Tank crashing
 

While I was on holiday, there were few sps colony those started dying. As soon as I am back I have done a 40% water change. Hoping that I will flush out whatever thats killing my sps. And I have also added tlf 150 running carbon.

Here's my parameter
Sg 1.024
NH3 0.25ppm
NO2 0.25ppm
NO3 10 ppm
Phosphate 0.07 pm
Kh 9
ca 440
Mg 1450

I am suspecting the higher nutrient level comes from dying sps and not having the skimmer running for 2 days(setting up a new one)

What else could cause my sps to die?? Btw it looks like brown jelly when they are losing their flesh.

At first glance at your parameters, ammonia at 0.25ppm is high. It's at a deadly level to some sensitive fish and inverts (including corals). A few dead SPS won't cause that high of ammonia. Do you have any other fish missing or dead?
A mass water change should be done if it hasn't been done already.

All fishes and shrimps are accounted for. However I dunno about turbo snails.

looks like you have a mini cycle going, have you added anything new like rock or sand or did any equipment crap out and not get removed soon enough??


lots of carbon and water changes should help plenty:)

no rock, sand or live stock. only equipment down was skimmer because I was redoing the plumbing in order to fist a bigger one. also efflux line on the ca reactor was clog for sometime but, don't think that will cause much of cycling issue.

thanks

remove the dying colonies and affected parts, siphon out the slimy bits if you can. the death may be triggering others to do the same. run lots of carbon and do lots of water changes. eventually it should slow down. sorry to hear of this, I had the same thing happen due to a massive decrease in temp after a tank move

I recently also went through a mini crash don't but it was from a clam spawn :sad:. Its tuff but change carbon often and run it generous and keep up with the water changes.

just complete another 50% water change.

carbon is running. how often should I change them out while the tank is suffer major sps death.

if I keep on loosing sps at the current rate, I won't have any left by end of week.

LPS survives though... cleaner shrimps are doing ok, bandit crab is alive however it will probably run out of sps colony to live in. RBTA is alive, although it's on a major move today.

Just gonna cross my finger and see what happen in the next few days. hopefully there will be a few colonies left.

I agree with Christy. Cut your losses and frag what you can and get rid of all the dying bits. With SPS, death begets death.

Did you smell anything like rotten eggs - even a faint smell?

If you weren't moving water through your ca reactor, the water in the ca reactor was sitting without oxegyn and would have become anaerobic. This can lead to the production of hydrogen sulfide. If you have water sitting in pipes, you should always flush it so that it doesn't end up in the tank. With a ca reactor, the water moves through it slowly and it's possible you might not have noticed the smell.

Aside from hydrogen sulfide, there are other problems that can arise from anaerobic conditions, but you would have to do some research to see whether the symptoms relate to your experience.

There are some recommended solutions for this and some good documents on the web that can help you through it. I only remember a couple of things such as leaving your lights on, maximizing aeration by pointing powerheads at the surface, putting in new carbon and water changes.

Hope things take a turn for the better. Good luck.

that I have no idea, I only spotted it using iphone facetime(video call) while wife was feeding the fish. She doesn't know how long ago the line was clogged.

on the interesting side note. it appears that I have more death during the day than night.

Hmmmm... Bacterial bloom maybe. I had an issue once (and still time to time) where I get big bacteria blooms that leave films on the glass and kind of stringt, bubble things coming off the rocks (not dinos), and they seem to flourish during daylight hours. When this happens really bad I find everything looks unhappy. My theory is that the blooms drop the O2 levels in the tank (this has been scientifically proven for many bacterial blooms) and everything suffers. I think this is ultimately what caused my cantaloupe sized birdsnest to crash. Took me forever to figure it our but once I got the bloom under control everything bounced back and stopped dying.

I had a similar tank crash last summer. The route cause ended up being my calcium reactor that had gone offline. It caused all my parameters to go crazy to the point were i didn't understand how they were related but in truth, it was simply a chain reaction of evens caused by system adapting to the lack of balance in the calc. and alk.

I ended up losing almost everything of importance. Only lost 1 or 2 fish though which kept me going.

All in all, i would suggest patience, try not to over react as hard as that is. Toss some Rowaphos, Some Carbon and and just 10gal water changes ever other day.

And ride it out.

the birds nest and green monti cap I got from you before are gone. it's actually the monti cap went first, then I was slowly losing acro and such. then last week, I started to suffer heavy loses. Looks like my elegance is on it's way out as well.

that's what might trigger the heavy loses, that I had in the last 2 weeks. with my effulux line clog up and not knowing how long it was clog up. when it opened up again, it probably cause major alk swing.

luckily I haven't lose any fish yet.


Hopefully by the time everything stabilize, I will have some corals left even though I already lost way more than half of them.

i would also suggest, if you sense something else going, move it to a quarantine or cut your loses. Corals dieing can't be good for the ones around them....

What's your salinty at? When's the last time you calibrated your refractometer?

Take a water sample to a LFS and get them to read the salinity. Refractometers can drift and your salinity might not be what you think it is?

What abou stray voltages? Is a powerhead on in the day and off at night?

no stray voltage.

SG is currently 1.026, but I usually have it at 1.024. Must have use too much salt on one of the water change. Will try to lower it to to 1.024 again.

refractormeter is less than year old, and calibration is good.

MP40 is set to night mode, and korlia 750gph is on at all time.

Dying is slowing done. at least I don't loose a colony/frag every day.

I am crossing my finger right now, hoping whatever left will survive

You should get a test kit that can isolate carbonate alkalinity from borate alkalinity. I went through a mini SPS crash that I simply could not explain a couple of months ago because my total alkalinity kept testing in 'normal' ranges.

For a variety of reasons my borate alkalinty was actually making up too much of that percentage and my carbonate concentration was dangerously low. As soon as I realized it and I corrected the carbonate alkalinity specifically (even though it made the total alk higher than I normally like), the 'crash' completely stopped and has now reversed.

I only mention it because you said that part of your calcium reactor was clogged for a while. If you use a salt with a lot of borate it can really start to obscure a problem with low carbonate over time.

I just want to give this thread a quick update.

there hasn't been any RTN or STN for the last 2 weeks. and all the injured sps has been starting to regrow over the dead spots.

What I have done so far.

A 30% water change and another 50% water change 4 days after.
add TLF phoban 150 as carbon reactor.
replaced Vertex In-100 with Skimz SK180 skimmer.
removing dying sps.
boost up kH
increase efflux output from ca reactor.

Now, I have high ph than before. 8.2 during the day and 8.0 at night. versus 8.0(day) 7.8(night)

I have to thank everyone for your input.

Now... who has sps frags?? LOl