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Cultivated Reef

chlorine poisoning or Uronema? or worse? HELP


cocojakes

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Okay, so I just set up a big 3 foot by 2 foot tank that is supposed to be housing a baby stingray soon, and recently was ready to test it out with a few fish before introducing the expensive ray. The tank has a shallow medium grain sand bed (was recommended to me by a FW ray keeper, very similar in size to sugar grains) a few lace rocks on the back left hiding the return line, and 2L of SeaChem Matrix bio media in the sump. The sump also has a filter floss pre filter for the SeaChem to avoid detritus building up in the bio media, and a bag of Chemi-Pure Elite.

 

About two weeks ago now I purchased 3 large (3-4") Green Reef Chromis and placed them in a 10G quarantine tank (which I later found out was hyposalinic at 1.018) after a week in the tank they got moved to the main Ray tank. Within 24H of being placed in the ray tank, the first one died, and within 48h all three were dead. After the first death I noticed the other two had red gills (that may be what they always looked like though, just hadn't looked closely before) and were breathing heavily, swimming with their mouthes open. As this was happening I did a ton of testing, and found my PH was a little low at 7.6, the salinity in the QT was very low at 1.018, and after a lot of investigation, found out that the water had chlorine in it (my friend's RO unit that I get my water from somehow had been adding chlorine to the water. We found out that the RO water coming out of the unit had 3x as much chlorine as the tap water going in, which we still have no clue how that is happening).

 

Because of the chlorine issue, and the added stress of the hypo salinity for a week followed by the stress of low ph and relatively fast (I dripped them into the ray tank, but it was still a big change for them) increase in salinity, coupled with them dying with their mouths open, I chalked it up to chlorine poisoning, and after letting the tank sit for a week, after dechlorinating it, decided to try again with a more hardy, 3 inch devil damselfish.

 

This ended the same way as the chromis, within 48h he was dead. This makes me think there is still something wrong with the water. The current stats are as follows:

 

Ammonia: 0

Nitrite: 0

Nitrate: 0-5ppm

Phosphate: 0.25ppm

 

chlorine: 0

 

salinity: 1.024

pH: 8.0

temp: 77.2F

 

 

What could possibly be in my tank killing anything that gets added to it, and what can i do to make it safe for fish, and eventually a stingray.

 

Help

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KP_Reef_Tank

I would consider letting the tank sit and cycle for several weeks.

Do weekly water small partial water changes.

 

Perhaps the RO unit filters are not in correctly, or are loose?

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Perhaps the RO unit filters are not in correctly, or are loose?

that wouldn't account for it ADDING chlorine to the water

 

and yeah I'm gonna keep up with the water changes on the tank, but that won't affect anything if its uronema which will just stay in the tank. I'm considering getting a UV sterilizer for the tank since that apparently helps kill uronema, but I want some kind of confirmation that that might work before I invest the money in it, if the only way to make the tank safe again is to scrap all the sand/rocks/media and drain the tank and bleach everything. I would really rather not do that though, as its a LOT of water (compared to my 20G long reef) but I definitely don't want to be adding any more fish until I know whats killing them, and how to stop it.

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gulfsurfer101

I wouldn't bleach anything, since that's basically chlorine. You may want to try prime,or removing your toxic water and go with all new water from a different source. I'd still use prime to eliminate any toxins stored in your sand or rock though.

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yeah, I primed the tank before attempting the damselfish. the only reason I mention bleach is if there is some parasite or disease in the water such as uronema, then draining the tank and bleaching, or even just whiping everything down with vinegar seems like a reasonable (annoying time consuming)way to kill it.

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gulfsurfer101

I'm willing to bet the water quality is what is killing your fish and not some bug. Has the tank properly cycled. It sounds fairly new and that itself could also be an issue. The red gills are most likely from the chlorine or other heavy metals and contamints that made its way into your system. That ro unit is what is killing your fish.

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jedimasterben

If your friend had chlorine in their tap water and don't have a good carbon block before their RO membrane, it is toast and should be discarded. Since you are getting a chlorine reading on the output side of the membrane, then it is probably shot.

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yeah, we know the RO unit is shot, the TDS coming out of it was still pretty low though (around 5) he has since brought it back and bought a new RODI unit which is working properly now. So you figure theres just something other than chlorine still in the water? He's used his tap water on his FW tanks with some prime before (what he used to do before he got his RO unit) so I can't imagine that theres anything in the water still thats killing them? The tank is fairly new, I had a soft cycle of about 2 weeks, the ammonia barely spiked. I was feeding the tank daily since there would be no die off from the dead rock or bio media. Levels are all settled at 0 though, even after the fish deaths, two of which happened overnight and so weren't removed for up to 10h.

 

What are you suggesting my best course of action is? I just ordered the skimmer for the tank, and with it I bought a 9w UV sterilizer as I was told that often is a good method of defence from bugs like ich and uronema. If its something dissolved in the water that I'm not testing for, should I just drain the whole thing, go buy more salt, and start over with new water from the new unit? if I don't have to drain it I don't want to, but its seeming more and more like the next logical step in trying to make the tank safe again.

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jedimasterben

If you still there is any chlorine anywhere, run a bag of carbon, that'll be the end of that. Or since this is just a small QT tank, drain it, disinfect it, and refill it with new water/etc.

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I know there is no chlorine, I used a bunch of dechlorinator, and have been running carbon now for a week, and its not just a small qt tank, the qt tank I tore down and have disinfected and whatnot, its the large 60gal with 30 gal sump that I'm worried about, since nothing died in the qt tank, everything died within 48h of being placed in the main display tank (its new, and they were the first additions, so its not a HUGE deal to tear it down, but its still almost 80 gallons of saltwater)

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so if you don't think it was a parasite, and the second time it wasn't the chlorine because I removed it with dechlorinator, and he used to use just strait tap water with dechlorinator on his tanks so it *shouldnt* be anything else thats just in the tap water, what else could it be? What is my best course of action to get the tank safe? Do I need to drain it, dry up all the rocks and sand and bio media, vinegar the glass, and start over?

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so I just made a realization that I used two different tubes of silicone when making this tank. Half the tank is with stuff from home hardware that specifically says its aquarium safe (and is what I've always used) but half the tank (the sump baffles mostly I think) is done with GE silicone I kitchen and bath. I've noticed a lot of people questioning if there are any negative agents in the kitchen and bath version. I know that the GE silicone 1 for windows and doors is apparently good to go, and they appear to be the same silicone, but could this be an issue?

Silicone 1 for kitchen and bath says 100% silicone, and nowhere on it does it say there are any mould or mildew reducing agents? is this a possibility, or could there be something else wrong? I really don't want to put another fish in there until I find out what the source of the problem is since I've now killed 4 fish with this tank. (3 likely from chlorine, 1 from god knows what)

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  • 2 weeks later...

Did you change the water out or just add de-chlorinator? Chlorine should evaporate out of water over time. If the chlorine coming out of the RO unit was higher than going in, perhaps his previous RO system was incorrectly plumbed and he was was drawing water from the drain (discard water) instead of the outlet (RO'ed water)? If that is the case, than there are probably higher concentrations of other water contaminants you are no testing for, such as metals, that could be poisoning your fish.

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