!!!!??? It's happening again!

[asylumdown]

I'm in more of an emergency situation than I thought:



I need to start seriously looking in to re-homing some fish here. Testing for ammonia didn't even occur to me because this tank is two years old. All fish alive and accounted for, all inverts alive and accounted for, I haven't changed feeding patterns in months (I actually feed a bit less now)... the only thing I can think is the chemi-clean treatment I did to get the cyano under control after this all got out of hand the first time, but that was in March. If that caused a cycle shouldn't it be done by now? At the very least my corals shouldn't have been growing and improving for the whole month of April?

Gaaaaack. Cause or symptom?!?

[StirCrazy]

Originally Posted by reefwars

by low i mean 7-8 obviously not 4 or 5


when running bio pellets or even zeolites(ULNS) it is better to keep it lower

ahh, ok, I never ran any of that fancy stuff used to keep my alk 9 -11 ish

Steve

[Delphinus]

Have you ever tested with that test kit before?

I remember once panicking over a so-called ammonia test reading when I was chasing weirdness but over time realized that the particular test kit I used never gave a reading under 0.1 or something.

Do you have a nitrite test kit that you trust? I would test for that rather than ammonia.

Honestly you shouldn't be having an ammonia spike unless something really big died in there. I don't think you have that.

[asylumdown]

I have used it yes. It's the one I use when I get new fish and need to monitor ammonia during the tank transfer protocol. I attempted a couple of iffy fish in the past few months that never made it out of QT, so I've used it recently. Expires in 2017. I also re-ran it using RO water and freshly mixed salt water. There's definitely ammonia in my system.

Since you only need to worry about ammonia during the tank transfer protocol, I haven't had a nitrite kit since I cycled this tank two years ago. I'll pick one up tomorrow.

I'm starting to develop an operating theory, but seeing as I never tested for ammonia until today I'll never really know for sure. It's very long so don't anyone feel the need to read it, but if someone wants to critique my thinking I'm happy to hear it.

In November I had a crazy cyano problem. To fix it I double-dosed the tank with chemi-clean (as in, repeated the treatment after 48 hours and a water change). I then immediately started dosing huge quantities of MB7. The effect on the system was pronounced - white bacterial slimes started growing like mad on the glass, my biopellet reactor turned in to a mulmy soup, and things generally just got really gross in ways they had never done before. It eventually lead to my biopellet reactor clogging up and failing, which is what I thought started all of this. I then took the reactor offline, cleaned it, and put it back online with a drastically enlarged effluent pipe and the same volume of pellets. Where I had been dosing something ridiculous like 70mL of MB7/day for the two weeks after the chemiclean treatment, I think I only did one or two doses of 10 mL after putting the reactor back together. I wasn't paying close enough attention to the tank or dates, but things started dying within a couple of days of that, followed closely a cyano outbreak of biblical proportions.

In March I shut down everything but the skimmer, started changing huge volumes of water every day, culminating in one massive 60% water change. I also re-dosed with chemiclean, which wiped out the cyano. Everything started to recover. At the end of March I put the reactor back online with a teeny tiny amount of pellets and dosed MB7 for a while. A month later, things fall apart again.

Contrary to what the makers of chemiclean would like people to believe, I'm pretty sure the active ingredient of that product is a form of erythromycin. They make a point of stating it contains no erythromycin succinate, which is a whole lot more specific than saying it contains no erythromycin, as there's 4 other kinds of erythromycin that I know of (estolate, stearate, gluceptate, and lactobionate according to wikipedia). Erythromycin works against gram positive bacteria, and all the "good" bacteria in a tank like nitrosomonas (the guys who munch on ammonia) are gram positive.

They probably get away with saying its safe because the kind they're using has less activity against the nitrifiers. The "true" nitrifiers metabolize and divide like a hundred times slower than cyano and heterotrophic bacteria, and erythromycin damages bacteria by making it hard for them to build cell walls, something that is particularly important during cell division. This should mean that a 48 hour treatment should be far less harmful to "true" nitrifiers than cyano and heterotrophs that divide every couple of hours, but it most certainly would have an effect on them.

