Emergency Something Wrong With Tank!

nmhs2 · #1 12/05/2007, 02:12 PM

I just added a sump last week so my protein skimmer has been of for two days because i ordered an aquac thats coming in friday. Also my return pump was getting bubbles in it and i woke up and all bubbles in my tank, possibly could have hurt corals. I check my corals yesterday and they looked all messed up. Checked again this mornings till messed up. tested conditions and found a low ph of 7.8 and alkalinity of 6-7 dkh. So i added superbuffer a few hours ago. dkh is now 11-12, waiting for ph to stabilize. What caused my corals to look like this?

nmhs2 · #2 12/05/2007, 02:15 PM

my snails look dead to they fell off the glass wall, but my fish are fine.

mluz · #3 12/05/2007, 02:20 PM

have you checked the salinity?

nmhs2 · #4 12/05/2007, 02:30 PM

yea its ok 1.022

nmhs2 · #5 12/05/2007, 02:41 PM

HELP PLEASE???!??!?!?

meco65 · #6 12/05/2007, 02:48 PM

How much water did you add, and what was the salinity before the sump was add, if there has been a change in the salinity level it may take some time for every thing in the tank to adjust.

Myrddraal · #7 12/05/2007, 02:49 PM

1.022 is a little low. What are your other parameters at?

nmhs2 · #8 12/05/2007, 02:52 PM

Well i didnt check but i had my sump running for over 1 week everything was fine untill yesterday.

jjakes24 · #9 12/05/2007, 02:54 PM

It think it was an issue with raising your dKH so fast. I found that I raised my tank dkH from 8 to 9.5 with a 50% water change and lost about 3-4 snails from it. Corals will close up a little but they recovered in an hour or so. I really think snails are extra sensitive to sudden dKH changes in the water.

nmhs2 · #10 12/05/2007, 02:55 PM

also theres like this hazy white stringy stuff on my corals

jnb · #11 12/05/2007, 02:56 PM

and perhaps the instrument you use to measure salt content - those float arm thingys I never used after three of them side by side measured crazy relative to each other

nmhs2 · #12 12/05/2007, 02:57 PM

My corals and snails were thriving 1 1/2 days ago now they look like theyre dead, before i even played around with the dkh

nmhs2 · #13 12/05/2007, 03:20 PM

I have no idea what caused this could it have been the dkh and low ph?

stingythingy45 · #14 12/05/2007, 03:24 PM

This may sound stupid but,did you check your temp.?
It's been awfully cold here and house/apartment temps are probably lower now.Also,I would shoot for 1.025 SG.
What kind of snails are these?

nmhs2 · #15 12/05/2007, 03:26 PM

mexican turbo snails

stingythingy45 · #16 12/05/2007, 03:27 PM

Hmmmmm.....those are usually very hardy.
You mentioned adding a sump...is this a new sump?

nmhs2 · #17 12/05/2007, 03:31 PM

yea one week old, things were going fine untill yesterday

nmhs2 · #18 12/05/2007, 03:35 PM

nvm 4 days old, **** something with this sump probably is bringing new changes it happened about 2-3 days after, temp is 80

stingythingy45 · #19 12/05/2007, 03:46 PM

How is the sump plumbed in?All PVC,plastic ect...
Didn't drop anything in while plumbing?
Are we talking softies/leather that's Poed?
I stuck down some corals with 2 part epoxy and created a lot of micr-bubbles.The leathers closed for a couple days.

nmhs2 · #20 12/05/2007, 03:52 PM

Its also pvc plastic except for two brass fittings which shoudl be safe in water. Actually I had a lit of microbubles because i noticced a problem with my protein skimmer in sump, thats y i ordered a in tank one, the aquac ev 120. Before i had the bak-pak two. Two many bubbles were goging through and I mean my whole tank was filled with microbubbles, for probably the whole night. Then that morning all the corals looked like that all messed up. Probably the bubbles, what harm could they have caused?

vezina345 · #21 12/05/2007, 04:00 PM

If my memory serves me correctly isn't brass an alloy that is made with copper? That could be you're problem right there.

Sk8r · #22 12/05/2007, 04:02 PM

NO to the brass fittings! You cannot use metal of any kind in salt water. If I understand you correctly, you have just dosed your tank with copper.

Get some polypad or polyfilter. YOu're going to need to take everything to quarantine.

I am so sorry for this. Your actual tank I think can be saved, but the cloudiness is because you have just killed off all your bacteria. Talk to the chemistry forum about next steps, but polyfilter can pull copper, especially since it has not had a chance to penetrate deeply into the rock.

I am trying to think this through as I type. Polyfilter alone cannot solve this.

If this is what has happened, this is going to be expensive enough: get a rubbermaid brute trashcan for a qt, put your rock and corals into clean new saltwater in that and run a bubbler and put a light on it.

Do the same for your fish in an actual tank: clean water.

Discard all your sand. Remove all water. Add conditioned tapwater or ro/di. Clean your tank and sump completely. Run several gallons of vinegar through the system dilute in water.

Test both for nitrite/nitrate and ammonia. This will be your safety device. If the rock/specimen rock shows no great increase in readings, it will indicate you are going to save that.

Use polyfilter to test your tank once you have rewatered it. If any blue color shows, it is not clean: there is still copper. [Polyfilter turns colors depending on what it has sopped up.]

As soon as it tests clean, you can rewater and re-sand your tank. Rinse your rock off [assuming polyfilter in that tank tests clean] in clean salt water and replace in the tank on the new sand. Your tank will cycle, so do not add the fish.
It will probably be a small cycle. Last a week, about. Your corals, shrooms, buttons, are all tough and will survive a mild cycle with no troubles.

As soon as the cycle finishes, add inverts [I doubt any survived this, since copper poisons the smallest things first]. Keep testing for nitrate/nitrite/ammonia, and when the tank is going well, put your fish back in. The one thing I will about guarantee, grimly so, is that you will not have ich in your tank or in your fish.

This is what I would do. If you are attempting to have a reef, copper is too lethal to operate with: you need to get it out or you will have nothing but problems.

Doublecheck my advice with the Chemistry forum, please. I do not want, singlehandedly, to press anyone to take such extreme measures if there is any other way to save this tank. Ask Bertoni or Boomer. PM them if you need to. This is not a minor problem.

nmhs2 · #23 12/05/2007, 04:04 PM

Oh man!!!! So i gotta get new pvc fittings and, fitler, I dont have enought room to quartinne everything. What should i do just chagned the fittings to pvc? And wait for conditions to get better?

vezina345 · #24 12/05/2007, 04:07 PM

can you remove the sump and the brass fittings? if you don't have a QT tank at very least disconnect everything with brass on it. Also check around you may have a LFS that can hold your livestock for you until you can correct the problems.

stingythingy45 · #25 12/05/2007, 04:10 PM

Few........now aren't you glad I ran the gambit on questions?
This could be the difference of you tank crashing.
I think you may have caught it in time.You might want to look into cuprisorb and run that for a while.

*How was that SK8R?

(Patting myself on the back)...LOL