Destroyed my tank

[travis32]

will it take the full 2 or 3 weeks of a normal cycle with ammonia levels currently at just around .5. Or will they drop in a week or so?

How do I know if the water will ever be safe for live stock given the amount of "coral sludge" (dead coral residue) in the tank? Will a 100% water change make it safe?

I was planning on housing coral stock I'm getting with the 125g temporarily in the 55g until the 125 is fully cycled and operational. However, if the water and/or rock may be too toxic to do that, I will have to have 125g of sea water ready, and wait on cycling it and place the coral stock in that tank until I can get my 55g safe enough to hold corals while the "new" tank is cycled. I don't exect the cycle to take long, given that i'm using cycled sand, and will hopefully be placing some of my cycled rock in there to jump start the bacteria population.

Just torn on how to keep the corals until everything is back in shape. This is his only tank, so, there's no chance of the previous owner keeping them until things are stabilized in both tanks.

I'll be tearing the 55g down once done with this transition process. Due to the leaks it has.

 

[bertoni]

The ammonia likely will disappear in a week or two, but that's hard to predict. I suspect the tank will be fine. I'd start doing some large (20%) water changes to remove byproducts from the decay cycle, maybe one a week, and then do a series of 10% changes once the ammonia hits zero, and run a lot of fresh carbon. I don't think a 100% water change is necessarily a good idea. It might disturb the filtration capacity of the live rock, and stress more animals, if anything's still alive.

The tank should be safe enough in a few weeks, IMO.

 

[travis32]

Thanks.. So, get this. I don't understand this and I'm not complaining... But, there's 2 -3 survivors...

2 necarious snails roaming around. They change places taking turns on the glass.. But, there's 2 of them. (I had boughten 20 baby necarious... no clue if there's any of them alive, guessing not..)

But, here's the odd thing... My duncan is extending today -- as in opening... As in it still has flesh attached! My open brain, all the flesh gone, Leather 6 - 8" leather is nearly completely disintigrated. Hair mushrooms, gone, there's a few purple mushrooms that might recover. They aren't opening, but they aren't completely disintigrated either.

So, let me ask.. How on earth does a single LPS - Duncan, survive this? I don't get it?

My Betta in QT came out today when I came home from work!!!!! His first time out of his hiding spot in QT since he got moved there!! And I fed right away as I was so delighted to see him out and I saw him eat a few pieces of shrimp!! That's my Betta!! I spared his life, and he's recovering it looks like!

I am very happy to see he survived! He's the only fish I've had since 7 or months ago that's survived. Royal gramma died of ich complications and lawnmower blenny went carpet surfing...

I'm happy for that! I'm glad to hear that in a couple weeks the tank should be fine. I didn't test tonight, but I'm dosing prime daily, to hopefully spare the snails and the duncan. (I don't have adequate lighting for an LPS in my QT or I"d move the duncan. The snails I could move, but the tank is still a little cloudy so, it's hard to see what else might be alive.

I would think the duncan and snails are indicators though that things are slowly starting to get better. I hope. Tank looks like crap and that's an understatement! The room still reaks of mushrooms....

 

[jason2459]

I find my duncan to be a great indicator of things changing in my tank. Some bad and some good like a drop in PO4. I notice duncans can close up really tight and look like they are completely dead only to pop back out eventually and get super full.

One of the best pictures to show how durable they are is in this amazing thread of pictures from down under .
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1529412&highlight=how+rare+is+this

In there is a picture of a large grouping of duncans having to protect themselves from brutal environment of a super low tide. In fact shows how versatile many organisms we have in our tanks are.

 

[travis32]

Yeah, I just can't believe it can survive ammonia levels at .5 and PH levels that most likely exceeded 9.0 at their high points. Alk levels that probably went through the roof from the Lime OD.

Again, I'm not complaining, it's just quite amazing at how despite all the destruction, that life can survive and will flourish. Pretty neat to see happen before me and despite my blunderings.

 

[travis32]

Bad news gets worse. O.k. I've learned in life not to ask stupid questions, but I'm going to, Why Me?

Here's the deal, my return pump quit today, my heater I thought, died on me (the indicator light wouldn't come on when I plugged the stealth heater in.) The return pump kept blowing the breaker...

Arg! I bought a new return pump because I'm going to need a pump anyways for my new tank (for utility like filling the tank from a rubbermade tub, etc.)

and I picked up a new heater. Well, turns out my old heater was working, I either just couldn't see the indicator in the daylight or it took an hour or two for it to come on.. (in the water.)

So, Now I've got two heaters and a working return pump! Yaay!!

I put everything back together including my ATO and so far the only thing I'm not sure on, is that the return pump kicking the breaker may have burned out the timer in my surge protector, as the timer plug in spots don't come seem to be working, all others do. Or else the tank is leaking enough to get water in the surge protectors and I don't know it.

So far, everything else is working except the timer spot. I'll see if the timer kicks on the lights tomorrow as I reset everything.

Well, here's the worse news. Tuesday my tank was at .5 Ammonia. Today, it's a dark Green, according to the indicator sheet, up to 4.0 ppm Ammonia!!!!!! So, a really harsh cycle it is. How long will stuff be dieing in the tank and in the rockwork? Will the ammonia continue to climb as stuff dies or will it eventually even out?

I'm running a lot of carbon and the skimmer and everything I can to try to get it under control, but, well, I'll keep testing to see if it continues to climb or if it starts dropping.

I tested the QT, just to make sure the tesk kit is working. I've got two medium clowns (about 2" each) and a marine betta (about 5 -6") in the 29gallon QT... Yeah, not very big for the amount of fish. It's fully cycled with some rock and other objects (pvc pipe, etc) for bacteria to grow on. Well, it must be working because, the test kit showed ammonia completely undetectable. 1 good thing at least!

The betta is eating like a pig now. So, he's fully recovering in the QT!

 

[bertoni]

That's a lot of ammonia. I don't know how long it'll take for the ammonia to level off. You could try removing any organic debris, and perhaps some large water changes, which might help speed the process.

I'm glad to hear the betta is better.

 

[travis32]

Yes, he's back to his old self. I wasn't sure how he would get along with the clowns in such a small tank. He chased my blenny in the 55g a lot. (probably why he went carpet surfing).

All I've seen so far,is the betta steal a piece of food that the clowns were going right for, as soon as they saw him coming they both scurried away. And there's lots of hiding spots for them. They all seem rather peaceful. So, that's good.

I'll be getting the new tank on the 20th. I'll be ordering an RODI unit this weekend so I can start creating water for the new tank.
I have an extra heater now to keep the new water heated. So Hopefully I can just transfer the rock and it'll be close to 100% cycled as I transition it to the new tank.

I'll test again on Sunday to see if anything has changed on the Ammonia side. I'm curious to see if it levels off or not.

It's possible that the return pump was either over heating or shorting out to cause the breaker to flip. Which could have made things worse. There was no black ness nor smell of anything burnt. So, I don't think it actually did anything to the water.

Here's to hoping things get better from here on out. I wish I wouldn't have had to learn the lesson this way!