Tank Crash Mystery

[Schwanson]

After staying in bed all day yesterday with the stomach flu, I woke up at 4 PM to see my tank was crashing.

 

The monti cap was sliming it's color and bleaching, frogspawn was all shriveled up, brain coral was shriveled and sliming, and my acan was shriveled.

 

I immediately did a 50% water change and added a full package of Chemipure to supplement the 1/2 package that was already in there. I removed the filter floss and did not replace.

 

Parameters from water prior to water change: Phosphate, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates all 0. PH 8.1 alkalinity 8. Calcium 400

 

Things that have happened recently:

 

Palm light for my fuge went out 2 days ago. There is only cheato in there. I did not feel any stray current nor were the light or cord in the water.

 

Have not dosed anything in at least 3-4 days.

 

Temperature at time of crash was a tad low, I had turned down the AC while I fought off the flu. Tank temp was 76 - Normal range for my tank is 78-80. Maybe this caused my monti cap to slime which effected everything else?

 

I have an open top tank and two young children. Both swear they did not add anything, I believe them. They are afraid to stick their hands in after I explained that "Pinchy" the emerald crab wants to eat their fingers.

 

The lights aren't due to kick on for a few more hours but today the acan looks a little better. Coraline algae is starting to look bleached. Frogspawn may be a tad better, will know more after lights on. My brain coral is still very deflated. All zoas and xenia look unaffected.

 

Well, any advice or suggestions are appreciated. This sucks.

[Mark S]

Wish I had some solution for you. I dont know whats going on, but it seems we have had a rash of crashes or near crashes lately. Many of the near crashes were tanks owned by experienced reefers and not caused by the normal beginner/newbie errors.

 

I went through something similar on my, up to then, near perfect 2 year old tank. I did just what you did. I continued with 25% water changes every 3 days for 2 weeks. All has recovered, with very few losses and I am back to normal now after 4-5 weeks. I still have no idea what happened.

 

Mark

[tinyreef]

Temperature at time of crash was a tad low, I had turned down the AC while I fought off the flu. Tank temp was 76 - Normal range for my tank is 78-80. Maybe this caused my monti cap to slime which effected everything else?

do you have a heater to avoid the really low temps? 76F is what you saw during the day (i assume). it could've dipped lower at night. anything lower than 70F can be very traumatic ime.

 

They are afraid to stick their hands in after I explained that "Pinchy" the emerald crab wants to eat their fingers.

lol.

 

Wish I had some solution for you. I dont know whats going on, but it seems we have had a rash of crashes or near crashes lately. Many of the near crashes were tanks owned by experienced reefers and not caused by the normal beginner/newbie errors.

season change usually brings on a rash of tank crashes ime. i.e. things look well for six months and then the season/temperature change (warmer or colder) catches people off-guard.

 

another possibility is changes in water source purity. spring rains tend to kick up a lot of sediment in groundwater sources. unless water sources are carefully filtered and monitored for filtration effectiveness, that can enter into tank setups and cause crashes thru pollution.

 

i would tend to suspect season changes though given the timeframes.

[Schwanson]

I do not have a heater, but my house temperature never dipped below 72, prolly closer to 74. I live in South Florida and the only way to keep it that cool is by using the AC. I tend to doubt it, but there is a possibility the tank got to 74-75. I can see no way it dipped below that, even on the coldest winter days it never dipped below 75.

 

I was expecting to find high ammonia / nitrite / nitrates. This would be much easier if I had as I would know to look for the decaying matter. Once I saw those params were normal I was sure the PH was going to test way off, no dice.

 

I can't see the water being an issue as it's been over a week since my last water change, unless it can take that long for a problem to develop. The water used down here is NSW, if that was the culprit I tend to believe I would have seen an issue closer to the time of the WC.

 

Thanks for the input Tinyreef and MarkS. I'll update after lights on.

