IS THIS A GOOD PLAN

[Help me]

My tank has been running since March 10, this year. Everything was fine I got 2 fish and 2 gsp and 7 tiny blue leg hermit crabs. Everything is fine until last night, I go out to eat at 6 and come back at 10 and the tank is complete white and my yellow clown goby is dead and my green reef chromis is trying to get air. I asked tons of people and they said a bacteria explosion happened. 
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1. Remove all dead creatures in tank 

2. Replace 95 percent of water with freshly made saltwater

3. Recreate the rock formation to my liking 

4.Add Fritz Turbo Start to tank(aka live bacteria) 

 

Thats it 

 

[DevilDuck]

Sounds like a good plan. Personally, I would find out why the bacteria bloom happen also. Do you have a way to test for ammonia? 

[brandon429]

Omit the re introduction of cycle bac, you never lost cycling bacteria and they’re not dead from a common tank crash, they’re overcome. Their numbers actually boosted most likely / which is clouding / and in response to decay.

 

cycling bacteria exist mixed in biofilm with other species that will rapidly bloom when excess nutrients are added, a crash doesn’t occur biologically if current remains in the water and no additions are made (and no fish die and are left to rot in a small tank)

 

When you change water cycle bacteria stay stuck to surfaces, there are zero times we input cycling bacteria after a cycle. They’re extra oxygen loading and 100% backwards from what you need, which is simply all new water matching the old water temp and salinity. A tank this new needs zero dosing of anything. Merely weekly partial water changes, and some manual cleaning so the uglies coming up can’t take over and produce a wrecked tank you tolerate for six straight months while experimenting in all ways to fix it vs what works: cleaning it out as needed. 
 

 

most people will not listen to or even read an example thread of fixing tank crashes if linked, which directly shows before and after pictures and says not to dose bottled bacteria. The sales machine for bottle bac has them in the grip to add it, no matter what, at any whim. Dosing bottled bacteria to a cycled tank is adding biomass that has no where to attach, cannot help prevent a future crash whatsoever, they can’t just stack onto rock surfaces making the filter “thicker” the extra cells are pure bioload in the system floating around and compete for oxygen until they’re skimmed or floc up and settle out in group masses only to be exported next water change. A freshly changed water table is the only thing you need.
 

 

you can only get a tank wipe crash by leaving a dead fish in the tank vs removing it, one that died due to no disease preps administered during cycling, or a fish food over dose, or some bottled doser item you added that became toxic. Lastly, dosing of calcium and or alk controls can cause clouding which isn’t lethal, so the accompanying animal loss likely started first with the fish then cascaded down if some additive didn’t start the initial reaction.

[brandon429]

Also post a pic you’d be surprised at the unspoken design details those can convey to prevent future crashes 

 

 

remember you aren’t adding mass in response to this, in any form, you’re merely removing wastewater and replacing it with new. Do 100% all new water aged a couple hours, matching temp and salinity, keeping any old water at all is bad not good, it’s loaded with extra + rotten bacterial mass.