Really dangerous things for your fish and corals---

[Sk8r]

1. under-oxygenation. Your skimmer, your sump downflow, your return pump, and the cheato in your fuge are the 4 great oxygenators for your tank. The fewer of these you have in operation, the fewer fish you ought to have per gallon of room, for safety. Particularly dangerous: overheating combined with overcrowding. This can take out fish at night, when the oxygen production is low.

2. ammonia. One of the decay byproducts. Barely tolerated by anything, really nasty with stony corals. Avoid using Windex next to your tank---put it on a rag in the next room: that's how much to avoid it. Have a bottle of Amquel [ammonia remover] as an emergency kit is not a bad thing, especially when you're new.

3. caulerpa in the tank with a chancy lighting schedule. The stuff can 'spore', disintegrate without warning and turn your water unbreathable, killing everything in the tank. Light changes seem to trigger this. Fairly rare, but bad.

4. miracle cures. NO med is reefsafe, period. It kills SOMETHING, or you wouldn't be putting it in your tank to kill, yes, bacteria. Well, what recycles stuff in your live sand and expensive rock? Yes, bacteria. Bad. Very bad news. If you're treating something, get it to quarantine to treat, or just write it off. And sad to say, if it gets much sicker, you may be able to catch it. It sounds cruel, but so is it cruel to lose a whole tank and kill all the fish via tank crash.

5. exotic invertebrates. If it's fleshy and weird [cucumber, sea apple, etc] and doesn't move fast---it still has defenses against predators. Toxins [poisons, including extremely lethal ones] are number one. It doesn't know it's in a closed system that will make it breathe the poison as well. It only knows it's stressed, so it'll produce MORE toxin. Everything dies. Absolutely everything.

6. heat. Believing a heater thermostat or trusting just one thermometer is the primrose path to tank nuke. Use more than one, and DON"T trust the thermostat setting without crosschecking. Most are wrong.

7. the unresearched meat-eater. Corals may be on its menu. SO may its tankmates. And it will be really impossible to catch. Guaranteed. [I had a 'reef-safe' eel reputed to be bad about never eating in captivity take out 300.00 worth of fish in 3 days. I had to unbuild my tank to get him out. Naturally he ate my favorite fish first and didn't touch the damsels.]

9. a stirred sandbed: this is very dangerous. Certainly don't do it intentionally. I don't ordinarily recommend buying critters to do 'jobs' in the tank [algae, etc.] but sandbeds---yes. Get some nassarius snails, etc., maybe a fighting conch. Stick to snails for this job, no starfish, no sifting fish unless you have a huge, huge tank. Let Nassarius do it inch at a time. [they burrow]. Don't mess with the sand otherwise.

10. guessing about dosage or dosing without testing. Measure. Remember that most doses of alk buffer or of calcium take 24 hours to percolate through the chemistry. Piling dose on dose is dangerous. Follow instructions and Never Dose What You Haven't Tested For.

11. unguarded powerheads...especially with anemones or soft crawlers in the tank. They follow currents---they will get sucked in. Put a sponge cover on and clean that sponge weekly; take it out for a thorough cleaning in vinegar and put in a new sponge. Or use blue-white filter floss with a rubber band and toss it for a new snip on Saturday morning. Or build a rock 'cage' around it, if you can do it without losing flow. Just don't give them a chance.

HTH, dear friends. Better a word beforehand than a fix after.

[McTeague]

Avoid using Windex next to your tank---put it on a rag in the next room

All great tips but I like the Windex one the best! Very nice

[papagimp]

Agreed, but I'd add any other household chemicals in that list with windex.

great list sk8r!

[jamiep]

Yes again with the windex- Perfume, Deodorant, Air freshener, even the Old spice...keep it out of the room!

[Sk8r]

And aromatic candles and smoke from the supper you burned---[yo! guilty as sin!]

If you suspect something bad has gotten into your tank---I just fielded this question elsewhere---run carbon, if you can't get to Amquel. A little charcoal can absorb a lot of problems. Run it in a brand new ladies' kneehigh nylon if you haven't any other bag: cheap, tossaway. Knot the top. And only leave carbon in 4 days! The stuff, forgotten, acts like bioballs and starts collecting nitrate, plus releasing all the stuff it once collected as it starts to break down.

