tank crashing

[leslie]

I am absolutely sick over this. my tank is crashing/cycling/something. I did a water change on 7-3 of 25 gals (100 gal tank). Wed. 7-5noticed tank a little cloudy. Thursday evening tested parameters. Amonia = .25, nitrite = .o5, nitrate = 0. called lfs, sid to run carbon. Friday 7-7bubble tip dead. went to lfs picked up TLC and treated tank. Sat. 7-8 amonia @ .5, did 25 gal change and treated with TLC again. Sun. 7-9 seabae detached and is behind rock. Mon. 7-10 pulled out several corals that have died (seabae, frogspawn, hammer, bubble tip, red lobo, and several more). Did another 25 gal water change. Amonia testing .5. I do not know hwat is going on. I have not added anything to tank. I did buy a new pump for skimmer, since my old one crapped out. I do not belive it is the water since I did a water change on my seahorse tank and everything is fine there. I have not added any new corals of fish, which by the way are all still alive (so far). do not know what else to do. Advise please.
My tank has been set up since Dec. 2003. Had a problem with nitates at one point but got that under control thanks to all of your wonderful help.
I do not know what else to do. Advise please.

[GaryP]

It definitely sounds like some sort of toxicity.

Running carbon, skimming hard, and continuing with regular, large water changes would be your best bet. Also, change out your carbon at least once a week. If you can set up some sort of sock filter or borrow a Mgnum 350 filter, that might help also. My best bet is that once the bubble tip died, it created some sort of chain reaction.

Are there any inverts in your seahorse tank. Everything you mentioned seems to be targeted at your inverts. Is the bucket of salt new? Do you have anything like a cucumber in the tank that might have died.

[leslie]

not sure what you mean about being targeted at my inverts? I do have snails and crabs in both tanks two died in my 100 gal during all this. I changed to brands of salt from oceanic, to coral life about 2 months ago.
How often and how much do I continue on the water changes, and do I run carbon the whole time?

[GaryP]

I meant that you didn't mention any fish dieing, just inverts (anemones and LPS).

I had a large LTA die on me and it released nematocysts all over the tank, stinging everything. Yes, run carbon all the time and do 1-2 25% water changes a week until the crisis is over. Please let us know if there are any other changes.

[alton]

The water you used for the water change where did it come from? Here comes the stupid question, did you use a garden hose anywhere in your water change?

[Bill S]

Leslie, what are your parms right now? I'd keep changing water daily until you get them under control. Maybe even twice daily. BTW, changing 50% once a day removes more toxins than 25% twice a day. As Gary said, something like your anemone released something. My 55 crashed at xmas while we were gone. Poor neighbor who works for me was changing water like mad.

[Wryknow]

Ditto on the big water change. What's your source water? Are you testing the parameters of the fresh salt water before it goes into the tank and how long are you letting it mix/age before it goes into the tank? Are you testing Ph regularly?

[leslie]

no I did not use a water hose, but I do use the tap here. As I stated in earlier post I do not belive it is the water I used for the change because my seahorse tank parameters are fine. nitrite = 0, nitrate = 20, ph = 8.2, and amonia = .5. Isn't doing so many big water changes going to cause my tank to recycle? I have already lost all my corals I hate to lose all my fish as well. If I am going through some sort of cycle how high will amonia go before turning to nitrite, and how high will nitrite go before turning to trates, and for how long.

[hammondegge]

I do not belive it is the water I used for the change because my seahorse tank parameters are fine. nitrite = 0, nitrate = 20, ph = 8.2, and amonia = .5.

that sounds like the tank is cycling to me. could you somehow be introducing ammonia to the tanks? or maybe Chlorine causing some dieoffs?

[Wryknow]

Changing water will not cause a tank to cycle. Ther is very little in the way of beneficial organisms in the actual water column - all of the the critters that you're concerned about are living in the live rock or the sand. Water changes could be hurting the tank though if you have impurities in the tap water that are accumulating in the tank. Trace metallic element contamination (like copper from copper pipes) or chlorine/chloramine from the water could explain your problems. The fact that your tank is showing nitrates and ammonia indicate that there is some die-off happening and that's a problem.
I'm not sure what "TLC" is or why your adding it to the tank. It doesn't soiund like it's helping though.
I would start using RO water for the water changes and switch back to Oceanic salts. [Either get the RO from your LFS or the gorcery (Albertsons in my area has vending machines) for $.25/gallon it would be worth it to make sure that the tap water isn't causing a problem IMHO.] I would keep doing large, frequent water changes until my nitrates are < 10 and ammonia is undetectable, making sure to mix the fresh salt water for a good 24 hours before it goes into the tank, and run about 2 cups of carbon in the sump.
Good luck. This must really suck for you :(

[GaryP]

that sounds like the tank is cycling to me. could you somehow be introducing ammonia to the tanks? or maybe Chlorine causing some dieoffs?
I have a feeling that whatever it is that is causing this isn't something that you will ever detect with a test kit. The ammonia levels are probably the result of the die off, not the cause of it. There are thousands of potential toxic chemicals that we will never detect unless you happen to have a gas chromatograph mass spectrophotometer in your spare bedroom. If you do, I want to come visit.

