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A sad start to a new tank


MrsPeet15

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Hi everyone, it’s been a long time since I posted in here, life has been kind of busy and I’ve been setting up my upgrade. I wanted to share my story regarding the upgrade as it really hasn’t gone too well. I wondered if someone may have experienced the same as me and could shed some light on what has happened as I am stumped.

 

My marine keeping story began with my 3gallon pico tank and boy was it hard work. The eco systems in these things are so volatile and fragile the slightest things caused major problems. I had the tank 2 years and it took around a year to stabilise and for me to come to ‘understand’ it. My husband took a liking to the hobby but really loves fish so eventually it was time for an upgrade so we could keep some more alongside my corals and we purchased a second hand aqua nano 60 which comes in at around 30 gallons. We spent around 6 months slowly acquiring equipment. Our BM NAC QQ and our Maxspect razor nano arrived..... and my husband chipped the bottom of the rear pane of glass moving the tank into the kitchen. We took the tank apart and rebuilt it resealing all of the silicone and flipping the back pane so the chip was no longer in a load bearing corner of the tank. We are lucky to have 2 extremely experienced reef keepers as best friends so they helped us throughout this process, ensuring we had stripped all of the old silicone perfectly and that we used a tank safe aquatic silicone.  In the mean time, my friend Sam helped me build a beautiful reef scape from some dry live rock she had in her shed. We bleached and scrubbed everything and rinsed rinsed and rinsed again until the bleach was gone and left it to stand dry for a week. The whole scape was epoxyed together enabling us to simply lift the whole scape into the tank on Saturday before adding water and substrate. I used salinity salt as always and RODI water generated using their RO unit (my usual source for water). The skimmer was set up and for now has had to go in the main display whilst it beds in. This thing is going nuts and overflowing whilst it beds in, so we were unable to put it in the sump at the back for risk of it pouring down the back of the tank onto the floor. Following this the tank was cloudy so we added some of my old sand to the new sand and live rock and left the tank to clear until Yesterday afternoon before transferring stock which was:

2x Red Neon Eviota gobies

1x Green Clown Goby

1x Nassarius Snail

1x sexy shrimp

Several Candy Cane polyps that have grown voraciously

 4 heads of Acans which again I had great success with and were my favourite coral

Multiple mini Zoa colonies

Clove polyps

Ricordea mushroom

Green Hairy Mushroom

3 x Yellow sponge 

Finger leather 

Leather 

2 Medusa coral

everything was epoxy’d Into place ensuring minimal ‘cloud’ was released from the epoxy, and everything looked great. I also had a huge population of brittle stars which went in with the live rock and a tonne of spionids worms.

Heres the bit that sucks.

About 2 hours after the stuff went in, I found an eviota goby dead and my green clown goby looked atrocious, struggling to right itself and swim. I checked salinity and temp which were fine, so instantly thought it was lack of oxygen or ammonia. My friend fetched an air stone up and the skimmer went on in the main display incase this was the problem despite us having a decent return pump and a power head in there. The green clown goby disappeared. The corals all looked ticked off but I assumed they might have done following the move. I put the fish down to acclimatisation shock or lack of oxygen. Ammonia came back as 0 in a test, as did Nitrate and Nitrite. When I got up this morning I found the other eviota dead. No sign of the Clown Goby. I tested the water again incase the issue was an ammonia spike but all 3 tests came back as 0 for ammonia, 0 for Nitrite and extremely low trace for Nitrate. This made me wonder if the tank has done a mini cycle overnight. Across the course of today the following has happened:

- Nassarius has surfaced and died

- Acan corals have suffered tissue death

- candy canes have suffered tissue loss

- hairy mushroom has spewed its guts ul

- brittle stars have dies

- Spionids worms have ejected themselves from their tubes and have died

- multiple hitch hikers from my rock that I didn’t know existed have died and dropped out including limpits and various worms.

I can’t believe how quickly everything has died so I have a number of theories as to what might have happened:

- a contaminant has entered the tank and is killing everything - I cannot understand what this could be though. We’ve been extremely careful with not putting dirty or contaminated stuff in the tank including using clean hands for everything. All of my equipment is new except for the power head and return pump which have both been out of water and stored in a cupboard for at least 6 months before being rinsed in RO.