[r341ity]

thanks sk8r great write up. I always enjoy reading them

[Sk8r]

You're welcome. The FYI posts are a lot easier to put together than to figure out what's gone wrong once it's gone south in a handbasket---and, most importantly, a lot less grief involved.

[Bambalam]

I wholeheartedly agree with all points, albeit with one question: I have a Diamondback Goby that sifts detritus from the top layer of the DSB in my 75 - could that cause problems?

[hybridgenius]

I was just going to post that, but you beat me to it Sk8r LOL j/k. I love how you make these threads.

[MrSquid]

Aromatic candles??? Serious? How bad? My wife may change her mind on the tank.

[TheCureForSin]

Definitely a good post. I like the style, informative and catchy. Hate reading novels.

[baldomero]

sometimes i stir my sandbed to clean it didnt know it was bad.

[ACBlinky]

Something else that can be bad (even deadly) for your reef:

Unsupervised guests or children. People love to drop pennies into aquaria, no idea why, which can nuke an entire reef overnight. Party animals have also been known to pour alcohol or even put pills or cigarettes into tanks, and some young children like to offer their soda, grilled cheese and crayons to the fish. Also watch your Mag-Float - guests are sometimes compelled to help out, and can unknowingly scratch the living daylights out of a tank.

[uscharalph]

Great list!

[Sk8r]

Cool it with the candles in the tank room---use em in the kitchen, elsewhere, but nothing in the tank room---and people who have one of those automatic air fresheners that's really heavy---I wouldn't do it near my tank.
If it stinks/smells/is aromatic---don't do it near the tank. Give your tank room, be it the living room, whatever, a break. No Carpet Fresh, no vacuum-it-out-of-the rug carpet cleaner. I do know that Spot Shot is safe, ditto Resolve...and it works better anyway. Steam cleaning your carpet is safe.

Another point: those of you who have basement sumps, I wouldn't use dryer sheets if your washing machine is in the same basement as your sump. I use no dryer sheets, and I use only 'fragrance-free' soaps. [Personally I think it's healthier for your family: I get so spacey when I inhale that stuff in the grocery story I have to get out of that aisle before I can recall what I came to the store for.]

Here's one way to manage ordinary living and volatiles near a tank: make the rule as None. Period. Then when you run up against an oops---or a must-do---ask on RC for safe brands, or make your own list----well, we used Resolve on the carpet and nothing in the tank went belly-up.

And remember to run carbon for a few days if something happened with a product you don't trust.

Also---AMOUNT has something to do with it. Use any must-do substance gently near the tank.

Good cleaners: white vinegar, amazingly cheap, cleans really, really well and leaves no streaks. Microfiber wiping cloth: great stuff, gets off hard to move streaks. And one of the best: Mr. Clean Erasing pads---they're white, like little microfiber sponges, and they will erase almost anything from anything. Got one of those household blackboards that's getting hard to erase? Eraser pad. Got a hair dye stain on formica nothing else has gotten---Eraser pad will sometimes make some headway with it, given persistence. Try it on anything. Fridge surfaces. Oven top. Kids' markup of the woodwork or walls. Nothing but water and that pad. No volatiles, no fuss.

Bad cleaners: ammonia. Lethal. Volatile oils, like Pledge, Old English, Carpet Fresh.

To avoid: automatic dispensing room fresheners and longterm high scent candles: if it knocks your head off, it's not a real good idea. A small squirt of Lysol is ok: a small half-second puff of most room fresheners is ok. Walking around the room fogging it with room freshener or Lysol: not good. Bad enough when our tanks had lids. Not cool, with these unlidded tanks.

[sanababit]

great info sk8r, not trying to dissagre with you but i have been using pledge to clean the furniture, windex to clean glass, my wife uses the those aromatic things you plug in to the wall outlet and nothing has happened to my tank, well for at least 8 months, lol, but i WILL stop doing it, this post made me nervous, i dont want to lose all my hard work just because i want my house to smell like ocean autum sunlight with a dash of lavender breeze.

sana

[WaterKeeper]

Listening to advise given by WaterKeeper.

[Sk8r]

Lol! Your advice, Waterkeeper, is always on time and under budget---and very much appreciated.

