causing an ammonia spike and of course a new cycle, and then the death race was on. You may need to do a 20G WC every day or even twice a day to get things back in check. Id start with a 75% WC right now if that is possible.

Also, it is remote but there could have been something (cleaners, chemicals) in the rubber maid left out back for trash that made matters worse. I tend to doubt it.

 

[hdben]

Sorry to hear of any loses, question though, how did you wash out that water container. I assume you are using ro/di water and you checked your fresh s/w for it's paramters before adding it.

 

[ronj]

what did you wash the trash can with??? do you have any toxic inhabitants in the tank??? you may want to make sure your refractometer is calibrated...i would get a new container and try mixing up some more water and do a large water change again(after testing the refractometer) i hope you get everything figured out!!

 

[Ditchplains2]

thanks guys!!

Well I did a total of 50g water changes today. I'm also running an airstone in the sump to make sure 02 levels are ok.

I think your right Trido, I think the dead Linkia started a new tank cycle.

Sadly, and stupidly I don't have a test kit on hand, I threw out my old salifert kits, I have been keeping reefs for 6 years now, I only tested in the beginning, nitrates and amonia, when I was cooking my rocks ( i did this for 3 months) Now with my ph probe and orp, I hardly had a need to test and I kept my biolad very low. Obviously that was a dumb move! I'm going out tommorow after work to buy a new set of test kits. I will post my results. I'm hoping everybody will survive the night although I very much doubt they will, GBTA is dead or dying, Angel and Clown Tang look like hell, clowns slow going.


I really don't know if anything toxic got put in the rubbermaid container, I doubt it, but possible. I only washed it with water. Maybe there was residue of something inside it. ugh!
I use Ro/Di with two tds meters on it, all showing zero, my water starts at 44ppt and ends up with 0ppt in the end, its a spectrapure maxcap 180g.

My refrectormeter is calibrated, I did recheck it to just make sure, but it seems fine, ph is now 7.96

thanks guy, I'm just watching all my corals die, which is horrible right now.

David

 

[MikeS]

Sounds to me like a toxic contamination problem...is there any way something toxic may have accidentally been introduced into your tank? In the meantime, if you have activated carbon, now is the time to use it, and lots of it! Keep us updated....

MikeS

 

[Ditchplains2]

Mike, Thanks for thre reply. No sadly I don't have activated carbon, I work like a dog drive a 2hr commute to and from work totaling a 4hr day in the car alone, and I work 9hr days, plus we have a newborn at home. I don't know what type of toxic contamination could have caused this problem. Only thing could have been someone dumped some chemicals in that container and rinsing didn't get it out.

just watching everything die here, its horrible. ugh.


David

 

[Jan]

Ahhh....sooo sorry for you David. This is horrible. Sometimes people use a product called Polyfilter to absorb toxins/metals from water. Could you possibly take a day off and go to a LFS and get some of that, some carbon (you really need carbon bad), a new container for mixing SW, etc???

 

[MikeS]

Very sorry to hear about the tank, I hope what you have left will be ok until tomorrow. Sounds like there isn't much more you can do tonight...are the lights off? If not, I'd turn them off, that will help lower the stress level of the fish a bit...it's not much, but it may help. Make sure you get a bunch of carbon tomorrow with your test kits....from your description I'd still guess a toxic contamination is a good bet as to why the tank is crashing so fast and the tunze's are churning out foam.....BTW, what does the foam smell like? does it have a detergent or chemical smell to it at all?

MikeS

 

[Ditchplains2]

oddly enough

Ok so that container I was using to mix my water in, obviously a bad choice I know may not have been the culprit.

For some ungodly reason, and I don't know why because I was measuring each bacth of water made, the salinity is suddenly 1.029 even though I was mixing the water at 1.026. I recalibrated my Sybon refractometer twice with pure 18ohm water just to make sure. So I'm wondering why the water is cloudy, part of it could be a high salinity Im thinking.