In most people's tanks, I'm sure the effect is small enough to not cause any harm. But I double dosed. Then I started dosing with mad quantities of rapidly reproducing heterotrophs in an environment rich in organic carbon. And I have a 10 inch cow fish that eats more food every day than most people feed in a week. Since heterotrophs can also facultatively use ammonia as an energy source, I've read theories that suggest providing excess carbon during a cycle can lead to the rapidly reproducing heterotrophs outcompeting the nitrifiers for space and resources, creating a "false" cycle. When the heterotroph populations inevitably crash for whatever reason (run out of carbon or some other nutrient), there's nothing left to pick up the slack and ammonia levels start to fluctuate - long after the reefer has stopped measuring it. The theory is that this creates many of the phantom stability issues that plague new tanks.

It's very possible that this was all started by an OD of organic carbon when I modified my reactor, but it's also possible that the chemiclean treatment damaged my tank's capacity to process the massive amount of poop my fish make and I exacerbated/masked that by dosing huge volumes of MB7 in an organic carbon rich environment. It's possible that when the reactor clogged, they lost their food source and the population crashed, and my tank started to cycle and I just didn't know it. By the time I added the reactor back to the system there could have already been detectable levels of ammonia in my water, which, coupled with a sudden massive over-dose of organic carbon with hardly any bacterial dosing at all, caused a nasty positive feedback loop of corals death, causing more ammonia, causing more coral death.

I never measured it, so I can't say there was any ammonia in the water then for sure, but doing a series of enormous water changes fixed the problem. But then I dosed chemiclean AGAIN.

If any of the novel I just typed out is accurate, what I essentially had at the beginning of April was an unstable, half un-cycled 375 gallon tank packed to the gills with stressed SPS corals and a ridiculous bio-load. There were probably low levels of ammonia building up, but I was doing 20% water changes every 5 days or more at the beginning of April. I didn't, however, do a water change in the last two weeks of April, I just tested everything but ammonia. It wouldn't have taken much of a rise to push my already stressed corals back over the edge, creating another positive feedback loop.

I should also mention that during all of this, my blue-throat trigger developed a horrible case of pop-eye. It got a lot better after those big water changes, but last week it exploded again. It looks like his eyeball is actually going to explode. A couple of months ago I also started really noticing the gills of my copper-band butterfly. As in they're particularly red and engorged looking, but I thought that was normal and I had just had never noticed it before. Two weeks ago though, he developed a tumour under one of his gill flaps. My Richmond's wrasse has also been having some dermatological issues on one side. It looks like he's been trying to de-scale himself. I thought they were all unrelated, but put this all together and you get a picture of ammonia poisoning.

Again, all conjecture, but it's theoretically possible.

I've taken the pellets off the system, done a water change and dosed enough prime to get a zero reading on my ammonia test. I'm going to try and ride this out, and find a new home for the biggest ammonia contributor in my tank.

[Reef Pilot]

Well, your extreme actions, overdoses, etc, can't have been good for your tank. And if I remember correctly, you had your bio pellet reactor running offline for a while where it could have built up a lot of carbon from the pellets. Then the bacteria died, causing hydrogen sulphide. I believe you also discharged that into your tank, which then could have caused a die off in your live rock, which is still leaching out, and maybe causing your current issues.

So, a whole lot of things that could be causing your current problems. I think the old rule of not making drastic changes too quickly would apply here. That is especially important when using bio pellets or carbon dosing.

I used Chemiclean once (and followed instructions precisely) about 3 years, and it did the job well for me then. Have not needed it since, as I dose MB7.

And should test for nitrites too. If they also are high, and nitrates low, then you indeed are having a cycle. But with a 2 year running tank, and with all the die off now, would expect your nitrates to be high instead.

[Reef Pilot]

Vertex warns against taking bio pellets offline and rapid changes in water parameters, even for a short time, and the dangers of hydrogen sulphide. When you saw the excess clumping and mulm in your bio pellet reactor, you should have dismantled and cleaned it, before returning it to service.
http://www.jlaquatics.com/manuals/ve...structions.pdf

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

Well, your extreme actions, overdoses, etc, can't have been good for your tank. And if I remember correctly, you had your bio pellet reactor running offline for a while where it could have built up a lot of carbon from the pellets.

When I dosed the chemiclean the first time? I put the intake and effluent lines in a bucket of salt water outside the tank so the reactor never actually got dosed with chemiclean, is that what you mean?