And Sanababit---it's hard to judge the amount of ventilation a particular house has or where the aircurrents are going, so equally hard to judge how much is safe in those departments. I'd rather warn in broad generalities than have to advise somebody with mysterious tank problems. I sit here in the dark trying to ferret info out of somebody in trouble who shines a light, say, on his parameters, his equipment, the dates on which---and never mentions the person cleaning who has used abundant Windex to clean the tank frame and light kit and plugged in one of those scent-puffers right near the tank "because the water smells." [Sure it does, as it heads downhill.] If everybody knows that these common household chemicals CAN be a problem, hopefully they'll think to report them, steer cleaning AROUND the tank, and not overdo it.
I had a much-treasured pair of seahorses when I was in grad school. They were doing really, really well despite my limited circumstances---until the guys downstairs of our flat threw a cocktail party that went on into the wee smalls, and generated so much cigarette smoke up the stairwell that it hung in our apartment like a canopy. In the morning our seahorse tank was dead.
So I had an early and unfortunate intro to 'substances' as a problem in marine tanks. Sigh.

[killagoby]

Great post. Thanks!

[Sk8r]

Oh---somebody asked about the diamond goby. Hundred gallon tank, maybe two hundred, and I'd also recommend eggcrate under the rockwork: they're keen excavators, and throw sand...they do TOO good a job for a small tank, and many who don't learn to eat prepared food will starve to death.
They are so efficient they stripmine the sandbed of edibles, weaken the sandbed's organized bacterial layers [think of a torte [14-layer] cake that someone has stirred with a knife.]
They are particularly not good with a mandarin or scooter in the tank [pod competition unless you have a huge refugium.]
The diamond goby is a great fish and neat for really big tanks: I'd say honestly, if you don't mind a little sand kickup and have a huge tank with a lot of sandbed.

If you're under 100g and like the sandsifters just because they're cute, get a yellow watchman and his tiger pistol shrimp. They'll move sand enough. I have one in my 54, and they're just about right for that tank.

If you're under 40, I'd say a watchman WITHOUT the pistol shrimp, because he'll be about right.

If you're 20 or under, I'd say just get Nassarius snails: they immediately dive under the sandbed and don't resurface unless there's something like raw shrimp to attract them. They're so slimy they can't even climb the glass. But they're great subsurface cleaners. THey do NOT eat algae: just meat, and crud.

Re fighting conches: good, but limit 1 per 50 gallons, in a well-established sandbed. Another creature that tends to eat itself out of house and home, and will just die if the sandbed can't support it. Do not combine with tiger pistol: too much competition.

These are all safe ways to clean your sandbed. Think of it as a Place, where certain things live, move, and do a job. Ideally, it should have stable layers over most of its extent, it should be disturbed only a few inches at a time, and sand-dwellers and small-scale sand-sifters do this best.

If you have a diamond already, and he's eating prepared food, and you love him, keep him---but don't otherwise overload your tank with fish, because the sandbed isn't quite up to miracles with a diamond in an undersized tank.

[phenom5]

Never Dose What You Haven't Tested For.


That one wasn't big enough.

[connpatd]

Does that include "Trace elements"? I keep reading that some corals need them, but have no idea how to test (or how much is too much regardless).

Also, can I assume it is ok to add phyto/zooplankton for feeding purposes?

[phenom5]

Does that include "Trace elements"? I keep reading that some corals need them, but have no idea how to test (or how much is too much regardless).

That's the exact reason why I wouldn't recommend dosing trace elements. Not sure exactly what is in trace elements, and what to test for. Your salt mix should do just fine in terms of replenishing trace elements.

[nmhs2]

**3. caulerpa in the tank with a chancy lighting schedule. The stuff can 'spore', disintegrate without warning and turn your water unbreathable, killing everything in the tank. Light changes seem to trigger this. Fairly rare, but bad.**

After buying chaeto from my LFS he said it has a bunch of stuff in it. So it looks to me like caulerpa fern like looking things and mini grape looking things. I do have these is it part of chaeto???? i have a light on it 24 hours a day 60watt. Will I be ok

[WaterKeeper]

Avoid the chemical additives except for things like KW or pH additives. Adding phyto or zoos is fine however and many reefer do that.