Massive tank crash...Poo

[drgnbttrfly]

Well yesterday sucked...

I lost a peppermint carrying a load of eggs...well ok...shrimp die

So I figured the water change from a couple days ago must have been too much for it.

Then I notice my Xenia looks kinda funny...

What the hell are all my snails doing upside down on the sand bed?

Screw test grab run save what I can...

I have no idea what happened and by the time I was trying to just save what I could...it would be too late to test and tell.

I have a guess something screwed with my xenia...maybe there wasn't enough nitrates in the water because now I had a skimmer and a small filter...and then the water change.

PH had been good...everything had...:at_wits_end:

So maybe the Xenia melting poisoned the tank

It was only my 40 gallon...and there were three stalks...

So my Mexican Turbo is dead

I lost the peppermint and eggs..I will be surprised if the mate lives a week.

I lost a PAIR...not two A PAIR of cleaner shrimp.

My large BTAs got some good munchies though.

I think I saved most of my snails. Some look kind of rough...slow.

My smart little margarita went to a safe spot to wait out whatever was tweakin the water....never in any distress...I really think I like them. I want to get more...but everyone hates em I guess. They are so pretty too

My conches were in shock for an hour but have since resumed cleaning in my large tank.

A large hermit tried to eat one while it was in shock...Hermit is now grounded. Conch is fine.

My yellow tang was p'o'd the cleaner shrimp (in shock...who died) would not clean her...and I think she may have pushed them over the edge to death.

My hippo is mad...cuz I messed with her tank at all.

There were no fish in the tank that crashed...well there had been a sixline...but it disapeared less than 24 hours after it went in. That was a week ago.

This tank had a total of six shrimp a handful of hermits one teeny anemome

snails galore

rock rock rock

xenia

...........

lost half my shrimp...and my turbo...and probably all the xenia

what a day


I am about to go to bed...the plumbing is clogged I have to take down the overflow and pull out a small rock that nearly caused my tank to overflow...

Its now 647....:ph34r:I have not been to sleep...Of course today is a full day....:at_wits_end:

[ErikH]

That sounds terrible. Good luck.

[sly fox]

sorry to hear that

[aquasport24]

Have you check all the electrical equipments? make sure nothing is burning up . Do a water change and run some carbon .

[joelb]

that sounded like a movie. 3d studio max can help you animate that:) sorry about the crash though.

[p00num3lli]

im sorry...i fear the day if my tank crashes....hope all goes back to normal soon:bigsmile:

[seatrueblue]

I feel sorry for ya, I've been through two tank crashes last year. One in my 24g and the other in my 120. Lost a pearly jawfish in the 24 and a lot of snails. I saved most of the corals that were in the 24, I put them in the 120..months later the 120 crashed... lol.. I didn't lose any fish in the 120 but all inverts were slowly dying one by one. I couldn't keep any inverts alive in that tank for 5 months. Everything is doing wonderful now. I think I figured out what happened. For 120 not enough water changes and for the 24 we took too much water out trying to suck out cyano.
I hope things will get better for you.
Did you do too big of a water change?
Did you not make sure the wc water was at the right SG?
Was the water not mixed for 24 hours before doing the water change?
How often do you do water changes and how much?
I hope you can figure out what happened.

[RayAllen]

Ouch, Nock on Wood I havnt had a true tank crash yet. Good Luck and I hope you get everything in check.

Ray

[Mr_Cool]

Ouch, Knock on Wood I haven't had a true tank crash yet.

Ray

:nailbiting:I didn't want to say that. But, since you already did, I believe I'm safe. :whew:

[drgnbttrfly]

Yah...I did the water change because of the sixline dissapearing act...

there was an algae bloom that I was working on clearing...

I did a have the water and mix it ...but I did not mix it as long as I usually do...

i did check the salinity several times along with all the other readings since i had cleared the algae...

everything read great...but i think it may have been too rapid a change..

there was all this stuff in the water column...then nothin...

i think there is such a thing as too clean

my equipment was all fine

my temp stays pretty level...because of the teeny heater even at night without the halides...it only kicks on at night

skimmer actually had a skin in it from before but wasn't really pulling anything new

Just really surprised me...in all the years I did freshwater and the last year I have done salt...I have never seen anything so drastic or sudden.

