disaster

[scottm]

I have a 90gal tank. its been up and running for 4 months now. i was so exited. i built 2 overfloew boxes out of pvc got a 10 gallon tank for a sump, no wet dry just a 10 gal tank to circulate the water useing a rio 2500 for a pump, 500gph at a 4ft head. i use the sumpbasicly for circulation a water level works grate the bigest protienskimmer the store had a cpr sr4.
i have 2to3 inches of caribsea aragonite gavel and 2to 3inches of caribsea live sand separated by a fiberglass mesh. i use io salt. i filter with 2 wisper 170 water filters. i have a 250w ebo jagar heater set at 77deg.
i have 3 55w 10000k compact floresent and 3dark blue actinic that i run less than 8 hours and more than 7 hours. and i did not use them the first six weeks.
i filled the tank with tap water the ph of the tap water was 8.4 and i used a hagen test kit to mesue the phosfates it is 0 out of the tap. thereafter i have used distilled water for top offs and water changes
i got 35 to 40 pounds of live rock it had a nice pink algee on it.
i started with 3 damsels, yellow tail 3 strip and a domino.
the tank looked greate for at least 2months then the sand started getiing brown so i got some turbo snails and hermit crabs. the sand got worse so i got a white burowing star an orange star 2 sea cumbers and a britle star. then the sand got air bubbles in it with red patches. then the bubbles coverd the glass and the rock. the pink algee turned bleach white and is now coverd with green fuzzy algee. thesea cumbers are dead, the albalone is dead the britle star is dead, the 3 damsels are dead due to ick that i trided to treat with invert safe teatment and the tank stinks.
i use hagen test kits its all the lfs has. ammonia has always read 0, phosphate 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 0, ph 8.2, temp 77, specific gravity 1.022. i change 10gal of water every 2 weeks.
im about ready to scrap it all and go bare bottom with only 1 fish. ive got to much money invested to stop now. whats my problem. (me)
please excuse my gramer and speeling im a littel upset thank you for your time.

 

[fshhub]

first thing's first, did you say that your nitrate and all was always zero, or zero after you went through your cycle, if so, i would get another test kit, and or have the lfs check your water, because you should have had a peak during your cycle where all 3 went up
2d, do you live in town, town water has chlorine in it,a nd often othe r metals, so can well water(metals that is), which may have posed a problem for your inverts
3d if the above was the case, and it killed your cukes(now bear with me, here, i don't know my cukes by name) or if one died by another means, but many cukes when spooked or killed will emit a toxin into the water which can very easily kill everything in an aquarium, or at the least, stress the devil outta them, causing ick in some of the fish that may survive, now if this is the case, i can't help much with the clean up of the toxins(i don't know if it may have affected the rock or sand)
it does sound like you have everything else good(water parameters), but as i said you may have a bad kit too
as for the algae, the brown growth is normal in a 4 month old system, it is part of a phase and can be controlled with snails conchs or crabs, the pink turning color could be from die off, coraline when it dies or grows will turn this color, and that cna happen for any reason(low calcium, transportation, ,cycling or whatever) but it will regrow
and last, what med did you use for ick??, this could be a big part of the problem too, lfs's don't always know what they are telling you(some do yes, but many don't)
sorry for your loss, but maybe these things can help to find your problem, but i do sympathize,a nd hope you stick it out, because this is a great hobby and well worth the effort, although you may have some doubts right now, i really hope we can help you to get it going again
HTH(some)

 

[dwf]

what was the invert safe treatment you used? I'm going through about the same thing with my 90 gal.
after reading all the posts here, i'm convinced that the only way to treat for parasites is with hyposalinity and garlic.

 

[von_rahvin]

tap water unless you draw from a deep deep well has many bad things in it. Either buy water from a store or get a RO/DI. I was haveing algea blooms and they were causing all kinds of problems. Massive water changes you name it. Then i got a RO/DI started using water out of that and BAM no more problems of that nature. You do not have to buy one, although you can get a 60gpd kent for like 150-200, it all depends on how much your time is work, it was a .5 hr round trip to get 20 gallons of water for me and i would have to do a few trips. I got the RO/Di no i walk to my kitchen hit a switch and 30 mins later i have 5 gallons, mean while i can do whatever around the house. I consider it to be one of the most wonderful things i bought.

 

[wamp]

As said before tap water can cause problems. The bubbles you see are coming from the release of gasses by the algea. The red stuff you see is probabbly Cynobacteria. You can help this stuff go away with strong Protein Skimming and Good water circulation. I have also gotten rid of it with salt water maricin. I do not recomend this because it has antibiotics in it which may harm your "good" bacteria. It takes time to cure this and if you are new ,as i once was, you will be impatient and do something drastic. I will give you this little hint.. SLOW DOWN.. you cannot rush nature. Skimming has helped many people in this situation. The Brown algea you see is more than likley Diatoms. These will go away after you tank has fully cycled unless you keep adding them.. ie tap water.. Good luck and stay with it!

 

[wamp]

P.S. use carbon to remove the smell and get some garlic extract for the ich problem..

 

[scottm]

i used greenex i dont know much about it, though it will strees your inverts quite a bit and it gets a blue-green on everything.
test kits-- yea, thats what i thought, that the test kit was no good so after 2or 3 months maybe i mised the cycle so i buy the next thing, a nitrite test kit and it shows 0, so i buy the next best thing a nitrate test kit just today, "0"
well now they all cant be bad
what about hydrogensulfide gas you know the air bubbles that came up from the sand?