- the tank has done a mini cycle and everything is dying as a result. Our friends have set 5 tanks up doing an instant stock transfer like we did and have never seen anything like this

- everything is dying of acclimatisation shock

 

so now I have a few avenues to go down.

- Hope everything that’s still ok recovers to some extent 

- keep testing the water to establish if a cycle is occouring

- if everything dies, restart an entirely new cycle and try again in a few months when that has finsihed

- following that, if I have any further problems, assume there is a contaminate in the tank and start all over again. 

 

Ive spent a lot of time reading and researching and I’ve never seen anything like this. Neither have our friends. We’re all stumped. If everything dies I would assume the ammonia will just restart the cycle which is probably the most realistic but less serious scenario. I just hope to god it’s not a contamination because then I would assume my live rock is unusable.

 

I’d certainly be interested to hear any ideas or opinions anyone has on this. For now I will just have to watch and wait. This hobby eh? When it’s good it’s excellent, when it’s bad it’s a ball ache.

 

Thanks all, and hi again.

 

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Rock is porous, if you used bleach on the rock I would be suspicious that there is still pockets of bleach inside the rock. Whenever I re-use dry rock that used to be live, I cycle it in a bucket separate from any live stock. I only trust reef-cleaners rock to be added to a tank with living stuff. 

 

I am assuming that the friend is trustworthy and the rock has not been used with copper.

 

Do you have prime? I would toss in a capful or two right away as it would help with ammonia/bleach/chlorine/heavy metals, ect. 

 

The skimmer going crazy could be 'new break in period' but a crazy skimmer can also mean something/contaminate in the water.

 

If you used a lot of epoxy it can drop pH and oxygen and of course make the skimmer go crazy and probably irritate stuff.

 

How much of your old sand did you use? Did you wash it? If it was just a cup to seed then its not a problem but if you moved it over without washing it, it could release a lot of organics. 

 

 

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RayWhisperer

Holy long post, Batman! 

Im on my phone and it would take me an hour to read all that. So, before I begin. Welcome back.

 

now, you may not have ammonia, or other toxins built up yet. However, considering you have a bunch of new rock, you will. I understand, you have some from your old tank, but that just isn't enough. 

 

My thoughts on what may be your issue is corals releasing toxins, as everything was moved all at once. I'll try to read the rest of this post tonight to see if I suspect anything else. That's just my guess as of now.

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Just now, RayWhisperer said:

Holy long post, Batman! 

Im on my phone and it would take me an hour to read all that. So, before I begin. Welcome back.

 

now, you may not have ammonia, or other toxins built up yet. However, considering you have a bunch of new rock, you will. I understand, you have some from your old tank, but that just isn't enough. 

 

My thoughts on what may be your issue is corals releasing toxins, as everything was moved all at once. I'll try to read the rest of this post tonight to see if I suspect anything else. That's just my guess as of now.

Hey Ray, I know, it’s a long story though right! That’s interesting. Let me know what you think when you read the rest. The living room smells an awful lot like ‘tank’ right now if that makes sense. Assumed this could be because of all the corals dying in there at the moment. Stupid thing is, the Zoas which I’d assume would be the worst culprit for releasing toxins look really annoyed but don’t look like they’re dying ...... yet. Just for the record, I put ALL of my rock from the old tank in.

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5 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

Rock is porous, if you used bleach on the rock I would be suspicious that there is still pockets of bleach inside the rock. Whenever I re-use dry rock that used to be live, I cycle it in a bucket separate from any live stock. I only trust reef-cleaners rock to be added to a tank with living stuff. 

 

I am assuming that the friend is trustworthy and the rock has not been used with copper.

 

Do you have prime? I would toss in a capful or two right away as it would help with ammonia/bleach/chlorine/heavy metals, ect. \

 

The skimmer going crazy could be 'new break in period' but a crazy skimmer can also mean something/contaminate in the water.

 

If you used a lot of epoxy it can drop pH and oxygen.

