help fish pros... i dont know what happened

akidnamedchad

akidnamedchad

Member
So i have a 135 gallon fish tank that up untill yesterday was fine. I have around 100 pounds of live rock in the tank or more. I have a coralife protien skimmer the 125 model and a wetdry system.
Fish:
1 piccaso trigger
1 bird wrasse
1 cleaner wrasse
1 naso tang
2 blu damsles (which i hate with a passion, they are like two sharks).
2 serpant stars.
Well i bought the naso about alittle more than two weeks ago. I bought the cleaner wrasse about a week ago.
I bought the tank used and the guys said he had it for like 8 years. Ive had the tank for 1 year now.
Ive have only lost a couple fish to fighting and ich.
So here is the problem i test the water saturday morning and every thing is good.
Ammonia 0ppm
Nitrite 0ppm
Nitrates 15-20ppm
Also before its asked its been a week and a half since a water change on the 135 and i instruct my dad to how important it is that he doesnt over feed so im pretty shure that couldnt have been the cause either.
I go out sunday morning and come home around 3 ish to find the tank really cloudy, i thought that one of the fish messed with the sand bed. i check back in twenty minutes and there is no change. so i do a water test and every thing is the same except the ammonia. it sky rocketed. it went up to 8 ppm
So i figured something died. But every thing was fine except for a star fish that had 2 legs missing. So i dont know what happened.
it went up to 8 ppm. So i go into a panic and do a 30 gal water change. (all i had ready) and put in some ammo lock.
The naso looked sick. I have a 90 gallon also thats been running for over 6 months thats a very healthy tank. so i threw him in there for safety. I also threw my wrasse in there two cause he wasnt looking to good. and im throwing the piccaso in a ten gallon with clean water.
Any help or advise would be great. Im going to the LFS to get some nitromax to throw in the tanks.
Any advice or reason to why this happened.
 
renogaw

renogaw

Active Member
8ppm would mean a total death for everything in your tank--fish, inverts, even the bacteria in your rock. If things are still alive in there, i doubt it got that high and would think it was a faulty test or user error. how deep is your sand bed?
hopefully by "threw them in" you really mean you acclimated them to the tank and didn't just plop them in.
if you have ich, you need to look into hypo for your fish and leave your DT fishless for upwards of 6 weeks. oh, and by the way, by putting your naso into the other tank you also infected that tank.
 
rainbowsix

rainbowsix

Member
Sounds to me like one of two things if I had to guess.
Someone threw a boatload of food in there, like a bunch, kids maybe?
Second, all the filter media was cleaned and put back in, water will be real clear at first then go into a mini cycle, ammonia will be the first to hit.
 
rbaldino

rbaldino

Active Member
Originally Posted by RainbowSix
Second, all the filter media was cleaned and put back in, water will be real clear at first then go into a mini cycle, ammonia will be the first to hit.
Why would that happen when he has 100 pounds of live rock?
 
rainbowsix

rainbowsix

Member
well I know what you are saying, but I have about 40 pounds in my 29 and it has happened to me before. If you take out the main source of bacteria which is in the filter in most cases, you may get this.
 
renogaw

renogaw

Active Member
the main sourse of bacteria should be in the rock, sand, and water column. I rinse out my prefilter in my overflow and on my return pump all the time and haven't had an ammonia spike.
 
nigerbang

nigerbang

Active Member
I would like to just throw this out here....Ammolock ® does not get rid of Ammonia...It just "Locks it up"..Its still there and when the Ammolock ® wears off...The Ammonia will come right back..
 
rainbowsix

rainbowsix

Member
Maybe I should clarify, I use the biocube things in my fluval, so that is what I am talking about if you wash those all out it gets rid of the bacteria in your filter. Cannot believe I cannot think of the name of those, lol. Look like cheerios, only longer and white,
 
akidnamedchad

akidnamedchad

Member
i did another test today and the ammonis seems as though it has dropped to 4 ppm. But im not shure since there is no nitrites. but the nitrates seem as though they went up also. But i got the api kits and going by colors isnt that great. (side note what is a better test then api).
the trigger and two damsels are in there and fine. nothing seems to change about them.
After talking to a LFS guy about the tank we came to the conclusion that the filter wasnt doing its job. which is my fualt because i was taking peoples advice and lowering nitrates by taking out bio balls. He said that even with all that rock in there it cant keep up with the bio from the tang.
So hopefully every thing turns out ok and i dont have any deaths. every one is fine and the 90 gallon seems like its having a party with those fish in there. Also the 90 gallon is steady and not having any changes in the water chemistry.
.
So this was a valuable lesson that i wish i would have learned from word of mouth or this forum.
-chad
 
rainbowsix

rainbowsix

Member
so precisely what I was saying is what was wrong. You were removing filter media and that is what was causing it. It has happened to me before, so that is how I knew. Good luck and let me know if you need anymore help.
 
michaeltx

michaeltx

Moderator
sorry but unless you removed it all at one time that is not the cause of this problem. something else has happened in the tank.
how did your skimmer react during this time when the ammonia started going up?
Mike
 
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