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Tragedy


Mros

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Hello, I am brand new to this forum and I am in need of some advice to what I should do next. Backing up a little bit, last night my 3 year old daughter dumped an entire 1.2oz jar of Cobalt aquatics marine omni fish flakes into my 12 gallon nano reef. This was my first saltwater tank it's been up and running for about 6 months now and I am completely devastated about what had happened. I had 4 fishes an anemone and about 6 different corals. How I reacted to what happened was I first scooped out as much of the fish food I could with a net then I replaced the filter floss and went straight to my lfs and bought 6.6 gallons of nutri-sea water because I didn't have any saltwater ready to go. I came home and did a 5 gallon water change siphoning up as much of the food I could. At this point the water was beginning to turn extremely cloudy and started to smell. I didn't know what to do so I took the remaining nutri sea water and put in into a 5 gallon bucket and took all my fish and coral out and into the bucket. The anemone was dead at this point, when I first got it it was on the brink of death and I brought it back put so much time and effort into it. My fish were starting to act weak and about to die. I put a small heater in the bucket and let the filter run in the tank all night. This morning to my surprise all my fish were still alive in the bucket as well as my corals. I took all my fish and coral to my lfs and let them have everything. I figured they would have a much better chance of survival with them. All that is left in my tank now is a few snails and hermit's that survived. The water is still cloudy so I just changed all the filter floss and rinsed the carbon in my filter. I aslo turned on my protein skimmer. What I want to know is what should I do next to get my tank stabilized again. I feel like I've lost a lot of the motivation I had about this hobby and after losing everything I worked so hard for and spent so much money on makes me almost want to empty my tank and give up. Any advise or encouragememt would be greatly appreciated. Below is some pictures of before and what my tank looks like now

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Doesn't look that cloudy.  Do a few more correct water changes over a few weeks and you should be good to go.  Test levels before introducing live stock again.

 

It was only food, worse things can happen.

 

If the water from the LFS wasn't up to temp that could have done some or most of the harm, especially if the salinity wasn't matched close enough. 

I'd skip on the anemone next time.  Not the best idea in a tank that size.  If you want something for the clown to host look into frogspawn.

 

Fish and the other corals are pretty hardy, anemone was the issue blowing up.  You'll be back in the game very soon.  Hard labor for the crumb cruncher seems like the correct solution.

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If the water continues to cloud you can add an airstone for a couple of days to offset the O2 depletion from the bacterial growth. Continue with your water changes as StevieT said. I also agree about the ’nem. Too small a tank for them to do well.

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sam_the_reefer

Lol, happened to me a few days ago! But luckily I caught it early and had lots of water. Pretty common occurrence when you have kids. 🙂 I wasn't so lucky the first time it happened, so I learned it's always best to keep some water around.

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Your tank will have a bacterial growth spike from all of the extra nutrients in the tank and secondary algae outbreaks might happen. 

 

What I would do is change mechanical filter pads/floss daily, add carbon or purigen to remove the extra nutrients (change weekly). run your skimmer if you have one and do water changes until your nitrate is below 5ppm..

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NuisanceAlgaeCultivator

Not sure if this is the most expert way, but I’d buy salt mix from the LFS, dechlorinator, make multiple buckets or a big trash can worth of water, match salinity, and change ALL of the water.

In a separate container dip rinse the live rock to get excess food off.

Change the filter media too. 

 

This issue doesn’t seem too bad, you basically just have a bigger water change than normal on your hands. Maybe the LFS will be nice enough to give your stuff back?

For the future keep a 5 gallon bucket with ready made water on standby for emergencies and water changes. It’s helped a ton in my experiences.

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The tank doesn't look bad at all.

 

The fish and corals would have been fine in a bucket for a few days, you didn't need to give them up. Even a rubbermaid container can be used as a holding tank, qt, and hospital tank. 

 

 

While the fish were being held in the bucket I would have done a very large waterchange, 50% or more.

 

Add new carbon, new purigen, new floss. Change floss more regularly during this time.

 

Test the tank and let it run for a few days.

 

Once it cleared up and tests were good, return livestock to the tank.

 

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Hi, thanks for all the replys. I definitely over reacted to the whole situation. I did another 5 gallon water change today as well as thoroughly cleaned the filter area moved all the live rock around and got just about all the remaining fish food out cleaned and return pump. The water is slowly getting more clear. I was thinking of putting some nitrifying bacteria in the tank as well. I'm gonna check back in with my lfs to see how my first and corals are holding up. This is how it's looking a little over 48 hours after the incident.

