Possible Tank Crash...... Could use some help!

[McFraembs]

Hello everyone,
So I woke up this morning to find my cleaner shrimp dead and Rittiri Anemone dead also...... All my polyps are closed and my toadstools have all fallen over. I tested my ammonia, ph, salinity, etc and everything seems to be in an acceptable range. My nitrates were just a hair higher than what they usually are.

I had my aquarium down for about 6 hours unfortunately as I was re-plumbing some items and ran into some issues a few days ago, however everything was fine the following day until I woke up this morning.

I am doing a water change now and not sure if I need to remove these corals to prevent further loss, to be honest I don't know if these corals are even dead at this point.

Can anyone give me some advice on what I need to do? it seems that all my fish are happy, some snails also died but that was about it.

Thank You!!!!

 

[beth]

Sorry to hear this. First, you can't completely turn off all pumps in a tank, especially a reef tank. Go ahead and take current readings of water and post them, including pH, salinity, temperature, ammonia, nitrite, nitrate. If you have a healthy cycled tank, then yes, be prepared to transfer the corals if things get worse. Were all pumps shut down?

 

[McFraembs]

Beth,
I had both of my ecotech mp40's running while the tank was down, however my heater was in the sump so it had no heat going to the display. once I got the tank running again the temp showed 73 degrees....... I just tested the parameters and this is what I came up with.

PH - 8.2
Ammonia - 0.125 "API never gives me a zero test, I assume it is at 0.00
Nitrite - 0.0 PPM
Nitrate - 160 PPM!!!! Tank has never tested this high, I assume this is from the tank mates that died
Calcium - 440 ppm
Salinity - 1.025

I can't tell if my coral are dead, should I remove them? Or is there a chance to save them? Im not sure if they will generate more nitrate spike.

 

[McFraembs]

My 1 hour job turned into 6 hours, my bulkhead cracked in my overflow which required me to drive over 2 hours to get the part......

 

[flower]

My 1 hour job turned into 6 hours, my bulkhead cracked in my overflow which required me to drive over 2 hours to get the part......

Hi, What test kit are you using to get a reading that high? My API wouldn't go any higher tan 80. at 40, inverts like anemones and shrimp die, over 20 will kill coral... So nitrates could be the cause for sure. You have to figure out how nitrates got so high and fix that. If you are doing regular water changes, and tests, I can't imagine your readings at 160 ppm being accurate. You would have seen your readings of nitrates creeping up over time, not a sudden reading of 160ppm.

Die off causes ammonia spikes, not high nitrates. 73 degrees isn't going to kill everything off, because the tank cools and reheats slowly... but sudden change would be deadly.

LOL, always count your blessings: Stuff breaking is why I stopped doing stuff on Sundays, or in the middle of the night (I worked night shift, so that was normal time for me). While a 4 hour trip is a bother, at least you could go get the needed part.

Unless a coral is oozing goo and poisoning the tank, don't remove it. You will be amazed at how well some corals can rebound and grow again, I once had Xenia that disappeared into a tiny pool of goo on a rock...after I replaced my bulb, what looked like tiny hair began to grow from that spot, I got out a magnifying glass, to my delight, it was tiny Xenia, and within a month I had a full beautiful crop growing happy and strong.

 

[beth]

I'm going to move this to Reef Forum. Also closed out the duplicate topic you had open.

Do you normally have nitrates that high or is that recent? What size is your tank? What filtration do you have on this tank?

Are you premixing and aging your water before using it in the tank?

 

[McFraembs]

Flower,
I have one of the API test kits, and my Nitrates tested at zero on Dec 28th. When push water with a turkey baster over the coral a cloud of something comes out. Is this the goo your talking about? Glad to hear that the corals will rebound sometimes!

Beth,
I actually though my test kit was broken because my tank never reads any nitrates in my tank, from what I understand I figured a little should show at times due to the nitrogen cycle. This was the first time I actually had a reading on my test kits for nitrates.

I also premix all my water in a big 55 gallon jug, and make my own RO/DI water. So my water has been mixed for weeks before I use it in my aquarium. two days prior to my water change I crank on the heater and power heads in the 55 gal jug to try to match the temp and salinity in my display.

 

[McFraembs]

So after my water change last night it looks like I am around 40 PPM Nitrates, should I do another one this morning or wait until the evening to give the tank more time.

