Tank move and subsequent pH crash!

[Squiers007]

Hey all, Its been a while since I have posted anything and frankly its been because things have been going very well with my tank and I have been super busy with school and remodeling my new house. Getting back to the point of this post. I moved my 75gal reef tank on Wednesday with the help of Jarob(Thanks again man) and thought that everything went off without a hitch. No corals got broken, temperatures stayed pretty constant and my new aquascaping turned out better than expected. Well, I went home for the night had a good nights sleep and came back in the morning. What do you think I found...well lets just say it was not good. Of the SPS corals that I had over half of them were completely bleached. The list includes my softball sized birdsnest, ORA green polyp birdsnest, Idaho grape monti, warspeed monti, monti spongodes, blue hydnophora, green hydnophora, green candy canes, branching hammer, green pocillopora, pink stylophora, and an ORA hawkins echinata. Needless to way I was pretty broken up about the whole situation and couldnt figure how or what had gone wrong.

Well, as it turns out my pH had dropped over the night from 8.3 to 7.6. Not Good! I pulled all of the corals out that had not already completely died and got some Kent superbuffer to slowly raise my pH back to were it should be. Over the course of the last 2 days I have raised my pH back up to 8.2-8.3 and the corals that survived seem to be doing fine. I added a bunch of carbon and my skimmer has been working overtime. Things seem to be back to normal so thats good. I just wanted to let everyone hear my story so that they are aware of an issue I had not thougth of during a tank move. Pictures of the death and destruction will follow.

[Europhyllia]

what caused that drop?

[kkiel02]

I have quite a few of those corals if you need any let me know and I can frag them up for you. Like Karin I wonder what caused the drop as that seems to be a rather large drop? I hope everything bounces back though...

[Squiers007]

Not too sure why the pH dropped so much. The only thing I can think of is that I released a sulfur pocket from my sandbed (probably unlikely since my sandbed is less 1in. deep). If anyone can think of any other reasons why my pH would have dropped so fast I would love to hear them.

[aquasport24]

What are your other water parameter? I don't think PH alone did it. The ph drop at night in every tank and the corals should adapt to that by now.

[aquasport24]

There are alot of factors invovled when you do a big move. It causing alot of stress to corals,so even a slight change of something will cause them to bleach.How much old and new water did you used? Lighting change? flow change? did most of the corals sit at the same spot in the new tank? Were the corals in the new tank already when you were redoing the rocks? how long did you have your hands in the tank and did you sweat too? these are just some factors.

[Squiers007]

What are your other water parameter? I don't think PH alone did it. The ph drop at night in every tank and the corals should adapt to that by now.

Yes, the pH in your tank will drop somewhat at night if you are not using a reverse lighting schedule on a refugium, but even then it should only drop by maybe .1 to .2 units. A drop of 0.7 in only 8hrs is much to fast for some corals to adjust to. As far as my other water parameters go and how the move was conducted: Temperature and salinity were monitored throughout the move with neither varying more than 1-2deg. and 1ppt. None of the corals were in the tank while I was rearranging the rockwork aside from the corals that were encrusted on rocks, but those went in last anyway. For water I saved all of my water and used it to refill the tank. The corals were not under lighting both before and after the move and I repositioned my powerheads in the same place they were before the move.

Everything is back to normal now and has been stable for the past 24hrs. I think the worst is over and I am just thankful I didnt lose everything. Time to rebuild!

[aquasport24]

It good to hear everything is back to normal.

[Jarob]

:( thats sad!! Ive got a few frags for ya, just let me know when you can house them! and I need my buckets!

[nubz]

this scares the crud out of me because im bout to move my nano reef.... not a lot of water to work with if things go sour.