NUKED!

[Teeb]

I've been having some skimmer problems and pulled my biopellet reactor offline for the past month. I finally got my skimmer fixed and slowly brought the reactor back on line. Within 5 mins of the system running with the biopellets, every fish and both shrimp I had are dead. The corals don't look far behind. Anyone have any ideas why biopellets could have effected it like this?:cry_smile:

[Teeb]

Also have horrid smell from the biopellets and Ammonia is jumped up.

[Bill S]

Are the biopellets new or the old ones? Sounds like something from the reactor... Take it offline, get some water, salt and buckets and change as much water as you can!

[Teeb]

Old ones, pulled the reactor off as soon as I saw everything happen. I just dropped a huge bag of carbon and wife is on the way to get more water.

[Teeb]

ugghhhh....my house stinks! Strange thing, zoas perked up, LPS not happy, SPS is tolerating it. It looks like my little clown may survive, but he's super fish.

[LuckySingh]

sorry to hear that...

[txav8r]

Bummer man. Sorry to hear it.

[Europhyllia]

just to clarify: did you let the rector sit there with water in it? And then plug it in and send that month old stagnant water into circulation?

[Europhyllia]

That must be devastating. I am very sorry :(

[Teeb]

I drained the water out of the reactor first. My bionic clown is doing much better in a QT tank, he should pull through, coral seems to make it, just swapped 20g out, don't think there's much else I can do.

[Europhyllia]

Hm. Not sure then. If you had left the water in the reactor during the off-line time I would have guessed Hydrogen Sulfide (article (http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-12/rhf/index.php))

[Big_Pun]

you can't let bio pellets sit. it's a bacteria filter and the bacteria live in the pellets, they are porous. so your reactor turned into a big ammonia bomb. sorry about the hard lesson but maybe this will help other people