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5 hours ago, Mros said:

Hi, thanks for all the replys. I definitely over reacted to the whole situation. I did another 5 gallon water change today as well as thoroughly cleaned the filter area moved all the live rock around and got just about all the remaining fish food out cleaned and return pump. The water is slowly getting more clear. I was thinking of putting some nitrifying bacteria in the tank as well. I'm gonna check back in with my lfs to see how my first and corals are holding up. This is how it's looking a little over 48 hours after the incident.

15455564794058591145897283345707.jpg

You should be good. It looks pretty clear now. 🙂

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5 hours ago, Mros said:

Hi, thanks for all the replys. I definitely over reacted to the whole situation. I did another 5 gallon water change today as well as thoroughly cleaned the filter area moved all the live rock around and got just about all the remaining fish food out cleaned and return pump. The water is slowly getting more clear. I was thinking of putting some nitrifying bacteria in the tank as well. I'm gonna check back in with my lfs to see how my first and corals are holding up. This is how it's looking a little over 48 hours after the incident.

15455564794058591145897283345707.jpg

Looks fine. I would just check your ammonia ,nitrite,  nitrate levels.  Don't worry about adding more bacteria your tank has plenty if you gave been running for 6 months. If you are worried about the big water changes dont . Many people do 100 percent water changes , the bacteria lives mostly in your rock and sand not the water column. 

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Giving up the wrasse was a good idea... IDK who sold you it but it has no business being in a nano. It gets a foot long!!

 

Maybe they will give you the clown/corals back? 

 

Sorry for the problems...tank looks like it will turn around just fine.

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On 12/23/2018 at 8:30 PM, Tamberav said:

Giving up the wrasse was a good idea... IDK who sold you it but it has no business being in a nano. It gets a foot long!!

 

Maybe they will give you the clown/corals back? 

 

Sorry for the problems...tank looks like it will turn around just fine.

It was still maybe 2", just a juvenile. I was planning on moving it to a bigger tank when it was time.

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Oh, and when I came home from work tonight I found this. It was my son this time. The wireless mouse to my laptop, gum, batteries, Neosporin, scissors, and a chop stick.. FML..

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NuisanceAlgaeCultivator
4 hours ago, Mros said:

Oh, and when I came home from work tonight I found this. It was my son this time. The wireless mouse to my laptop, gum, batteries, Neosporin, scissors, and a chop stick.. FML..

Resized_20181223_225005(1).jpeg

Fixing the tank isn’t going to be hard, the bigger issue is kids haha!

 

I say that with no malice, having a son and daughter that love trying to “help Nemo” 🙂 through questionable methods...

 

Thanks for your service too!

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5 hours ago, Mros said:

Oh, and when I came home from work tonight I found this. It was my son this time. The wireless mouse to my laptop, gum, batteries, Neosporin, scissors, and a chop stick.. FML..

Resized_20181223_225005(1).jpeg

Looks like an uphill battle to me. 😄

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5 hours ago, NuisanceAlgaeCultivator said:

Fixing the tank isn’t going to be hard, the bigger issue is kids haha!

 

I say that with no malice, having a son and daughter that love trying to “help Nemo” 🙂 through questionable methods...

 

Thanks for your service too!

Thank you, and yeah I'm thinking my next move is going to be purchasing a taller stand for the aquarium. Just thought "nemo" needed a year's worth of food and some gum and batteries haha. Kids man lol.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Hello everyone, wanted to give a quick update to where I'm at now. I haven't added any fish back to my aquarium yet but I still have about 4 hermit's and 5 snails that survived. I've noticed a huge increase in pods in my tank. Literally hundreds. Lots of Bristol worms, one I saw is about 5-6 inches long. And a lot of algae growth. My question is how do I get rid of the algae. Below is a picture of it. Bryopsis?

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Looks like bryopsis. I'd do manual removal plus spot-treat peroxide. Water changes to lower nutrients, maybe add a fuge. You could resort to chemicals (fluconazole)

but it may just select for other algae.

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1 hour ago, dandelion said:

Looks like bryopsis. I'd do manual removal plus spot-treat peroxide. Water changes to lower nutrients, maybe add a fuge. You could resort to chemicals (fluconazole)

but it may just select for other algae.

Good thing I was planning on building a refgium before this algae showed up. I just purchased the innovative marine aqua gadget chaetomax refugium light a few days ago. Should be coming soon. Also upgraded my return pump to to more water flowing through the filter. Hoping the fuge will make a difference.

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13 hours ago, Mros said:

Hello everyone, wanted to give a quick update to where I'm at now. I haven't added any fish back to my aquarium yet but I still have about 4 hermit's and 5 snails that survived. I've noticed a huge increase in pods in my tank. Literally hundreds. Lots of Bristol worms, one I saw is about 5-6 inches long. And a lot of algae growth. My question is how do I get rid of the algae. Below is a picture of it. Bryopsis?