Mike to answer your questions, yes there was a bleach smell to the water, very faint but there, but I do run ozone, maybe because my orp probe was on its way out the ozone dosed too high bleaching the tank? I'm unsure and until I get a new probe I wont know for certain. I'm going to go in late tommorow pic up some poly filter and some carbon and run that til I see some results. I'm going to buy a nice mixing and draining container online tonight from US plastics. I hope this helps. Yes luckily my good corasl. Roscoe, Mike Paletta, Ora Tort, and green samonesis are doing ok as is my TCN blue coral. The rtn'd corals were my red samonesis, and my green with red polyps Florida. ugh sucks. my purple and purple polyped montis dont look good though .... gbta is hanging on for dear life. I just hope my clowns and other fish survive the night.


thanks guys so much
David

 

[MikeS]

Yeah, I'd get that SG down a bit...

Let us know how it turns out tomorrow...best of luck!

MikeS

 

[Ditchplains2]

Thanks Mike!!

Goodnight!
David

 

[billaweed]

any chance of chlorine/chloramine? Copper?

this sounds like something that happend to me when my RO/DI unit went bad and I introduced chlorine in my tank. Slowly all my inverts and corals died. Luckly I caught it before my fish died. All my fish looked like they had problems breathing, slugish swimmers, and werent eating as much.

just a thought

 

[Ditchplains2]

Billaweed, well the only real possibilities here are the container I mixed the water in, was sitting outside near trash, landlord could have dumped stuff into it, I rinsed it a few times to no avail. RO is new Spectrapure Maxcap, and tds shows nothing 0. I'm going to get a copper test tommorow hopefully no cooper.


David

 

[Scooterman]

If your having problems still, If you can set-up a qt type tank I'd install new water & put your corals & fish in there until you can clear up the main tank, one thing dieing after another will continue causing issues until you can stop it. I know those 15/26 hours days are killer. I'd stop using your Orp until you can get it right also, If you didn't already. This will buy you some time, you mentioned cloudy salt water, sounds like you have a bad batch that it didn't dissolve properly. Also calibrating your Syborn you should be using the 53MS Pinpoint Solution, once set it shouldn't change, If it does that easily then may be time to yank it, My Syborn seems to be dead on with my glass hydrometer which is dead accurate but only after calibrating it.

 

[Ditchplains2]

Im using my glass hydrometer its reading the same, its in the green. I thought the purpose of calibrating the sybon was to get zero from pure 18ohm water and then from there its supposed to work, I do have a container of pinpoint 53ms salinity solution. The smell from the tank is bad right now. I'm going to head out and get some carbon and filter pads and maybe a qt tank.


this is so horrible
David

 

[Scooterman]

Hey David, I'd have to dig it all up but Boomer latest information on the calibration is still holding true to the Pinpoint 53Ms solution.
Anyways, stay with it, do what you can & an emergency crash hospital tank will at least save what you can until you can get time to figure out what is going on, lets hope you can save as much as you can & get better results.

 

[Ditchplains2]

so far

I bought some activated carbon, I'm running that with my phosguard. I added some Blueboded poly pads to my bubble trap to absorb any particulates. I also purchased Kents Ammonia detox its supposed to neutralise chlroamine, chlorine and ammonia.


I bought a cheap Red-sea Marine lab test kit.

results are as follows

ph 8.0 greyish/purple

alk is normal greenish-blue

ammonia is reading bright yellow or zero

I didn't run nitrate or nitrite yet, but you can get the picture.

I'm stumped my water is still cloudy as hell, I've lost 4 corals so far, but suffice to say my fish are doing ok now, tang is swimming, as are clowns and angel.

Im hoping the worst is over.

I had an extra carbon block and some 1 micron filters for my ro/di unit I'm going to switch them out even though their not discolored to see if that's the cause ( leeching from carbon block and or micron filters) tds is 44 in 0 out so far.

ugh very very frustrating, I wouldn't have felt the least good about this without everyone's help here, thanks so much guys, any further advice or suggestions please add them

David

 

[MikeS]

I think the carbon should help a bunch...use lots of it and change it out often until you stop seeing the problems in the tank....

Scooty's recommendation of moving the livestock out of the tank is a good one, I'd do that if you can....

MikeS

 

[Ditchplains2]

Mike yea it's a great idea, except I live in a small apartment well its a 3 bedroom, but not that big with a baby and her stuff, so I really cant, plus Im not sure if the problem wasnt from the ro/di leaching chrloamine into the water in the first place. I could try to pick up a small 10 g aquarium and placing the corals in there later today, but wont that just be a sterile enviorment and kill them anyway?

thanks for the help right now, I won't forget this guys.

David