I feel terrible about my shrimp. They started as 8 cleaners 1 fire and 4 peppermint...(2 added 2X)

The cleaners...whacked each other till I had only three...the first batch of peppermints were weenies...but these guys...I LOVED to watch them. It was their tank.

[pagan.n.damaged]

you forgot when the BTA ate a few of them. I still say we're gonna play heck with them not eating the shrimp.

[Bill S]

Xenia, when they melt, can be EXTREMELY toxic. They pick up and store all sorts of "stuff" from your tank - things that would normally be exported thru water changes. When they die, they release all of this at once, which can easily pollute your tank. Xenia crashed my daughter's nano a couple of years ago.

As for your six line - they can do a disappearing act, like all wrasses. Either into the rock/sand for a few weeks, or over the top. They are amazing jumpers.

Salt really only has to be mixed until the water is clear. I do this ALL THE TIME, without problems. In my daughter's nano, it gets a 50-60% water change about every 3 weeks - everything does just fine in that tank.

BTW, BTAs can be real polluters too - I almost never feed mine, and this helps.

[Texreefer]

Sorry to hear this. sounds to me like a very new system had an ammonia or nitrite spike. Inverts can be sensitive to this and salinity swings

[barderer]

did you check the temps. Xenia nuke quick with high temps.

[drgnbttrfly]

Temp was stable and ammonia and nitrite had been reading zeros again. I had a nitrate spike...small one...with the algae bloom...but it was when my filter was down for a day because of repairs...my skimmer was working.

Gah I dunno. The tank had established rock and sand bed...the sand was from my tank that was a year old.

My pods are all still kickin and my bristle worms too...

I just didnt have a ton of experience with Xenia...it was all doing so well then it just melted.

Lesson learned.

When I feed my BTAs I clean up when they expell...I just figure if I have dead shrimp...they might as well be useful. I have not KNOCK ON WOOD...lost a BTA yet..the one I got as a newbie and found it was dyed...I nursed it for a year and it actually split for me...in this tank a month ago.

I also keep a very close eye on them...where they move...how they eat...when they need a hand...what symbiotes hurt more than help...etc.

I have been really lucky.

Pagan...the shrimp that we thought the BTA ate were the ones that were alive but hiding...until yesterday.

[Bill S]

MOST BTAs are grossly overfed - leading to or adding to tank pollution. I have one in my daughter's nano that's ALWAYS hungry, 'cause it's rarely fed. The nano can't take the expelled leftovers from a silverside!

[ErikH]

Bill has a ton of RBTAs. I would definitely watch feeding them and take Bill's advice as gold. Water quality changes dramatically in small(er) tanks.

[drgnbttrfly]

My BTAs are in a 125...cept my baby who is in a ten...but the foot is smaller that a quarter and it filter feeds and catches what the stupid clown drops.

My bleached (creepy ghost white) one was the only one in the tank at the time of the crash and it really doesn't eat...you could put food on it and it would drop it. When it has the porceline crab though it continues to grow.

Its back in the 125 now. Because of the reorientation of light it has moved some...but I have no powerheads in the at risk area there and they have MH lighting available. My one maroon and anemone crab host two large BTAs and one small one...the white one having just been tossed back into the tank...currently has no symbiote but the clown and crab wander...so he will get visits.


I don't normally feed them...it was a treat. The one that ate the peppermint loaded with eggs hasn't had that kind of bubble since we got it...It expelled a bit of slime and it was easy to use a syringe to clean up.

[JimD]

I have 6 bta's and feed them maybe once every couple of months months.... Splitting is not necessarily an indication of good health, actualy, in a captive environment its usualy a reaction to stress.

[drgnbttrfly]

Believe it or not that makes sense...when it split..I thought it was because it was trying to move away from the larger two BTAs and got snagged and sort of involuntarily split itself.

I just assumed it was a good thing...both pieces are doing well though.

Under lower lighting (T8) I used to have to hand feed my small BTA once in a while when it got green around the gills but it would take one flake of low phosphate food...and it was good...not generally whole shrimp..;)

I learned it needed a flake about every 7 days under that lighting not the three days a week I had originally read when I got them. Under the MH lights they need almost nothing.

As a matter of fact one got ahold of a piece of Krill I was feeding to an emerald and it actually seemed to cause more problems than it was worth...but the larger BTAs I have in the tank now are ummm 3-4" in diam...the shrimp were just gone!