I think my aquarium is melting down.

[psimitry]

So I walk out and check out my tank just a few minutes ago.

I've had some cyno outbreak recently - not a huge deal as I've replaced the sandbed about a month ago

But I just walked out a few minutes ago and noticed I had dead snails all over my sandbed. My flasher wrasse is swimming around aimlessly and gasping. I can't find my fairy wrasse and my angel appears to be missing too.

My (earlier today) HUGE BTA is closed up tighter than a fist as are every single one of my corals.

I don't know what to do other than emergency water changes and carbon.

HELP!

[risika67]

What are all your levels at (Nirtate, temp, salinity, etc)

[aquabod]

do a water change,30% or more....use carbon,and if you have any bacterial supplement add it too after you water change.

[jjmg]

In such cases water changes are your friend. A battery operated drill, a five gallon paint mixer for the drill and distilled water is what you need to mix the salt. WalMart has all three. You will see why you can use the water within minutes when you mix it.

Remember to keep the water out of the drill.

Good luck.

[psimitry]

SG 1.024 (refractometer)
Temp 79.5 (digital - verified with mercury)
Nitrates (undetectable - old test, taking to LFS to confirm)
Ammonia: see nitrates

[psimitry]

I'm also considering evacuating a bunch of my corals to my roommates tank. The only thing I'm worried about is those corals melting down in his tank and starting off a cycle.

He said I could but man I'd be worried.

[risika67]

Have you had anything die before the snails? It's weird that it happened all of a sudden.

[edwing206]

Have you added anything recently to the tank? Is your heater ok? A buddy of mine had a heater explode and it crashed his tank.

[dastratt]

Originally posted by psimitry
SG 1.024 (refractometer)
Temp 79.5 (digital - verified with mercury)
Nitrates (undetectable - old test, taking to LFS to confirm)
Ammonia: see nitrates

What is your Ph? A low ph can cause uninhabitible conditions.

What is your Alk? Low alk can cause Ph swings.

Both are more important than nitrates

[Brian24]

I had something similar happen but it was due to a heater being stuck on and it overheated the tank. I caught it before it was a disaster.

[psimitry]

Just got back from LFS. Don't know if the owner was correct, but he usually knows his stuff so here's what I (hope) is going on:

The inclusion of the new DSB coupled with my (embarassed) lack of water changes recently (only 10% since I installed the new DSB in the last 1.5 months) caused an ammonia spike. This is supported by the fact that everything that is really sensetive to ammonia (wrasses, snails, corals, etc) freaked out and everything that is more tolerant (shrimp, crabs, clownfish, angelfish) are perfectly fine.

For the record, the ammonia level was high (I forget the amount I think it was like 1 ppm), but not extremely toxic levels (same with nitrates). So again, this seems to support it.

SO: he said to leave it at the 10G of water I just changed and run a polyfilter overnight and call him in the morning.

We're going to hope he was right.....

[ricks]

You need to know what ALL your levels are at...

Your system can be fine one week and the next not so good..

Reef tanks take routine maintance. if not you will be in for trouble.

You don't say how long your tank's been up. I suggest you get all the test kits and test weekly.

Are you using tap water???

Happy Reefing

[Craig Lambert]

Sand didn't cause an ammonia spike.

[psimitry]

Originally posted by Craig Lambert
Sand didn't cause an ammonia spike.

Agreed.

However, here's what most likely did (a.k.a. a complete failure of my husbandry process based on an incorrect assumption):

When I moved recently (about 2 months ago) I decided to replace my previous DSB (my previous one was a silica based sandbed and I decided to go to an aragonite based one).

When I did this, I somehow forgot that all of the previous denitrifying bacteria was no longer there. Despite this, because I was home more often during the day (my job/school situation also changed), I was feeding my tank more regularly and in bigger quantities.

SO, my tank suddenly had to deal with a large increase in nutrient load without the proper bacterial culture with which to deal with the increased amount of waste in the tank.

Couple this with my failure to do proper water changes, and suddenly we have a buildup of ammonia levels.

I don't think that what happened was so much an ammonia SPIKE but more a gradual buildup to potentially toxic levels.

Now that I'm looking back on all of this, it's making a lot more sense (and I'm kicking myself for it too).

However, after replacing my carbon, performing a normal water change and running a polyfilter in a high flow area of the sump, I can already see things getting better.

[psimitry]

So now that I (somewhat) have this under control, the casualty list is (so far) as follows:

1 orange Montipora Digitata colony (small)
2 orange Montipora Capcricornus frags
1 Green Nepthia Colony (large)
Numerous snails

Things that don't look good:
1 Green Bubble Tip anenome
Several Ricordia Yuma
Candy Cane Coral

Things that look like they're going to make it:
My fish (all 4)
Various Zoanthid species
1 large hammer coral colony
1 small frogspawn colony

Monitor your nutrient levels, kids.

Monitor them no matter how established you think your tank is. it can come back to bite you in the backside.

[psimitry]

Originally posted by edwing206
Have you added anything recently to the tank? Is your heater ok? A buddy of mine had a heater explode and it crashed his tank.

DING DING DING DING DING we have a winner!

I don't know why I never pulled out and inspected the heater, but today I happened to be looking in my sump and noticed that while normally clear, my heater looked a little brownish. So I pulled it out and sure enough, it was cracked all over the place and water had gotten in.



Titanium heaters for me now!

It's worth noting though that my tank isn't actually crashed. Just injured.