 

 

Hey,all things I certainly considered. The friend who did my rock with me is certainly trustworthy, her tank is reef with a lot of fish so would never use copper. She stressed to me today she rinsed the rock to death, it sat in a tub of RO and I’m pretty sure she said the flow was in in it. She re filled with clean RO a tonne of times and this was all after totally soaking and rinsing it down. Same way she’s always done it for her tanks. I did wonder if the skimmer was going mad because something nasty is in the water, I’ll have to keep an eye and see if it beds in anytime soon or just goes in like this for weeks. I was extremely careful with the epoxy as I’ve read horro stories about people working it too much in the tank and it depressing oxygen, again very feasibly and option though. I do tbhave any prime at the moment but certainly could get some tomorrow, that’s really helpful advice, thank you! Knew people would be quick to offer advice on here. Hopefully this thread will become part of the archive and could help someone else in future too. I will update as the week goes on, think it’s gonna get a whole lot worse before ro gets better though :/

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What a terrible experience. My heart goes out to you for all your hard work and to have it go so wrong. One question. When you bleached the rock did you use straight bleach or dilute it? I'm thinking, like Tamberav, you may have had bleach pockets inside the dry rock. With evaporation bleach will crystallize that then goes back into solution when water hits it. That's why you want to run it in RO/DI for a week or so with a powerhead and frequent water changes. The fact that your CUC, as well as everything else is going belly up definitely points to a contaminant, esp if you are getting 0 readings with your test kits. I'll be following this thread, so please keep us updated.

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11 minutes ago, Oldsalt01 said:

What a terrible experience. My heart goes out to you for all your hard work and to have it go so wrong. One question. When you bleached the rock did you use straight bleach or dilute it? I'm thinking, like Tamberav, you may have had bleach pockets inside the dry rock. With evaporation bleach will crystallize that then goes back into solution when water hits it. That's why you want to run it in RO/DI for a week or so with a powerhead and frequent water changes. The fact that your CUC, as well as everything else is going belly up definitely points to a contaminant, esp if you are getting 0 readings with your test kits. I'll be following this thread, so please keep us updated.

Hey Oldsalt, thanks for your kindness. I’m leaning towards contaminate at the moment which is really sad. I know the bleach seems like the obvious suspect at the moment, I Have to stress though, this woman knows what she’s doing I left this with her as she had some time off work to deal with it. She’s had 5 tanks now all of which she has treated in the manner mine has been. I left the rock with her and she took care of the rinsing. I’ll double check with her in the morning but when I spoke to her today she was adamant she changed the RODI in the tub she was using regularly after soaking the stuff and rinsing over and over. What you’ve said about the crystallisation is very interesting, I thought the bleach would have evaporated to Chlorine over time. Is it likely I would be able to smell bleach in the system if this was a culprit? At the moment I can smell no bleach but I would imagine a trace amount that wouldn’t smell would be enough to damage the ecosystem substantially without giving off any scent? 

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RayWhisperer

Bleach only crystallizes at high concentrations, as far as I know. However, I don't know how chloromines (spelling?) react in any concentration to dehydration, or rehydration. Just another culprit, to twist your brain with.

 

im at work, so I still haven't read all your original post. However, I think my initial suspicion is still the one I'd lean to. Especially in your reply, you said the palys looked pissed, yet seem better off than the others. That's a pretty good indicator IMO.

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I'd suspect residue bleach and the fact that it was dry rock used with no pre cycling.

 

Without the dry rock being cycled, there's no biological filtration.

 

1 piece of lr won't provide enough for a fully stocked tank.

 

 

Basically it's a completely new tank, sterile.

 

New sand, new rocks.

 

 

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RayWhisperer
1 hour ago, Clown79 said:

I'd suspect residue bleach and the fact that it was dry rock used with no pre cycling.

 

Without the dry rock being cycled, there's no biological filtration.

 

1 piece of lr won't provide enough for a fully stocked tank.

 

 

Basically it's a completely new tank, sterile.

 

New sand, new rocks.

 

 

I'd agree with the lack of rock, however, that wouldn't make for an apperently overnight malfunction junction. Plus, she's still reading zeros. While that in and of itself is questionable (since I doubt any test we use can read low numbers accurately.) It still points to any serious cycle to have even started yet.

 

Im of the mind of just chalking this up as a big mistake. Continue to cycle the tank without anything, or whatever corals survive. After a month or two, start over again with new, and more interesting corals.

