Coral dying, ORP drop and HLLE problem

Zweebe

New member
Hello everyone,

I totally understand that it's not a real emergency since it happen since few months now but I really don't understand what's happening...

In August 2018, my tank start to got some problems. At that moment, I noticed the ORP drop down day after day (I was at 420 and drop down to 270). When I noticed that, I started to add ozone just to help the tank to up the ORP. The ORP started raising slowly until 315-320.

During the ORP raise, some corals died, some quickly, some slowly. They lost day by day a lot of colors... (SPS was the first to die). Then I noticed my blue tang start HLLE.

I've tried biger water change, adding amino, etc.. but nothing did a good results. By now, I've lost all my SPS, some high end LPS too and some fishies.

During those months, water changes was done almost every weeks, all fishies ate well even the day before diying...

I've noticed that the sand is full of grey/black sediment, live rock in my sump too but the CaribSea rocks in the tank seems fine.

After a lot of try, I think the problem come from the Carbon I used but could it be the problem for SPS/LPS dies?

My parameters are not bad:

Ca: 400
Mg: 1250
Alkalinity: 8
No3: 5
Po4: 0.02
Temp: 25°c
ORP: 300-320
Ph: 8-8.4

Should I remove all the sand to clean as much as possible the system?

Thanks for your help.
 
Black sand may indicate a hydrogen sulfide problem which is toxic if allowed to escape into the water column... A rotten egg smell may accompany it..

Removing the entire sand bed could certainly be beneficial and a safe measure..
 
Black sand may indicate a hydrogen sulfide problem which is toxic if allowed to escape into the water column... A rotten egg smell may accompany it..

Removing the entire sand bed could certainly be beneficial and a safe measure..

The sand is not black but when I move it, some black powder get out...
 
How old is the tank, and how deep is the sand bed?

Kevin
 
How old is the tank, and how deep is the sand bed?

Kevin

Hello Kevin,

The tank is 1,5 years old but one year ago the tank has been made empty because I move out to a new house. I re-used the same sand at that moment. The sand bed is about 3-4cm, depends from where in the tank..
 
If you think the sand is questionable the replace it.

That's the point... I don't know if it's the sand or somethings else? I just don't understand why I got those problems. Before moving to the new house, everythings was perfect and I had really nice grow and colors and then it started to going bad... I didn't change anythings but I re-use the same sand that's why I think it could be the problem?
 
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