ARGH- What happened?

[Empty]

Hi all,

 

Last night I bought my first coral and my first(and only, assuming this turns out ok) fish- a small mat of GSPs and a neon blue goby. Yes, I know, bringing home 2 additions was probably a bad idea, and I won't be repeating that idiotic impulse.

 

Tank specs:

 

5g bow

26w PC w/ ahsupply reflectors

Water: distilled, 3 days ago: 0 am, 0 nitrite, 0 nitrate, pH 8.2 alk ~7 ca ~450ppm

81 degrees f

 

The tank is cycled(cured LR and I watched the spikes) and I have had detrivores in there well over a week(4 hermits 2 astrea 1 emerald crab)

 

Last night when I was getting ready to put the frag and fish in(while they were drip acclimating) I moved a piece of LR that had been bothering me. Part of it that was under the substrate is now above it, and some of the substrate got churned up. Late last night, after noticing my GSPs had not yet opened, I decided to test again.

 

!!! .5ppm amm, slightly non-zero nitrite(IE beteen 0 and the lowest nonzero color on Red Seas kit- cant recall off the top of my head what that number was and the log is at home ), and 50 ppm nitrate! I did an immediate water change (2qt, IE 10% of total volume so probably 15-20% of water volume). I will do another tonight.

 

I used tank water to acclimate after dumping out most of the LFS water, and did not introduces any FS water to the tank.

 

So, what happened? The only thing I have added this week is a little bit of kalk to boost corraline and tubeworm growth (like 1qt of makeup with 1/4 tsp of Seachem calc - a half dose) and 1/4 cube of frozen spirulina for the algaevores, which was eaten within a few hours.

 

My current theory is that I opened a pocket of decay on the LR and it released the ammonia in the water, but I want to know for sure. I am betting a 1/2" neon goby can't crap that much.

 

The goby was taking it in stride (he came from Petco, though- .5ppm ammonia is probably a good day in the petco tanks... And FWIW I would not have bought a less disease-resilient fish from there ). The GSPs have not opened as of this AM, although one or two poked out for an hour or two last night), but from what I understand sometimes they take a few days to open, especially if there is a pH difference.

 

Any advice or help would be appreciated.

 

On the bright side, the GSPs have a little bivalve of some kind imbedded in them- hard to tell what, as it is tiny and covered with the mat- it's visible as a small line that opens sometimes They also came in with what I think may be a nudibranch- a yellow-orange thing with an abalone-shell-like back part that appears to be soft. The shell-looking part has several little flaps and the rest of the sluglike body has some hair-like protuberances. He was in the mat and climbed out and under the rock within a few minutes of being in the tank. The GSPs appear undamaged, so I don't think it was eating them, but I will tweezer him out if he becomes a problem.

 

I will try to get some good pictures later tonight after another WC or two.

 

~Empty

[zizmans]

Here's some advice . NEVER BUY SALT WATER INHABS OR HARDWARE FROM PETCO. Their tanks are a joke, inhabs in poor health. Red Sea test kits SUCK. Petco sells no descent products for the SW aquariast.

[johnstringer]

I disagree, I saved a nice small yellow tang from petco this weekend, and it only cost me $25. My local reef store would have charged about $65. yeah, the little guy is skinny, but is adapting very well in my 125. I also have a yellow goby from petco that has been doing great for the last 6 months. Yes, petco has poor conditions, but the livestock I have gotten has done me well.

[jmt]

Petco isn't bad if you catch them on shipment days and get a chance to get the fish before it's been under their care fo too long. It's not that they suck over all, it's just that a lot of them aren't very knowledgeable. There are exceptions though, as I ran into this guy about my age that had a 55ga and a 7ga bow front at home.

 

-Justin

[zizmans]

Nothing like cyanide caught fish from petco.

[Empty]

First, an update.

 

I got home tonight and ammonia was down to .25ppm. Nitrite had spiked to .2ppm, though, so I have a mini cycle ramping up for the job. Nitrate was at 10. I did a 2 1/2 qt waterchange, so using my earlier guesstimates I probably lowered those numbers to ammonia .2 nitrite 1.8 nitrate 8. I will test later and do another change before bed I think.

 

The goby is fine, as are the other inhabitants. My star polyps are open, the nudibranch is exploring the powerhead, and the goby was swimming around the rocks and chilling. When picture time came, he got shy and stuck to the tank-interior side of the powerhead, so I don't have any good shots of him.

 

 

 

Now, some replies:

 

zizmans: "Here's some advice . NEVER BUY SALT WATER INHABS OR HARDWARE FROM PETCO. Their tanks are a joke, inhabs in poor health."

 

Petco is a chain- different stores carry different things- and have different employees. I can tell you there are some Petcos in the Seattle area I will not walk into, and there are some I will ask advice from. It's ALL about the aquatics person, and knowing what not to buy. Another helpful thing is to know the sump layouts so you can determine what ranks of tanks to avoid based on water column and the health of all the fish in it.