20190103_171159.jpg

15465538597918132344973750622613.jpg

 

Flucanozole will kill it off for ya real quick (days) in my experience. A fuge will likely not out-compete it. It used to be a fairly difficult algae to ever get rid of before flucanozole showed up. I would honestly just nuke it and add a fuge after so this pest algae doesn't out compete your fuge. 

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6 hours ago, dandelion said:

Looks like bryopsis.

Yes, probably.

6 hours ago, dandelion said:

I'd do manual removal plus spot-treat peroxide.

Yes.

6 hours ago, dandelion said:

Water changes to lower nutrients, maybe add a fuge.

No...can't starve it.  Even if you could, you'd be asking for another (worse) algae vs fixing anything.

6 hours ago, dandelion said:

You could resort to chemicals (fluconazole)

Everyone likes a miracle cure, but no. 😉 

 

Folks have side effects + the algae has a high percentage chance of coming back w/this treatment.

 

@MrosThere's so little of this algae growing (per the pic) that you should go with manual removal.

 

As long as you remove it at the base (it has rootlets if it's Bryopsis) it won't come back.   Use your fingers in a pinching motion to grab the base, or use something like tweezers. Immediately follow up with a peroxide spot treatment (or two) to assure destruction.

 

Also, you really want other algae growing – coraline and regular green hair algae will take up space an prevent REAL pest algae like this from having their pick of the tank.   Those algae NEED NUTRIENTS, so make sure you are NOT starving your tank.   NO3 ≥ 5 ppm and PO4 ≥ 0.03 ppm would be excellent target numbers.


What is your water testing for NO3 and PO4 now?

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8 minutes ago, mcarroll said:

Yes, probably.

Yes.

No...can't starve it.  Even if you could, you'd be asking for another (worse) algae vs fixing anything.

Everyone likes a miracle cure, but no. 😉 

 

Folks have side effects + the algae has a high percentage chance of coming back w/this treatment.

 

@MrosThere's so little of this algae growing (per the pic) that you should go with manual removal.

 

As long as you remove it at the base (it has rootlets if it's Bryopsis) it won't come back.   Use your fingers in a pinching motion to grab the base, or use something like tweezers. Immediately follow up with a peroxide spot treatment (or two) to assure destruction.

 

Also, you really want other algae growing – coraline and regular green hair algae will take up space an prevent REAL pest algae like this from having their pick of the tank.   Those algae NEED NUTRIENTS, so make sure you are NOT starving your tank.   NO3 ≥ 5 ppm and PO4 ≥ 0.03 ppm would be excellent target numbers.


What is your water testing for NO3 and PO4 now?

 

You ever used it yourself or just going off what you read? I used it in my SPS tank without any losses besides bryopsis and havn't seen it come back. It didn't even kill the macro, just dead bryopsis in 4 days, did a water change, ran some carbon. Done and moved on.

 

Spot treating with peroxide was only keeping it at bay and pissing off SPS frags nearby, I tried that then said screw it, not worth bleaching the acros.

 

Yes the OP could take out the rock and dip it probably and be done... his tank looks new and empty.

 

Was not an option for me but flucanozole had no effect on anything. I suspect it will not come back because there is literally nothing left to come back from. 

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There are some giant threads on the stuff out there and it's very popular....I just read a lot, pay attention to the averages.

28 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

I suspect it will not come back because there is literally nothing left to come back from. 

Assuming this is regarding the antifungal medication, this statement is a hypothesis, not a truism.   It comes back on people all the time.  

 

Google "reef fluconazole retreat" and see what's out there.   It's no miracle.  Vibrant is better in terms of efficacy and side effects, IMO, but no miracle either.

 

(Dont' forget the "reef" in that search or it's all yeast infection links...a legitimate use for this med.)

 

38 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

Spot treating with peroxide was only keeping it at bay and pissing off SPS frags nearby, I tried that then said screw it, not worth bleaching the acros.

 

I'm surprise to hear you had side-effects from spot treating with peroxied, but I don't doubt your word.  Thing is, most critters (acro's included) seem to have a good ability to process peroxide with an enzyme (peroxidase).  

 

If your acros were getting tweaked by peroxide spot-treatments (<5 mL of 3% peroxide), that would tend to indicate they were already stressed.  

 

(Check some links here on it....a quote from one: "low enzyme activity levels may indicate a depletion of colony resources.")

 

If there's ever a next time, I'd be interested in knowing the details as they happen.  

 

Just for what it may be worth, folks have spot-treated with much large quantities, for longer, and with higher-concentration peroxide without issues.

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