everything is dying! levels are good!

thisistodd

Member
i put this in the new hobbyist section because i made a new hobbyist mistake i should have known better. yesterday i added a 29 gallon fuge to my 50 gallon tank, but only filled the fuge halfway. i mixed my saltwater and started the fuge after only a couple of hours. needless to say, the water in the fuge was cold and it dropped the temp in my tank about 4 degrees from 82 to 78. now all my corals are closed, my mushrooms are shriveled up, and 2 fish have died. my other green chromis that hasnt died looks terrible, breathing very fast and wiggling around. even my turbo snail looks like its dying. all other fish are swimming very sluggishly. I tested my water and salinity is at 33 ppt, Ammonia at 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 20ppm. what could possibly be causing all this??? this sucks i was so stupid to do that and now it seems like my whole system is going down the drain.
 

bang guy

Moderator
Now that your tank is stable you just need to let everything recover. Remove any dead animals you see immediately.
Fish don't usually react so negatively to temp drops so I would guess the salt was not fully stopped reacting when you opened up the refugium.
 
O

osufarker

Guest
I made a similar mistake early on. The salt needs to be mixed and aerated for at least 24 hours before it is considered "stable".
 

thisistodd

Member
seriously, there has got to be something more wrong than the salt mix. even my feather duster is dead looking. i can actually see through the tube part and see the worm inside. the mushrooms have fallen off the rocks and are the size of a dime. they were about 4" open. my hermits are moving soooo slow they used to be very lively. could the glue from gluing the pvc somehow contaminated the water??
 

thisistodd

Member
ok this could be bad. i just saw another post about silicone. i used 100% silicone kitchen and bath sealant. i also filled the tank after about 2 hours when it was dry. i just read that it fully cures in 24 hours and in the safety section it said. "releases acetic acid when curing" i have a bad feeling about this. could that be the problem? should i just count on my whole tank dieing? anyone?
 

krowleey

Active Member

Originally posted by ThisisTodd
ok this could be bad. i just saw another post about silicone. i used 100% silicone kitchen and bath sealant. i also filled the tank after about 2 hours when it was dry. i just read that it fully cures in 24 hours and in the safety section it said. "releases acetic acid when curing" i have a bad feeling about this. could that be the problem? should i just count on my whole tank dieing? anyone?

oh man im sorry, but it sure does sound like a poisoning to me. a 4 degree temp flux aint gonna crash your system period :nope:
 

thisistodd

Member
ok yeah this is what i have to beleive this is not normal at all. i just mixed 40 gallons of saltwater downstairs. should i wait a day and start changing out water? if so how much should i do and how often?
 

bang guy

Moderator

Originally posted by ThisisTodd
i used 100% silicone kitchen and bath sealant.

Uh oh. These products contain a chemical to deter mold and are deadly to many reef type animals.
 

thisistodd

Member
yes i already disconnected it. now tomorrow i will have the water ready. how much water should i change at a time? will i run into cycling again? thanks alot for your input
 

bang guy

Moderator
You can safely change 20% every other day providing the Salinity & temperature are close to the display tank levels.
 

sly

Active Member
I'm the one who used non-aquarium silicon you mentioned in the other thread. Here's what happened.
I had a leak develop in my old refugium and so I threw it away. I had already patched it twice and I had another tank laying around anyway. I glued in a plexiglass wall in the tank and I used 100% Loctite Silicon sealant. I let it dry over night and then I put the refugium in my system. After about 3 days I started getting brown hair algae on my substrate and on my rocks. My snails stopped moving around and my anemone was not opening fully. I did a partial water change and cleaned everything, vaccuming the substrate and scrubbing the rocks with a toothbrush. The next day I had brown algae again. I kept stirring the substrate and rinsing out my pre-filters. They were collecting a lot of junk.
It wasn't getting better. I added 2 big bags of activated carbon and some phosphate remover pellets to my main tank and took out the refugium. I have mangroves in the refugium and so I put them in a bucket. They are actually looking very good.
I've had the refugium out for only 6 hours and haven't noticed a major difference yet. I have a film on top of the water and my feather duster is not opening all the way although it is sticking out more now that it was this morning, which may be a good sign. My skimmer is producing like crazy. I'm emptying it almost twice a day. My water was getting cloudy despite my using ozone, but now it's looking really clear.
I'm going to give it another day and then tomorrow night I'm going to clean everything off again and do a partial water change.
 

sly

Active Member
LOL!!

I just woke up this morning and found this... I think my anemone is trying to tell me something. It seems to have settled in my carbon cup.:D
At first I didn't see it. It wasn't in its normal spot and so my eyes drifted over to the power head that the other one I had got sucked into. But no... It somehow positioned itself right down in the cup and is now opening up more than it has in days.
It's so cute.
 

thisistodd

Member
haha yeah i put carbon in thinking mabye it might get something out. it seems to be doin a bit better, my zoos are opening, but my shrooms look pretty dead, not to mention my 3 chromis.
 
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