advice needed --> advice taken -->update July 27
 

So I just moved my tank yesterday to a new house. It was basically pretty much a cluster. A friend and I packed up all the livestock and moved it to the new house. My husband was in charge of the heavy lifting and driving the truck and trailer to move the tank. He got delayed by 3.5 hours with a "shaw cable" issue and all my livestock basically sat on a cold concrete floor (about 18C, we haven't quite figured out the heat pump yet) for that time. Eventually he managed finally arrive with the truck, we moved the tank and I started to put it back together. By the time I was moving the livestock, the water was pretty cold. Because of my hurry to get everything back into the tank, some stuff was left behind including my chiller which, I'm figured out later, is pretty much an integral part of my sump return (hoses and junk are cut to that length).

Of course, the invariability with moving rock around (at least in my case) is less real estate. This happens every bloody time and I'm not quite sure how it happens. Anyway, most of the corals went into the main tank with the "leftovers" in the sump. I have a heater and circulation going in both the main and the sump.

Today, both the sump and tank are cloudy. Stuff from the sump is pretty much heading south. Couple RTN'ed pieces, some look ok but... well, you know how it is. Things in the main tank look ok but everyone is pretty stressed out looking, including me.

Anyway, the cloudiness. I can't remember if this is normal, we're talking pretty cloudy, about 6" viewable depth then fog. I can see most of the corals clearly enough to identify shape and color but not polyp extension.

I'm running carbon, a wavebox and a 6060. I'm scrambling to get the sump online, but now I'm sort of wondering if I should bother with everything going to crap down there its probly pretty toxic. There are lazy brittle stars everywhere (and you know how fast those guys usually are). Maybe I should just change out the water.

Any other suggestions?

If the main tank looks ok and the problem is in the sump, I would leave the sump off line for a while as to not contaminate the main tank. I would do a 100% water change in the sump before I started it back up.

Thats sheety Christy..Im getting worried about my tank swap. I think Im going to set up the new tank and let it run ( as best as it can run with cobbled up parts and pieces and borrowed rock from my other tanks) for a while before I switch the contents.:crutch:

Took 3 days before my tank cleared up when I put all the sand and rock in

if your sump and tank are still separated from each other how about taking a bit of rock out of the tank and putting it in the sump. Replace the rock with corals in the main tank. What did you do with the sand bed?

Unless you have sand (which I know you don't) then cloudy isn't normal. I would change out the water...even better get the 180g set up and transfer everything over

Pleas check ammonia levels….a.s.a.p.

Shelley, I don't think it was the swap that was the problem, I"ve done it many times before. I think it was the sitting around in rubbermaid totes at 18C that did the job. The corals just got too cold and reacclimating them to normal temperatures just didn't go all that well.

Marie, sadly the 180 isn't going to be ready for quite some time. Apprently we need a sub panel and part of our heat pump whatevery system has to be moved. I'm away for 2 weeks this month and my husband is gone next month.:neutral: I think we're looking at almost october before it even sees water :sad:

I'm brewing up some water right now for a water change. Oddly enough, I have every test kit but an ammonia one, how stupid is that.

My tank doesn't have any sand and hasn't for some time. There was a lot of "detritus" on the bottom of the tank when I took out the rock so I wouldn't doubt that some of the cloudiness might be it getting stirred up but I suspect its the corals that are making the water cloudy. The water was pretty cold yesterday and I'm sure they weren't happy.

Bleh, I just took a hard look at the tank. Some wicked RTN goin on in there. God I hate this hobby sometimes :sad:

Oh Christy...this sucks!!! :(

I would be doing a 50-75% water change, and checking all the levels. Ammonia would be my biggest suspect right now. Have you checked temp and salinity (sometimes we over look the simple things).

I'm so glad my tank move went to smoothly...I thank my lucky stars every time I look into my 90.

I had a similar problem
Get an additional powerhead in the tank (place it just below the water line) that will stop a natural decline in the oxygen levels ASAP

So um yeah, I totally hate to be the bearer of bad news here, but yeah, um when this happened to me we all know what happened...my tank suffered a complete wipe out. While I'd be thrilled for your tank to recover, and I hope it does, unfortunately in my experience it didn't.

