I want to cry!

[Stephen]

Yes a grown man wants to cry, bawl like a baby! I had to move my 55g yesterday to get ready for the floor guys to come in and lay the hardwood flooring. April and I put all of the rocks with corals, shrooms, xenia, ECT. into 5 gallon buckets. Put all the fish and clams and most of the water in a large (clean) trashcan with a power head for circulation. After removing 90+% of the water and all rocks we loaded the tank and stand moved them into the garage and proceeded to re-assemble. In the process of moving the sand bed and the fuge were severely stirred-up. The following amnonia/sand/deteras storm was so thick that I could not even see the back of the tank much less the bottom. By the evening the storm had settled down quite a bit and everything was stressed but appearing to recover. Awoke early this morning to cloudy white tank with spider web looking stuff hanging off everything even the fish. Came home for lunch and found half my tank is dead.

So far the death toll is:
1 Purple Tang
2 Engineer gobies
1 Blue w/ gold tiger striped Derrasa
2 Emerald crabs
2 Peppermint shrimp
All of my corals, xenias, polyps of many kinds.
Half a million shrooms (April had a ton of these!)
Half of my crabs and snails


The close to death watch is:
1 male Mandarin
1 large BTA
1 leather
1 Neon green Kenyan tree (via Jim)


The Ph jumped above 8.6 and the ammonia spiked up to 4ppm. I did a 5 gallon water change tonight and will do 2 more tomorrow. I'll definitely be keeping a close eye on everything, especially my 3 other clams. If they show any signs of stress I may be making an emergency run to Tim or Jim’s house (if it’s okay w/ you guys) to “store” ‘em. Now I am going to go sit in a corner & cry.

Stephen

[MikeP]

Stephen, sorry to hear about that - I can house some fish/corals at my place too if need be for a while.

-MP

[Jimnorris]

Stephen,
So sorry to hear this news. Yes if need be bring the clams over!
Jim

[adaminaustin]

Stephen,
I am sorry. Whenever everything gets nice and stable I have some xenia frags for you.

[StephenA]

Sorry for your loss. If you need space my 120 has plenty of room. I'm at 183 and 620. I'm glad my move went better. I still have the move to my new tank in about a week.

[Ram_Puppy]

that sucks man, I am just getting into this and have allready formed attatchments to my critters... sorry to hear for your loss.

[Bigreefer]

You might want to run some carbon... I know the clams can handle the high ammonia so it's got to be either bacteria or chemical that's killing everything.

Jason

[connie123]

I feel your pain Stephen, I'm in tears reading this. I had a beautiful 55 gal. reef for 2 years, had thousands of dollar of beautiful babies, thought I had it grounded, until we had a storm, when electricity came back on everything got shocked, everything was dead within minutes. I cried for weeks. It took me six months to start up again, I'm slowly getting back into it again. I know this doesn't help you but I wanted you to know that someone understands your pain! Sorry, Connie H.

[RobertG]

Really Bites Guy. I hope My swap goes smoother for me. As I will be moving it this weekend. Hope you can save the rest.

Feeling your Pain,

Robert

[Tim Marvin]

Sorry to hear it Stephen....... I'll hold the clams for you also if need be.

[REEFAHOLIC]

Thats tough Stephen, it was really nice. :cry:

Tina

[GaryP]

You may have also released hydrogen sulfide from your live sand. I know mine had a distinct sulfide smell the last time I moved mine. Adding some iron supplent will take care of that. It will precipitate out as iron sulfide. That's the black material you commonly see in a DSB.

Gary

[OrionN]

Very sorry to hear about your problem.
Disturbing a functionig DSB can be deadly.
good luck.
Minh

[MikeP]

You may have also released hydrogen sulfide from your live sand. I know mine had a distinct sulfide smell the last time I moved mine. Adding some iron supplent will take care of that. It will precipitate out as iron sulfide. That's the black material you commonly see in a DSB.

Gary

What does the iron sulfide precipitate look like? Assuming reddish brown - or is it too small to see. I do dose iron every once in a blue moon but am always worried about overdoing it and fueling an algae bloom.

[Stephen]

Update: After 3 5gallon water changes thing are starting to stablize. The male mandarin survived and has paired back up with the female. I don't see any pods in either the tank or the fuge, and I'm trying to get them to eat frozen until the pods start to build back up. Clams all look fine and appear to be doing well. The large BTA is not doing so well it has detached from it's rock and keeps crawling down to the sand under several other rocks. The Green Kenya tree is still not fully extending it polyps.

Thank you all for your concerned thoughts. I will keep you updated as the tank recovers.

Thanks,

Stephen