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I wasn't casting aspersions on your friends ability, just trying to do some problem solving (no, I'm not getting defensive).  I'm sure she's more than competent. Chlorine will become inactive (change chemical composition) when exposed to sunlight... that's why you have to keep adding it to outdoor pools. While there is an amount of evaporation of it while drying, it's miniscule. As a chemical, being highly alkaline, it acts on living tissues by breaking down celluar walls and dissolving fats. That's why it feels slippery if you get a drop on your skin. Upon further reading of other posts I may also be leaning towards your zoas giving off palytoxin if they're pissed. That's also a possibility. The question remains, what pissed  them off? Either way I'd avoid direct water contact with skin and when doing water changes use a self-starting siphon.

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45 minutes ago, RayWhisperer said:

I'd agree with the lack of rock, however, that wouldn't make for an apperently overnight malfunction junction. Plus, she's still reading zeros. While that in and of itself is questionable (since I doubt any test we use can read low numbers accurately.) It still points to any serious cycle to have even started yet.

 

Im of the mind of just chalking this up as a big mistake. Continue to cycle the tank without anything, or whatever corals survive. After a month or two, start over again with new, and more interesting corals.

Oh I agree, the lack of readings is questionable.

 

Anyone know how bleach being leaches into the water can effect test kit results?

 

 

I don't think everything in this hobby is as black and white in all cases. Which makes some situations difficult to determine causes.

 

The bleach. 

Too many times do you see problems occur and bleach was part of the equation. Vinegar is far more friendly product to use.

 

Rocks are porous and can absorb bleach like they do phosphates. 

 

Bleach is so strong that it removes skin layers, that's why your skin is silky smooth when you use bleach with bare hands.

 

It very well could be a combination of a few things rather than just one.

 

The issue is, if bleach contaminated the water, it will kill all beneficial life/bacteria that was on the liverock. 

 

 

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Ok loads of really helpful replies guys, thanks for the quick responses. Oldsalt sorry if my post cam across as salty (excuse the pun) I didn’t mean to question your post I just wanted to make it clear how unlikely it is she wouldn’t haven’t considered bleach as the risk it can be.

Im thinking if it’s not a cycle (I will test again in the morning in daylight and post results) I could keep testing for a cycle start during the week. I’d like to assume that bleach would kill any bacteria right? If a cycle doesn’t start I’ll chuck a lance fish or a prawn in. If a cycle doesn’t start after that I reckon I could assume bleach is killing the bacteria, hence the cyckenisnt starting, hence bleach could well be the culprit? Im notnaure wether zoas would kill the system so rapidly? Any thoughts from you guys who are much more experienced than me? This is so gutting and really frustrating but I can at least put it down to an important if not very sad learning curve. 

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Jellyingabout

I would put money on you being able to drop a dead salmon in a tank and the tank still be alive a day later. I don't think a cycle would have had quite the impact and so quickly. My money is on the bleach as the direct culprit. People have zoas die all the time without nuking their system, i highly doubt they're to blame. 

 

Sinking rocks in RO with good flow for day won't clear bleach away properly. I know your friend and many others have got away with it on occassion but its just risky.

Bleached rock needs treated properly by either drying it out and allowing it to evaporate or by treating it with Sodium Thiosulphate.

 

Bleach kills by denaturing proteins, if the concentration is too low it won't do it, but once your over the right concentration proteins start getting messed up. Theres not much of a middle ground. Cells can react to dentaturing agents with heat shock proteins, but reef organisms are particularly poor at this being adapted to very stable conditions. This means that you won't see much of gradient in the toxicity of bleach. Its more of a deadly or not, with not much room inbetween. 

 

Many people get away with it because when the bleached rock is added to their system their tank is large enough to end up diluting the hypocholrite to below deadly levels, especially if they have a sump and do a water change soon after, something most folk do near the begining of a tank set up. Their critters may get pissed off, iratated by the change in pH but there tissues are largely undamaged, they blame it on a "mini cycle" and move on, but in reality they just bleach poisoned their tank a little and got away with it.

If you have a large amount of rock, bleached in strong solution, and have a smallish system volume you run the risk of tipping over that concetration sweet spot :(

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It’s not looking good is it, I’m thinking bleach may well have contaminated the system. It crossed my mind before but the more it’s mentioned the more sense it makes. If my attempt to trigger a cycle fails suggesting this is the culprit, does anyone have any suggestions for righting this? Many many many water changes or take the rock out and re-cure it? 

