Ahhhh! Tank water blew up. I'll be back soon!!

[flydan]

Hey,
Just got back from work about an hour ago. Wife says something is wrong with your tank. Rushed downstairs to find a tank full of GREEN water! Ahhhhh!!! All critters accounted for, one bunch of calurpa looks yellow with little hairs coming off the top, everything else looks fine; so far.
Did a quick 20% water change and am on my way to lfs for water test. I'll be back in about an hour with those results.
Help!
Dan'l

 

[risc]

I believe this is a time for:
You know you are (blank) if you (insert comment here)
So FlyDan:
You know you are a Saltwaterfish.com Addict if you take the time to tell the whole board a tank crisis you are having BEFORE you solve the crisis.
Jim

 

[flydan]

Hey,
Thanks Jim! Appreciate it! (That's sarcasm in case you missed it.)
I did all I could think of first, but I've never seen or heard of such a thing happening before! So I did the water change right away. Anyway, here are the results:
Nitrate: .20
Nitriet: .25
Amonia: .25
pH: 8.4
Phosphate: .25
They are all a little high but I thought something terrible would show up.
I still have no clue as to what's going on. Water looks absolutly terrible but everything inside looks fine. Fish are happy, finger leather, mushrooms, star polyps, condylactus and shrimp all look fine.
The only clue I have is that I dose with Coral-Vite on Thursdays. And today...booooom! Overdose? I've been using this once a week for 3 weeks.
Any help would be appreciated. I'll do another water change in the morning. BTW, for those of you that don't know my set up, it's a 55gal reef with 110+ lbs of lr, a dsb, skimmer, and HOT Magnum filter (Just some charcoal in there right now to try and clear the water)
Help? Thanks,
Dan'l

 

[risc]

FlyDan:
It's all good I love sarcasm
If your water is the green color of Coral-Vite then you may want to stick the micron filter into your Magnum. It will clean the water MUCH faster than the carbon filter will. The carbon is for bacterial filtration, while the micron filter is for water cleaning.
I would run that for about 8-10 hours then see how your tank looks.
Good luck,
Jim

 

[flydan]

Hey,
Thanks Jim. Your the best. I'll give that a shot. Sure can't hurt.
Dan'l

 

[flydan]

Hey,
Well, I've been running the micron filter for a couple of hours now and it's starting to clear up. Yipee!
So, anybody else ever have this happen with Coral-Vite? Guess I'll give it a while to settle down, then cut the dosage. Gave me quite a scare though!
Thanks again Jim, even if all you did was hold my hand!
Take care,
Dan'l

 

[saltwatersensae]

I dose coral-vite twice a week and this has never happend to me

 

[salisbury a d]

You said you dose it as in using an aquadose.
I just add it strait to the tank two capfuls a week since I got my first coral around the begining of January and have not had a problem or high test results.
** I did though for a while have my skimmer extract a blueish green colour liquid.
But that was it.
Adam

 

[beth]

Sounds to me like your calurpa is dying. Calurpa has the habbit of making your aquarium water a yellowish color [your lighting may be making that look green]. However, if you overdosed on supplements, this could, indeed, be the problem, and the additives could have killed off the calurpa. I'd suggest you remove all dead or dying plants.
BTW: carbon filtration functions as a mechanical-chemical filtration for about the first 2 weeks of use...so there is nothing wrong with using it to clean up your water under this circumstance. However, as the carbon ages, approx at 2 weeks old, then it looses its potency as a mechanical filtration and becomes, as risc said, a biological filter.

 

[flydan]

Thanks Beth,
It was indeed the calurpa dying off, and it was a whole bunch at once. I went in and took out as much of the dead stuff as I could. Water looked fine today and tests are a little better, but not perfect. I can't figure out why this one particular type of calurpa all died off at once. (I have two other types in there and they are fine.)
Anyway, the type that all died at once had leaves that looked like a fern. The other two types, one bubble and the other looks like cork-screw val. (For those of you familure with fresh water.)
This has been a strange occurance and I hope it never happens again!! I thought all my critters were toast.
Thanks again for your support and wonderful knowledge!
Dan'l

 

[mr . salty]

I am conserned with those water test results.There should be no(ZERO)amminia,or nitrites in there.IS YOUR TANK CYCLING?? It sure sounds like it.If so,this would explain why the algae died.My first guess was an algae spore bloom.But after seeing those test readings.I think you have a more serious problem on your hands...ASLO,,Why don't you have your own test kit???

 

[@knight]

did you recently make any additions or changes to your system that could have caused it to cycle? how long has your tank been set up?

 

[flydan]

Hey,
Tank was set up 4/16/01. Last bunch of lr went in on 7/9/01, cleanup crew added on 7/20/01. Last addition of any sort was 8/1/01 when I added a finger leather and green star polyp colony.
I have a test kit, but it's a Red Sea liquid kit and I don't trust it 100%, although I can't say I've gotten any false readings from it.
Dan'l