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

Then the bacteria died, causing hydrogen sulphide. I believe you also discharged that into your tank, which then could have caused a die off in your live rock, which is still leaching out, and maybe causing your current issues.

Nope, the last time water from that unmodified reactor made it in to the tank was the day the effluent line clogged. It couldn't, the lines were totally clogged, and I was very careful about taking it out of the tank after. However by that point I think the damage was done cuz I'm stoooopid.

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

So, a whole lot of things that could be causing your current problems. I think the old rule of not making drastic changes too quickly would apply here. That is especially important when using bio pellets or carbon dosing.

I used Chemiclean once (and followed instructions precisely) about 3 years, and it did the job well for me then. Have not needed it since, as I dose MB7.

Well, I technically was following the instructions of both chemiclean and MB7. Chemiclean's instructions and FAQs say a second treatment after 48 hours and a water change is OK if the cyano problem is particularly pernicious, which mine was. I was also following the start-up dosing schedule for high nutrient systems (which based on the cyano problems I was having I thought I had) for my water volume printed on the back of the MB7 bottle. Now that I'm thinking about it I remember having done my math wrong for the maintenance dose. I thought it was 10 mL/day but you helped me sort it out as it was actually 5.4 or something. At that point I wasn't super awesome at dosing every day so I was either adding 5-6 mL/day, or more commonly 10 mL every few days if I'm remembering right.

I think you can follow product instructions and still get in to trouble. But as for the adage about not making changes to quickly, you are spot on. I was my own worst enemy. But to be fair, there's no way to dose chemiclean that isn't a sudden change. In three days you go from lots of cyano bacteria playing whatever role they have in your system, to high concentrations of antibiotics, to no more cyano. Using the product as instructed creates about as sudden a change as you can get.

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

And should test for nitrites too. If they also are high, and nitrates low, then you indeed are having a cycle. But with a 2 year running tank, and with all the die off now, would expect your nitrates to be high instead.

Yah if I can get away to get a test kit today I will.

Originally Posted by Reef Pilot

Vertex warns against taking bio pellets offline and rapid changes in water parameters, even for a short time, and the dangers of hydrogen sulphide. When you saw the excess clumping and mulm in your bio pellet reactor, you should have dismantled and cleaned it, before returning it to service.
http://www.jlaquatics.com/manuals/ve...structions.pdf

In theory that sounds good, but doesn't that put you in a d*mned if you do, d*mned if you don't situation? They warn against taking them offline or suddenly changing parameters, which I also did not want to do, but whether I had cleaned the reactor out at the first sign of mulmy grossness or after the effluent line had clogged, the effect would still have been a sudden removal of the pellets from the system and the collapse of whatever bacterial population the reactor was supporting. I know no H2S was being made prior to the line being clogged because I was opening the reactor every day or every other day to clean it's strainers, and after it failed I did dismantle it and clean it completely out. Once it started mulming up I can't see how I could have done anything that wouldn't have contravened Vertex's instructions.

[Reef Pilot]

Originally Posted by asylumdown

So it turns out you actually need to be kind of careful with MB7. After dealing with a cyano issue with an aggressive dosing of chemi-clean, I stepped up the use/change of GFO and started dosing the 'start up' dose of MB7 for high nutrient tanks, which in my tank worked out to about 70ml a day. I missed a couple of days to go up north over the holidays, but otherwise I was pretty religious about it, including turning off the skimmer.

I ran the inlet/outlet lines of the BP reactor in a bucket of salt water for the first 4 or 5 days after the chemiclean treatment while I started dosing the MB7 because I have no idea what chemiclean does to biopellets and I didn't want a bunch of excess organic carbon to flood my tank, potentially giving the cyano a leg up over the MB7. When I put the reactor back online with the tank, I put about half the daily dose of MB7 directly in to the pellet reactor to get things going again.

Now, I have to say I was extremely suspicious of MB7, and bacterial supplements in general. I've used them before and never saw an effect of any kind, and I've always been highly suspicious of aquarium supply company claims in general (they use as much pseudo-scientific non-sense speak as the alternative health industry), as well as being suspicious that a bacterial product could have anything living in it by the time you bought it at the store.