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Jellyingabout
2 hours ago, Clown79 said:

Anyone know how bleach being leaches into the water can effect test kit results?

Hypochlorite (bleach in solution) is a key reagent in most ammonia test kits, so it will screw up your equilibrium making any test results inaccurate. Whether it artifically increases or reduces the result depends on the type of kit.

 

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Jellyingabout

Firstly test your pH, it will help you figure this out.

 

Sounds like the rocks are now full of dead crap. I would remove them and cure in a seperate bucket, along with the substrate.

 

Actually its probably easier to remove the corals and quarentine them in a seperate bucket with a heater and pump until your tank has stabilised, fixing the rock in the tank.

 

And as always - dilution is the solution to pollution. So get a tonnes of SW mixing and airating now ready for use soon.

 

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5 minutes ago, Jellyingabout said:

Firstly test your pH, it will help you figure this out.

 

Sounds like the rocks are now full of dead crap. I would remove them and cure in a seperate bucket, along with the substrate.

 

Actually it probably easier to remove the corals and quarentine them in a seperate bucket with a heater and pump until your tank has stabilised, fixing the rock in the tank.

 

And as always - dilution is the solution to pollution. So get a tonnes of SW mixing and airating now ready for use soon.

 

I think rather sadly all of my corals are a goner. I think start water changing at 50% tomorrow with the skimmer running, but I am more than open to reccomendations? 

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Jellyingabout

Sorry to hear that :( if your coral are dead then theres nothing stopping you from doing a 100% water change, reacclimating the critters. The stress of one big 100% change with a nice slow acclimation (making sure not to keep the acclimation water) is probably far less than a few 50% changes.

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5 minutes ago, Jellyingabout said:

Sorry to hear that :( if your coral are dead then theres nothing stopping you from doing a 100% water change, reacclimating the critters. The stress of one big 100% change with a nice slow acclimation (making sure not to keep the acclimation water) is probably far less than a few 50% changes.

Everything apart from the Zoa and leather looks like it’s just melting to oblivion. I think all of the critters are dead. Will do 100% in the morning if I can’t see anything to suggest a cyckenis going on. If it isn’t I’m willing to bet a contaminant is killing the bacteria before it establishes?

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SaltyBuddha

My first thought after reading your post was either a cycle or bleach problem. With problems happening so fast, it is probably the bleach.

 

Whenever I clean something with bleach, I will use a diluted solution (1:2 or 1:4) to soak the part I am cleaning. Then I will rinse the heck out of it and let it sit in a RODI water dosed with LOTS of Seachem Prime. The Prime is meant to bind to ammonia and chlorine (bleach). I change the water with more Prime/RODI until I'm satisfied. I only do this for things that absolutely cannot be cleaned with white vinegar. Usually this is because I went to long between cleanings.

 

Hate to say it, but personally I would re-start the tank. The bleach probably killed off a good chunk (if not all) your bacteria and your tank will need to re-cycle. Much easier doing this without all the corals/fish in the tank. Soak all the rock/equipment with RODI/Prime, replace or rinse sand with RODI/Prime, get the surviving animals into your friends tank or a QT. Then you can either cycle the tank for a few weeks or add some pieces of liverock in to bump start it. This would be safer for your tanks health and the inhabitants.

 

If you absolutely don't want to re-start the tank, then you will need to start dosing Prime ASAP. Overdosing Prime can also lead to oxygen problems I believe, so you want to keep that airstone in. Problem with that is that it will bind the ammonia too so your cycle will be harder to complete. Big and frequent water changes. Stir up all the sand really well. Add some bottled bacteria and hope for the best. 

 

Really sorry to hear about this. 

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Having thought more about it, I agree with jellingabout concerning hypochlorite throwing off the ammonia test. Being so alkaline it should also throw you pH through the roof. Check that if u haven't yet. Hang in there. We're all rooting for you. Drastic situations call for drastic measures. How much more can you lose by doing a 100% H2O change? I would try to get whatever surviving corals, believe you said zoas and a leather, into QT as I think u may have a cycle no matter what you do. Worst case is you have to start over completely. 

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