 

"Red Sea test kits SUCK."

 

I am coming to that conclusion myself. After seeing the "hardness" in my test kit have a scale with "Low, Medium, High" I realized that these will need replacing. In the interest of marital bliss I will do so slowly

 

"Petco sells no descent products for the SW aquariast."

 

Petco sells tanks cheap, for one. They sell many brands of salt people here use, as well as the Natures Ocean live sand some here swear by.

 

zizmans: "Nothing like cyanide caught fish from petco. "

 

OK, this I cannot argue with- I imagine Petco's suppliers do have some odious fishing practices. However, I know that most species they have that can be captive bred are, as it is economically feasible for them and helps mitigate disease losses. I buy captive-bred fish there (gouramis, some tetras, platies, etc). I also regularly write to them to make them stop carrying fish I find to be even worse than cyanide fished- painted fish. The Petcos I frequent have not had a painted fish in over a year now.

 

jmt: "Petco isn't bad if you catch them on shipment days and get a chance to get the fish before it's been under their care fo too long."

 

This is true... Also, know the Petco before you buy any livestock there.

 

"It's not that they suck over all, it's just that a lot of them aren't very knowledgeable."

 

This is exactly right. The aquatics guy at the Petco I got my goby from got in a good coworker-induced froth because a fellow employee had labeled them as cleaner wrasses. In the moron... err employees defense, the fuzzy picture looked somewhat similar. Then again, anyone with fish experience could tell by movement alone that this was a goby.

 

"There are exceptions though, as I ran into this guy about my age that had a 55ga and a 7ga bow front at home."

 

The fish lady at one Petco near me has a 150g planted discus tank. Her discus breed all the time. Her 40g reef aquarium has SPS, and she regularly frags it to sell to other LFSs(Petco can't support SPS, obviously, although some have MH pendants over the plant tank).

 

~Empty

[Whitten]

Empty, I haven't even read all the way through your post because I found what your problem is right off the bat. You are adding kalk....trust me when i say that stuff can both the best stuff in the world and your worst nightmare. I have a 2.5 that had been running for over 3 months. I got my first corals last week, and for got that my top off water had kalk in it. So I went about adding some water and realized that I had just done a stupid thing. Kalk will raise your PH, which will cause a chain reaction. If it is not dosed absolutly positivly the right way it can decimate a tank as small as ours. I had to learn the hard way that the best way to promote Coraline growth in tanks as small as ours is to buy water premixed from the store. I buy water that they mix especially for their coral tanks that already has all of the nutrients that are needed for corals. If you do weekly .5 gallon changes of that kind of water your tank will be perfect.

[onthefly]

Originally posted by Empty

the nudibranch is exploring the powerhead

 

Like mosquitos to a bug Zapper!

 

A couple things Empty, first how long was your tank cycled? If it was still "new" you very well could have disrupted a "pocket" of funk! Second, I tend to agree with Whitten (how is speaking from experience here) that rather than using Kalk to boost coralline, just keep the Ca levels up with the seachem product (that worked great for me!). In such a minimally stocked tank, the Kalk really isn't helping you and can cause some serious problems if dosed wrong.

[Empty]

Hi guys,

 

Thanks for the help I thought I was dosing correctly (I dosed up to 450-500ppm over the course of 2 hours or so with a 1/2 strength solution and a knotted airline tube dripping about 1drip/2sec) but perhaps that was the cause of it. I tested twice (once 30 min in and once near the end) and both times the pH was about .1 higher than it had been pre-dose. I don't use kalk in my makeup water, I just used it the once thus far.

 

onthefly, I think the the pocket-o'-funk theory is correct, as it is dissipating as quickly as it came and I think the crazy-kalk-pH theory would result in bacterial death and thus a much longer time before the nitrite spike I saw last night.

 

I plan to keep using kalk, *sparingly and slowly*, but probably not before the 10g sump I will be building in the next month or so. I also plan to upgrade to MH lighting and I amy even jump up to a 20 or 30 at that time

 

Regardless, the tank looks fine (IE I don't need to go a-diggin' again), the goby seems OK, and the polyps were fully extended last night. They were closed this AM, but I have my lights coming on around 10am so I would not have seen them open this AM anyway

 

(And yes, the nudi was trying to fit through the strainer holes )

 

Thanks!

 

~Empty, hooked

[Empty]

Well, I just got done testing- ammonia 0 nitrite 0 nitrate 2.5ppm. It looks like it was a pile of crud inducing a minicycle.

 

I also fragged my polyps today- one part of the colony was so low to the sand they could not fully extend. I snapped that part off, gel-superglued it to a broken off branch tip, and placed it in the sand. I am keeping the colonies away from the main structure so I don't end up with a tank full of them So far neither colony has opened back up, and the lights are out so probably tomorrow.

 

~Empty