Please help--snail died and then I made things even worse...

[whosinpower]

Here is what I would do if I were in your situation -

1. Set up a seperate qt tank for your fish. Check water daily - use your skimmer on the qt tank and change water as required. Requires diligent maintenance!

2. Find someone to take the coral off your hands until you get your main tank up and running and stable.

3. Clean out your main tank. Get rid of the sand - and put in clean new sand.
Maybe this is not necessary....not sure.

4. Put your liverock back in the tank and allow it to cycle - rebuilding its bacteria to convert ammonia into nitrite and then nitrate.

Basically - you are starting over. After your tank has fully cycled and water is testing good - then add a clean up crew....followed by your fish after a couple of weeks.

Wait another month.

Then add back your corals if your friend has managed to save them. Sorry for your troubles. Not sure what you meant by torching the rock?!? But - it seems to me that you have inadvertantly killed off the bacteria that converts ammonia if your water is testing high for ammonia......it is this biological filter that you need to reintroduce - be patient and diligent with the qt tank - and you should be good to go in the future.

[Slick Fork]

I'm in Spruce View.

What kind of fish? What kind of Corals? I could possibly babysit for you.

[sharuq1]

If I remove the fish from the 14g and stick them in some sort of temp tank and leave the coral in the 14g as it is presently what are the chances they (corals) will be ok? I am inexperienced in this area and I feel rather hesitant and nervous to move the coral somewhere else. (especially seeing as no one in red deer that I know of has coral, so I would need to travel at least 45 mins to take it to someone else's established tank)

[Der_Iron_Chef]

Honestly, I'm really confused as to what caused all of this. You put the torched rock in a separate tub, right? If there's no live rock in the tank and you did a 100% water change, what's causing the water to be so foul?

[sharuq1]

It isn't "foul" per se anymore it is just having a very high ammonia spike. My only guess is that it is being caused by:
-my 100% WC
-removal and subsequent wrecking the LR, which effectively removed my bio-filtration almost completely (there was some BR in there for 7 mo. so hopefully some bacteria colonised that, it is still in the tank)
-dying zoo polyps, but I am unsure which are dead and which just look bad so I have only removed the ones that I know for sure are dead
-fish in the tank in "new" water that has not been cycled

Some corals look unaffected, some died, some are very damaged....

[Der_Iron_Chef]

I'm really sorry about that If I lived closer to you, I would offer to help with the corals. I'm really not sure what to suggest....

[Zylumn]

sharuq1 Sorry to hear about the problems your having. I wish I was closer to help but will chip in my 2 cents worth.

To me it sounds like with your ammonia high you are going through a cycle. This could have been brought on by the 100% water change. My suggestion would be use only R/O water prepared hrs in advance with exact tank temp and salinity. Change out a max of 2 gallons per day at one time or 2 x 1.5g per day. Feed your fish sparingly (maybe every 2 days) or feed then do water change and get out any extra food.
Good luck.
Kevin