I did water changes, I ran carbon, and loads of it. But really all I could do was wait it out. The milkiness is from your SPS dying off, and it takes about a week to clear, or did when it happened to me. The next step after the milk-water is the stench of doom, the smell is in the water, and it takes about another week of 5% daily water changes to get it out.

Something you should probably do as soon as you are able is to pick up a few new pieces of rock. The low temperature seems to kill off some of the much needed bacteria in your system, and in my case my system (back in 2007) was unable to sufficiently repopulate the lost bacteria. I experienced SPS death after SPS death for 8 months before I figured it out.

I'm so sad to read this.

well bloody hell catherine, that is not what I wanted to hear at this point :neutral:

naesco, I already have a powerhead in place at that location, hopefully it helps

as for the waterchange, I'm making water but it just isn't happening fast enough for my liking

Sorry. I hope you can turn things around though with your WCs. Your tank is smaller then our 180g which makes WCs considerably simpler.

If you have rtn then i would start fragging fast. If the main tank is still OK then throw the frags in there and hope for the best. When i moved my tank it was in the middle of january during a cold snap. By the time I got everything home the water was 68 deg.F . I never lost a thing although I didnt have any SPS at the time. Hang in there, theres still hope.

no its the main tank going down the crapper now, I had moved most of the stuff in the sump into the main tank. Not sure if that sparked it or it was inevitable anyways.

Well if you need a hand with anything, or a babysitter just let me know.

Yup, gotta agree with this. Cold temps moving into my 150 did the same thing. I did recover though, and after all was said and done, it turned out ok. Don't give up hope yet.

did you wait it out? do waterchanges constantly?

I'm thinking its a good thing I stocked up on salt :razz:

After a couple of good water changes, I just left it with lots of GAC running. I found corals I tried to frag just got more stressed and I lost the whole colonies. Once you've got a decent handle on it, wait and see where it goes. Minimal lights for a couple of days too. keep temp a bit lower to increase O2 saturation, and lots of surface agitation.
I'd mix some new water and get the sump going, that will increase O2 uptake as well, and get the skimmer going and clean it as required to keep it empty.

Oh No Christy sorry to read of your troubles. I would get that Sump online. Maybe dump the water and give it a good rinse out. That way you'll be able to get your skimmer fired up. Get some filter floss in there and a ton of carbon.

+1 on the last 2 or 3 posts. Sorry to hear of your troubles .. moving tanks sucks big time..

Well, sometimes we underestimate the strength and durabeiility of corals.
Keep in mind that on some reefs during low tide coral are exposed to nothing but air for a long period of time.

Once I helped a friend moving his corals to a new tank, the new tank was located 6 hours away by driving. He had there some huge monti's and acro's the biggest monti was 60 cm diameter, the biggest stag was 56 cm high!!!
We had no choice but delivering them in big garbage bags with out any water (only some for humidity). Guess what….zero fatalities!

I put my finger on destruction of bacteria colonies and death of small critters in the LR, causing sharp rise in ammonia.

The best way to deal with that problem imo would be water changes and using some good quality bacteria supplements…. Beside that keep in low on feeding and calibrate your skimmer for wet foaming (skimming)

Good luck ( If it didn’t kill you it will strengthen you:wink:)

So sorry to hear, that really sucks. I hope some corals make it.

actually now that I think of it, most of the rock was in a cooler so the temps weren't quite as low as the rubbermaid totes that the corals were in.

this am, I still can't see in the tank, I have enough water to do a decent water change and at least clean out the sump and get it going. I'll make more water after that and I think I'll just do back to back waterchanges for the next few days.

thanks for all the sugggestions guys, I'm on it!! :biggrin:

All my fingers are crossed for you Christy. Hopefully things come around.

ok so I've done a 35 gal waterchange. Pretty much just emptied out the sump, shopvac-ed it and refilled it. Then did a 15gal waterchange on the main tank with what was left. Got the sump running and skimmer hooked up (some freaking disgusting stuff in there!!), carbon going. Can't find the filter floss but thats ongoing, its in one of these boxes around here somewhere. The water is much clearer and I can see most everything now.