[leslie]

My amonia is now up to 1.0 :cry . All my fish are fine, no hard breathing, actively swimming, etc. Again if it were something in my water why did it not affect the paremeters in my SH tank?
As for TLC it is a product that eliminates toxic NH3 and NO2.

[leslie]

I am probably grasping at straws here, but could the TLC I put in my tank be giving me a false reading???

[GaryP]

Again if it were something in my water why did it not affect the paremeters in my SH tank? As for TLC it is a product that eliminates toxic NH3 and NO2.
TLC is a bacterial culture used to innoculate new tanks. Since this is an established tank I doubt it did much good. It would not have caused false readings.

Again, I doubt you will ever detect whatever caused the crash with a test kit if it was chemical. It could be that one of your corals was sensitive to it and caused it to die and that resulted in a chain reaction. Corals can release a lot of toxic stuff when they die. It may not have been a toxin at all. Some bacteria or physical condition such as temperature may have begun the crash. After the initial die-off, it could have just been like a snow ball effect. There are just to many what ifs in a situation like this.

Why didn't it happen in the SH tank? Who knows? How many corals do you have in there? How many of those corals were the same as those that died in the other tank.

[leslie]

I have only some mushrooms and a gorgorian in the sh tank. Thank you for all your help. I guess it is back to the drawing board.

[Richard]

TLC is a live bacteria culture (no chemicals) so it is not causing you false readings. How much did you add (ounces)?

What types of fish do you have? Many fish will tolerate low levels of ammonia but corals do not. So I think the chain reaction Gary mentioned is correct. One thing died (either due to something with the water change or that could be coincidental) creating excess ammonia which caused other things to die releasing more ammonia etc. etc.

You need to control the ammonia levels though or you will begin to lose fish if it continues to rise. Make sure you don't have any dead livestock still in the tank that is continuing to drive the ammonia levels upward. You can lower them by water changes, polyfilters, more TLC but you need to keep them from spiking higher one way or another.

[GaryP]

Thanks Richard

I was just trying to keep everyone in line until you showed up and offered some "expert" advice. I forgot about the poly filters. Do you think a bacterial food would help in this type of situation?

[Instar]

There is one thing that can change in your tap water source. Its been raining a lot lately, more than it was for a while and water treatment will add more chemicals when there is an excess of run off. We have no control over extra dosing or when its done as well as no control over when things are changed. There has been a lot of pressure on the water quality folks lately from news media and fanatics to clean up the SA river and there has to be some repercussions of this to area water boards. I've heard that some water district areas are changing from regular chlorine to chloramine as well. If you draw water on different days for changing tank than sea horse or the sea horses are more tolerant, then that may explain it. I would check for salt bridges on all equipment that is working. Also, if a pump crapped out, it can cause all kinds of havoc and you said your skimmer pump went bad. Some of those release very toxic chemicals into the water when they go bad and the case leaks. There really is no way for us to know enough about your tank or maintenance of it to be very helpful really. If you have someone nearby that could take a look who is experienced, they might be able to be more helpful.

I've had newly aquired large anemones die before and never had any problems with that like you describe here. I wait till I am sure they are gone before doing a resonable clean up of the area. I've never gotten it all out. There are also some animals like the cucumber and some fish that are very toxic in a tank. Do you have any of those kinds of things? Box fish or bass, etc? Do you ever make soft coral cuttings inside the tank?

This symptom and results are very similar overall, sooner or later, for almost everyone who uses tap water. It may not be the water this time since the pump went bad but, I personally recommend at least an RO unit for all marsh tank and salt water tank hobbiests so this doesn't happen because of source water.

[Richard]

I'm not familiar with coral life salt but oceanic is very high in calcium so another possibility is that the cloudiness you observed initially was caused by calcium and carbonates precipitating out out your water. This can lead to extremely low alkalinity and low ph so you should check those levels if you haven't already.

[NewB]

I live in New Braunfels and I have tested my tap water and it does have traces of amonia in it. I don't remember the exact reading.

So if you are doing large water changes I would definately not recommend the use of tap water.