ammonia spike, tank crashes, losses what a night..

H

Hyperion1337

Active member
So yes my tank as you can say has officially crashed. Like all of the sudden ammonia spikes up for no reason to about 1 or more i think... the entire filtration system failed, the skimmer died, and the carbon and purigen werent doing squat, and all my chaeto disintegrated several weeks ago . I knew that the system was failing, like all my inverts stopped moving and the stars came out from their rocks and died. To make matters worse, I lost about $100 + in sps softies and lps in about 1 hr. I left for dinner and came back to see empty skeletons in their places. They werent frags, they were actually nice mini colonies of nice looking acros and montis. as soon as I got back i ran a 50% water change hoping things would turn out to be okay. now im just hoping my RP doesnt rtn, it is still showing some PE but its not huge. Its the last nice frag next to the ponape in the sps categories. Honestly I do not know what made it crash, the last one occured 7+ months ago, the params were relatively stable, 0 nitrates and nitrites no ammonia, undetectable phosphate and a ph of 8.3 . I was feeding a small amount of pellets to the 2 clownfish, which are the only inhabitants and i topped off with ro/di water. it makes no sense... i am like super ****ed off since i basically lost every nice piece of sps. Well i guess i gotta restart...If anyone can help me out by donating a frag that would be awesome and I'd truly appreciate it cuz restoring the tank to its former beauty would kill my wallet and being the fact that I am highschooler I have little time to baby my system and that im busy studying for SATs/ACTs and school itself.
Can anyone diagnose what the root cause of the problem is b/c i cant :worried: and it would be beneficial so that i dont run into the same problem in the future.
 
get a seachem badge for ammonia....cheep and will give accurate measurements even when using prime or an ammonia removal chemical ....I put my 300 into hypo to qt all the fish preparing to move them to my new 540 setup and you guessed it everything living except my fish and bacteria was killed off and you can imagine the ammonia spike while the bacteria was restocking and cycling to battle the enormous bio load of all the death......it took a week and a half of three 70 gal water changes a day to keep it out of the toxic stage and just keep it in the alarm stage.......
http://www.seachem.com/Products/product_pages/AmmoniaAlert.html
 
i added about 40 drops of prime into my tank (its a 20L) over a 2 hr period like 20 drops 1 hr and the other in the other hr.
So i guess the clowns will pull thru? I know they are hardy but they looked a lot more stressed than usual. And i think i will up the amount of water changes until the tank is stable..
for skimmin im using the biocube skimmer as a emergency skimmer for now (its been modded to better skim) and it hasnt pulled out anything.
The tank looks slightly cloudy, but not perfectly clear. The purigen is begining to turn light brown ( a good sign i hope)
 
20 drops wow ....I was adding a cup at a time with every water change ....I thought it was never going to end ......just keep up the water changes your exporting it by 50% each time with the changes your doing so it should cut it down tremendously in a day or two without a mass load increase of course
 
If you ever come up north after you figure out the crash problems, I can donate few zoas frags

Goodluck
 
If I remember correctly using products like Prime which have the side effect of increasing slime coat production actually have a detrimental effect on the effectiveness of purigen (dont have the instructions from the box). For sudden spikes of ammonia like you had, I used a product called AmmoLock that I think is a little bit better than prime for those emergency situations. As far as diagnosis... did you stir up the sand bed for some reason?
 
Principeces said:
If I remember correctly using products like Prime which have the side effect of increasing slime coat production actually have a detrimental effect on the effectiveness of purigen (dont have the instructions from the box). For sudden spikes of ammonia like you had, I used a product called AmmoLock that I think is a little bit better than prime for those emergency situations. As far as diagnosis... did you stir up the sand bed for some reason?
Click to expand...

regarding sand stiring... I have not touched the sand other thank when i first installed it. I let nature take its course.
Also, Thank you everyone for your support i greatly appreciate it. I will not be able to receive donations now (duh) but once the tank has stabilized i'll try to swing by.

Tank Update: I have lost all sps except my ORA RP and Ponape and bretts monti. surprising how the ORA corals are still alive, what is even more shocking is that they are trying extend their polyps. the tank is still cloudy, its white.... and I notice feather duster crowns on the sand where their tubes were. Clowns are still hanging on, i have halted feeding to a minimum. the purigen is starting to kick in.. its becoming slightly browner than usual as well as the emergency skimmer. I have done a 5 gal water change and am planning to do more tomorrow once i pick up some salt.
 
if you can make it to the cutler bay area. ill hook you up with some salt water so you can have some on deck till you get to buy your salt
 
I just picked up some salt today so let the mixing begin!!!
tank is looking slightly better. The inverts like crabs and snails have begun to move again.
fish are looking better... sps PE is still lacking but they are pulling through.
 
just did a major water change of 5 gal. gonna test params 2morrow. and im mixing another one for 2morrow's change.
tank is begining to clear slightly. RP has lost all colors, it looks washed out and a nasty green and a faint red.
 
How did you know it was an ammonia spike? Did you di a water test? I m asking because you symptoms matches what happen to my tank a couple of years ago but the problem was the temp getting too high... and by the way, what do you mean by your filtration failed? how much live rock do you have in your system? and how big is your tank?Your main filtration system should be your live rock, even without any mechanical or chemical filtration your system should have no ammonia problem? if its a nano how often do you add fresh water, because salinity swing is one if the nano s biggest enemy.
 
the ammonia creeped up to .5-1 ppm, but the nitrates/rites where zero which puzzled me. and when i meant my filtration died, my skimmer died a week ago and i think the carbon and purigen were exhausted because they've been in the tank for about 2 weeks. that is why i replaced them 3 days ago. I think have about 15 lbs of live rock total for the tank. regarding top off, I top off with RO/DI water every night, and my temp of the tank i think was like 80-83 F
 
i did another 5 gallon water change, things are going slow.. water is still cloudy to my eyes... the mobile inverts are moving around now, i got my RP back from the LFS cuz they didnt want to hold on to it anymore(they said that it could risk introducing parasites..).. not a big deal, the polyps are somewat extended, but I noticed a small patch of stn at the base of the rp.. any suggestions?
 
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