So far I've lost a milli colony, handful of other smaller colonies and a couple frags as well as a clam :(. So far all of my stuff on the frag racks seem to be ok. I've gotta get in there with some clippers and have a go at my big blue stag which is about half gone, also lost half my blue tenuis. I think I've given enough pieces away to find that one again. As for the others I couldn't recognize them and sadly, my tank is so full I couldn't tell you what they were anyways.

I think I may be on the road to recovery.

I'm saying that in a whisper in case the tank hears and goes to **** :razz:

Perhaps stirring up all the detritus lowered your pH dramatically and then the die-off dropped it even further? I have been reading a bit about Ocean Acidification http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_acidification and SPS really do not like lowered pH, 8.1 pH seems to be the limit.

finished off my first bucket of salt last night and cracked open the second this am :eek: I've got these waterchanges down to a science now. Unfortunately, though the water is clearer, the tissue necrosis hasn't slowed much :neutral:

:sad:

I dont know what else to say Christy.


perhaps :drinking:

Sadly, seems to be happening more these days, with very experienced aquarists.

Myself included but thats another story.

Sorry to hear about this..fingers and toes crossed...good luck

Believe me that has crossed my mind more than once, however, I've got waterchanges to do and they're no fun when you're half cut. Then again, they're never any fun :razz:

Took a water sample to the LFS this afternoon. Ammonia is 2.4 or 2.8 I can't remember which. The tube was a lovely turquoise green color. And thats after 80g+ of waterchanges. Oh yay.

I figured the fish/clams/LPS would be having issues at those levels but they all seem fine, its just the SPS that are affected and the larger colonies for some reason. Looks like I'll have a tank full of little sticks again.

Yeah what he said.:sad:

Sorry for being right…..

In is known fact that large sps colonies are first to go….
In that level of ammonia soon LPS, invertebrates and other will “suffocate” sort of say…

Maybe you can take out the corals and delicate live stock that you have to a friend or lfs? Just until you balances back your system biology?
I did it once and it was a life saver!!

Ahhh…..
It had just popped into my mind! If remember correctly there is a biological process that after the good bacteria are dead some nasty bacteria is developing and it transfer nitrate back into ammonia

Use Prime or any other ammonia reducer to get the Ammonia down quick. It'll work to prevent further ammonia toxicity issues and hopefully give your colonies more of a chance. I've used this in the past with corals I've received that were beginning to die from being too cold too long and they start to rot away in QT before I have a chance to treat them. Lost about 40% of the corals to RTN, but halted it there after about 6 hours.

Sorry to hear of your losses. Hope things pull through.

I've dosed an entire small bottle of prime over the last couple of days,et voila! we have zero ammonia! either that or so much prime is skewing the test. I've been doing 40G daily water changes as well to export what I can.


stupid fish have started eating the clams again. back to the LFS they go *sigh*

How are the corals doing?

The majority of the large colonies are gone, they started tissue recession and well, I didn't risk the chance of them going full bore and skewing the water quality again so they went. I did frag some of them but the frags went too. The tissue is coming off in sheets. Its pretty ugly. I lost the lovely purple frag I got from you so I'll be begging on your doorstep at some point.

I'd like to say its slowing down but every time I think that I see another one on its way out. Its pretty devastating to say the least. I've waffled between throwing it all out and just leaving the tank with rock, fish and the odd LPS that seem to have no problems with ammonia or then other times I look at other websites to see what I can plan for the new tank. I'm trying to keep my head in the game but man, this is pretty heartbreaking.

You can show up on my doorstep anytime...just make sure you bring enough styrofoam boxes to pack everything home :mrgreen:

Get a couple bottles of Hagen Cycle Christy and add it to the tank IT will help out on your tank. trust me it has worked for me in the past with my problems.