Well, I suppose the proof is in the pudding -



That disgusting pile of what looks like mucous is 1/4 of the goo that I had to eject from the outlet hose of my recirculating biopellet reactor yesterday. In less than two weeks of dosing large volumes of MB7, that outlet hose, which has remained clear and free flowing for nearly 2 years, clogged up so badly with that crap that water completely stopped flowing through the reactor. It's recirculating, so there was still some movement of water inside the reactor, but with the outlet blocked it slowed down enough that massive orange sized wads of white bacterial mulm had formed on the surface of the pellets that were largely stuck together.

The foam pads in my GFO reactor have also completely clogged up with bacterial mulm, causing the entire column, along with the foam pads, to rise all the way to the top of the reactor. Something that also, in nearly 2 years of running the tank, has never happened.

I've gone down to the daily maintenance dose of MB7, which if I'me measuring the volume of a 'drop' correctly, is about 6ml, so hopefully this stops happening.

Had to go back to you tank thread, and this is the post I am referring to. You said you took the reactor offline for 4 or 5 days and then you say you put it back online after that. You also added MB7 directly to the reactor at that time (and again wondered why the heck you would do that!!).

So, with it offline, the reactor (and bacteria) was obviously O2 deprived. And the effluent (carbon laden bacteria) had no where to go (supposed to go to the inlet of your skimmer). The build-up was probably the carbon laden bacteria, that was probably dying, too, with a lack of O2. You didn't mention hydrogen sulphide smell at this time, but could definitely have been present then, too.

The way bio pellets are supposed to work, is that bacteria forms on the pellets and they get digested and sloughed off with the nitrates, and need to be removed by your skimmer. If they make it into your tank, they will fuel cyano, if no other competing bacteria has been established (like MB7). That's why I don't understand at all the point of a recirculating bio pellet reactor. You want that digested carbon out of there as soon as possible, and into your skimmer.

Here are a few more links.
http://npbiopellets.dvh-import.com/i...-it-works.html

http://reefbuilders.com/2010/10/19/b...pellets-cheap/

http://www.vertexaquaristik.com/Port...lets%20FAQ.pdf

[asylumdown]

ooooh, I see. I think you misunderstood what I did. My reactor is designed to be external or internal. At that point its effluent line was tubing slightly wider than RO tubing, and in the inlet line was a bit larger than that. They're both flexible and a couple feet long.

When I say I took it "offline" I mean that I filled the big Salinity bucket I keep to store spent filter socks with salt water, put a small koralia in it pointed straight up, then put both the effluent and intake line from the reactor in that bucket while I was dosing with chemiclean. The reactor physically stayed in the sump and remained running, it just wasn't using water from the tank. The bucket was well circulated with tons of surface agitation so it shouldn't have gotten anoxic, but yes, for less than a week that it was like that all the organics that sloughed off would have built up in that closed system.

However the salinity bucket is like 7 gallons compared the the reactor's 2 or 3, and when I put it back 'online' with the tank I tossed all the water in the bucket, so 65% of whatever had built up got flushed. If that was enough to kill something, pellets aren't for me anyway.

[Reef Pilot]

Yes, and by offline, I do mean your bucket. That is a pretty tight loop, so water would still be O2 starved even with your koralia. And the presence of all that mulm/muck build-up could be trapped or dying carbon and nitrate laden bacteria, that isn't being flushed out into your skimmer.

And after you put it back online with your tank, the mulm/muck probably continued to build inside your reactor because your outlet was partially plugged.

I may have missed it in all your posts. But does your reactor effluent go directly to your skimmer input?

Despite all that, I am not saying either that was the direct cause of your current problems with your SPS dying. But it may have started the ball rolling, and caused other things to get out of whack. If your ammonia is high, though, sure does seem like a mini crash happening...

Again, I would do massive water changes. And keep that bio pellet reactor offline until everything stabilizes. Then you can start again with getting your nutrients under control, but this time, do things slowly and gradually, and watch your tank and corals closely to see how they are reacting.

If you look at the beginning of my tank journal, I started with a 100 ppm nitrate tank, with very high phosphates (after inheriting a 10 year running tank). It took me a year or more before I finally got everything under control. But has been running clean (zero nitrates and near zero phosphates) for a couple years now, and growing SPS like crazy.

I know your tank was looking great with all your SPS before, too. So with a bit of patience, I am sure you can do it again.