Salt water tank crashed NEED HELP!!!!

[coorsxman]

Hey there i have a 160 gal..salt with 150 lb of live rock,i had the tank up and running for 2 mo. then i put fish in 1 yellow tang 1 clown 1 fox face..about 20 snails and 20 crabs...i bought a bubble tip he was doing well...then i bought a butterfly and thats when it wall when down hill...the tnk and him started to fight..woke up next morning and his mouth was all red..i pulled him out threw him in another tank and he died 2 hours later...Next day i woke up the water was all cloudy..when my levels and my ammonia was t 4.0 right away i did a 25% water changed..nothing next day did a 50% nothing..next morning everything was dead...Im draning my tank now all my rocks are dark brown slimmy looking..What should i do? fill it back up? let filter and new snails clean up? do i leave any of the old water in it?

 

[buzz]

I would not drain your tank. It may have just cycled again...if that is the case, it will just take some time to re-establish itself. I would think draining the tank will be worse in the long run - LR die off, etc...
What kind of a timeframe did you add all of this in? If you added it all at once, it could have spiked, although with your size tank, it doesn't sound like too much.
Anything possibly die in there prior that you didn't notice?
Any additives? Anything else you can think of about the tank that may be pertinent?

 

[dburr]

You do need to ssssllloooowwww down.
That is a good size tank, but only one big fish per month IMO.
Rome was not built in a day, and reefs take longer.
I think buzz maybe right about re-cycling. Tell us more about the brown slime. Is it cyno.
Anything else you can tell us? nitrite, nitrate, temp, SG, ect...

 

[jferrier]

That massive of a water change could have very likely killed all you fish. 75% in two days is a lot, especially on such a newly established tank.

 

[iceburger]

the water change itself should not have killed the fish, as the water parameters should have been perfect since it was new water, what prolly killed them was either stress due to the moving and stress from the water changes or the new cycle that followed

 

[buzz]

If I am reading the post correctly, the water changes were done after the problems started. I don't think they were the cause, but I don't think draining the tank is the solution.

 

[slick]

How long has the tank been fishless now? Test the water and tell us the readings. I don't think you need to drain the tank. It has 75% new water in it. Thats a lot of water and salt mix to replace. I think your tank just had a mini cycle that your fish could not handle.

 

[sen j blutarski]

How has the bubble tip been doing thru all of this?? Are you sure it hasn't been wasting away and polluting the tank??
Just a thought.
Bluto

 

[splash1914]

what type of filtration are you using???