I have a 55 gal display with a 30 gal sump, sump probably filled about half way with water. My equipment is One Radion XR30, two vortech MP40's, Vertex 180i protein skimmer, GFO and Carbon Reactor, 7 gal auto top off with kalkwasser,

 

[McFraembs]

see photo

 

[lmforbis]

I have been battling the high nitrate issue for a few weeks. Mine came on slowly so my fish and coral had time to acclimate. Last time I tested it it was between 50 and100 (those are the top two levels given but closer to 100) with the salifert test kit and higher than the scale on my SeaChem test kit. I did lose a couple fish and coral which got me looking for the problem in the first place. Other corals including two SPS frags are still alive as are my snails, crabs, shrimp, urchins and starfish. I have been doing frequent large water changes and things are perking up but nitrates are still higher than I want.

 

[beth]

Imforbis.....another GFO/carbon filter user. Are you seeing the trend here?

McF, how long has your tank been up? How often do you change the media in the gfo/carbon filter?

 

[McFraembs]

Imforbis.....another GFO/carbon filter user. Are you seeing the trend here?

McF, how long has your tank been up? How often do you change the media in the gfo/carbon filter?

Beth,
It has probably been 2 months maybe 2.5 since I changed the carbon / GFO. Have you heard of problems with these reactors? The GFO really seemed to clear up my phosphate issue as I had some hair algae I couldn't get rid of.

 

[McFraembs]

Imforbis.....another GFO/carbon filter user. Are you seeing the trend here?

McF, how long has your tank been up? How often do you change the media in the gfo/carbon filter?

Beth,
I forgot to mention that my tank has been set up for about 2 years now, however I upgraded from a 30gal to a 55gal about a year ago. I ended up using my 30 gal for the sump and the 55 for the display. All live rock, sand, fish were transferred over.

 

[flower]

Hi,

API tests read high, you can have 0 reading for a long time (even years), then as soon as nitrates are actually present, it reads 4X higher than any other test kit.

I thought something was bad wrong with my tank (the API test said 80+). I would do a 50% water change, and right after the nitrates would be at 20, but by morning back up to 80+. I started doing 5g water changes a day... still by evening it said 80+. I switched to SeaChem brand because each test comes with a regent to be able to double check the readings are accurate. My nitrates were 1 not 80+.

all that just to say, you may have some nitrate readings, but not as high as you fear it is. Stay with Beth to figure out what is going wrong with corals not opening, and the anemone and shrimp dying... (you do have some kind of issue causing problems) but I highly recommend you invest in another brand of test kit.

 

[McFraembs]

Hi,

API tests read high, you can have 0 reading for a long time (even years), then as soon as nitrates are actually present, it reads 4X higher than any other test kit.

I thought something was bad wrong with my tank (the API test said 80+). I would do a 50% water change, and right after the nitrates would be at 20, but by morning back up to 80+. I started doing 5g water changes a day... still by evening it said 80+. I switched to SeaChem brand because each test comes with a regent to be able to double check the readings are accurate. My nitrates were 1 not 80+.

all that just to say, you may have some nitrate readings, but not as high as you fear it is. Stay with Beth to figure out what is going wrong with corals not opening, and the anemone and shrimp dying... (you do have some kind of issue causing problems) but I highly recommend you invest in another brand of test kit.

Thanks for letting me know about the API test kits, I have been wanting to get some better ones for awhile but haven't since I still have about half of the API. I tested this morning and looks like I am somewhere between 20 and 40 PPM from my "API test kit" unfortunately I have to order it so it will be a few days.....

my main concern is if I need to remove my corals that are looking really bad, I don't want to kill my fish by having an ammonia spike. My Ammonia is pretty low but looks like I may have a small reading, hard to tell from this "API kit"

from Beth's comment above she didn't seem fond of the carbon / GFO reactor? does anyone have information why?

Well on the bright side I just installed my APEX controller last night! It was a little frustrating getting it up and running but we are good to go! I just need to play with some of the programming to format it to my liking now!

 

[McFraembs]

Oh one thing I was thinking of was when I Re-did my plumbing could the purple cleaner and or cement caused any issues with my corals / inverts? Last time I plumbed my sump my tank was FOWLR. I was just thinking maybe this could have poisoned them but since the fish are more hardy it may not have affected them the first go round?

Any thoughts?

 

[lmforbis]

Typically you'd want to wait a day or two to run tank water through newly glued plumbing. Not sure if that would be your issue.
I'd leave the corals unless they start to slime up.