[tinyreef]

I was expecting to find high ammonia / nitrite / nitrates. This would be much easier if I had as I would know to look for the decaying matter. Once I saw those params were normal I was sure the PH was going to test way off, no dice.

hmm, could be something that doesn't show on the popular test kits (see tapwater/sourcewater comment below). we only test for 3~5 compounds out of thousands of possibilities.

 

I can't see the water being an issue as it's been over a week since my last water change, unless it can take that long for a problem to develop. The water used down here is NSW, if that was the culprit I tend to believe I would have seen an issue closer to the time of the WC.

actually, i was thinking more about topoff water than a waterchange. some salt mixes have metal neutralizers or react to compounds in source waters to create inert compounds that often don't affect tanks (imo, why occasionally some tapwater is ok to use). but if used as topoff, you don't have that (sometimes) benefit of 'neutralizing' undesireable compounds.

 

let's see if we can find something from the pictures and more info.

[Schwanson]

Hmmmm...top off water. I buy 5G of RO at a time from the LFS. I never test TDS as I've never had an issue nor have a TDS tester. But that particular top off batch is about two weeks old, I have used a few G's from it. Perhaps it got "stale" sitting in a stagnant jug? Not sure if that is even possible. I'll post up some pics after lights on so as you can see the carnage.

[tinyreef]

i'd doubt that the jug got stale in that amount of time, especially if you've handled it a couple of times during that period. it's probably not that then.

 

did anyone top-off/could anyone have topped-off for you from another water source while you were laid up?

 

any other livestock affected? or only the corals you noted?

[bluepanda]

After staying in bed all day yesterday with the stomach flu, I woke up at 4 PM to see my tank was crashing.

 

The monti cap was sliming it's color and bleaching, frogspawn was all shriveled up, brain coral was shriveled and sliming, and my acan was shriveled.

 

I immediately did a 50% water change and added a full package of Chemipure to supplement the 1/2 package that was already in there. I removed the filter floss and did not replace.

 

Parameters from water prior to water change: Phosphate, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrates all 0. PH 8.1 alkalinity 8. Calcium 400

 

Things that have happened recently:

 

Palm light for my fuge went out 2 days ago. There is only cheato in there. I did not feel any stray current nor were the light or cord in the water.

 

Have not dosed anything in at least 3-4 days.

 

Temperature at time of crash was a tad low, I had turned down the AC while I fought off the flu. Tank temp was 76 - Normal range for my tank is 78-80. Maybe this caused my monti cap to slime which effected everything else?

 

I have an open top tank and two young children. Both swear they did not add anything, I believe them. They are afraid to stick their hands in after I explained that "Pinchy" the emerald crab wants to eat their fingers.

 

The lights aren't due to kick on for a few more hours but today the acan looks a little better. Coraline algae is starting to look bleached. Frogspawn may be a tad better, will know more after lights on. My brain coral is still very deflated. All zoas and xenia look unaffected.

 

Well, any advice or suggestions are appreciated. This sucks.

 

Could it be salinity? I have been getting a lot of evaporate lately and replacing nearly a gallon every two days. If I don't attend to it right away my frogspawn gets very wilted.

[Schwanson]

One week update...

 

Everything is looking much better. The brain is inflating all the way, frogspawn is looking healthy again, and the acan is puffy. My monti cap is still bleached but there is some polyp extension so I am hopeful it will recover.

 

I have to wonder if this was a chain reaction from one of my corals sliming. Is it possible the frogspawn, monti, or xenia slimed causing everything else to release toxins? Not knowing the cause is frustrating as I want to prevent this from happening again.

[greeneyes]

Gald to here that things are better. It is possible that you corals released toxins in the tank causing things to go hay wire.

[Schwanson]

Gald to here that things are better. It is possible that you corals released toxins in the tank causing things to go hay wire.

 

That's what I am thinking. I have no experience with chemical warfare, but am lead to believe it could have happened. I do not have a lot of water in my AP12, I'm thinking <8 gallons after displacement. Are any of the listed corals known to release toxins?