mini tank crash....palythoa toxin the cause???

[marcingo]

I had the same thing happen to me years ago. My first tank (10 gal). All was great and I put in a rock with a hundred or so of these large brown palys. Next morning everything was dead. Feather duster crawled out dead on the sand, all bristle worms dead, corals, fish, everything except the palys which were wide open enjoying the water.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by Borderjumper

Can we see a picture of the Palys?
If I remember correctly this is a little tank? Isn't it like 20 gallons? I would guess ANY coral the size of a football sliming in a tank that size is going to cause trouble. That's a lot of slime!

I've had a ton of zoos and Palys and have fragged a few and I can't say I have ever had any of them slime enough that I could notice.

it is a 20g its 30 x 12 x 12 .....the palys are a mix of blue and green together and is about the size of say 10l x 5w x5h and around 400 heads or more and was given to me by another reefer who doesnt have any issues in his tank,and when i called him to say what is happening he is at a blank as well.it was def alot of slime just putting them in there so thats why i thought the problem had to be from the palys i put in there last night. i figure they got mad and slimed all over my tank possibly even more after i went to bed. my shrimp and snails and sps were the worst hit and then my lps is straggling along while my blenny passed away sometime today....


ive done all my tests and nothing shows as i figured it wouldnt and my elklegance looks like shes about to go ive done another water change but its got all ite tentacles pulled in and is slightly inflated and my brain is still shriveled up.


sorry i dont have a camera yet or i would have posted pics in my journal ill see if i can get something together tonight off the misses when she comes over off her phone

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by marcingo

I had the same thing happen to me years ago. My first tank (10 gal). All was great and I put in a rock with a hundred or so of these large brown palys. Next morning everything was dead. Feather duster crawled out dead on the sand, all bristle worms dead, corals, fish, everything except the palys which were wide open enjoying the water.

sounds close to whats happening to mine mine arent brown but they are def a big piece to add to a little tank and it would have to be a result of the sliming all of that slime in a little tank is sure to find its way into everything else. im heading to the store now to grab some more salt as i can see where this is going, im gonna have to blow off each coral and sand and rock and do a massive water change.this has got me so ****ed right now.im gonna add the carbon back to my reactor and change the phosphate media out now as well tonight. other than that theres not much i can do but ride it out any more handling of the palys is just going to make it worse....fml

[jorjef]

I know you are very experienced but maybe it was something on your hands or arms, maybe bug spray, cleaning fluid or soaps, gas or oil. With the small water volume tank very little of any could have had a big effect. Your feather duster should be okay if it was just the plume floating around..They shed it if they get too stressed. I had it happened once and it grew back and i still have it today.

[daniella3d]

It does not need much in a small tank to cause RTN and a chain reaction to kill coral, especialy such sensitive coral as sps and elegance. A 20 gallon tank can get unbalanced very fast and that can lead to some major problems.

It can be anything, a PH swing, salinity raise, ammonia peak etc.

When you put that rock in, did you remove water or did you just put it in? if so then I suppose that you water line was much higher and the evaporated water did not get replace thus rising the salinity fast. Just a guess here.

It could be from the coral sliming but I doubt that would have killed the invertabrate. One of my friend had her anemone cought in a pump and that released a lot of toxin in the water as the anemone shread into pieces. All fish died but none of the invertabrates were affected.

[marie]

Given that everything happened after the palys were added I would suspect chemical warfare of some sort going on.

The first thing I would do is remove the palys from the system and put them in a bucket of tank water or something, then do a huge water change (as big as your comfortable with) and aggressively run carbon. If it is the palys that are the cause of the problems then the tank should start to improve rapidly afterwards

[reefwars]

hey guys quick update before i go to work well i spent all last night with the tank and after all this i finally have some good news things are on the recover my elegance is showing signs of improvement and is opening up and my brain had his feeders out this morning and after my light was on for a bit they are both starting to open right up. it def was the palys.... like daniella said small tank things go wrong quick and i was forced to do 4 rather large water changes way more than i wanted to and lots of carbon through my reactor.it sucks that so much died in such a little time but time heals all wounds so im just glad i didnt lose my elegance as its my favorite piece. my feather duster is def dead the tube is melting away to nothing i doubt hes gonna return.fish are out this morning and nems still look great. against my better judgement i decided to remove the palys last night i did it very quickly and tried not to disturb them as much as possible so im not sure if it was the water changes which prob added up to be my whole tank maybe even more or the removal of the palys but in either case shes on the mend im going to frag the palys out side of my tank and keep a small piece and the rest are going in the garbage they are in my water change bucket right now.

not sure why my fish or inverts died maybe with that much slime there was a deplete in oxygen or somethings but i cant change that now so ill up[date again later and im hoping by the time i get home everything is back where it should be

thanks guys

[nlreefguy]

Yikes! That's too bad - I was going to message you to ask you how those frags were doing. Guess I know the answer now! Get 'er back on track and then we can try some more frags - I got plenty more where those came from!

[Wayne]

WOW umm that sucks! Sorry for the losses

[chris88]

There is no way it is from the palys. I have had them in my tank for years. Massive numbers in a 50g tank. I have cut and crushed tons of the pale green / brown palys right inside of the tank because I do not like them, and they never poison the tank. I think you may have caused an ammonia spike from added a large piece of rock. I honestly do not think it is from the palys but if you want to be safe just run a bunch of carbon.