Everything dead.

[Banjer1982]

Thanks for all the replys. Checked my heater and it's fine. Going to check my powerhead tomorrow. If it's cracked I'm gonna ditch everything but if it's not I'm just going to rinse all my rocks and sand and replace all my water. Hopefully that should be good enough.

 

[chrismunn]

anybody been spraying any cleaning chemicals in the vacinity of the tank, or even anywhere in the room that the tanks in?

how do you top off evap, manually or ato?

what, if anything, do you dose, how much and how often?

do you test for EVERYTHING that you dose?

how much rock do you have in the tank?

do you have a sump, and whats in it?

there are so many things that could've caused this, from an over dose of a single chemical, rapid floccuation of alkalinity or temprature, to accidentally and unknowingly dropping something into the tank. if your rocks were going to leach some toxicchemical into the water it would have likely done it a long time ago. a single snail dieing and rotting away in a 34g tank certainly will not cause this. do you look into your tank very often? if it were because something unknowingly died, you would have noticed changes in the tank that would have qued you off before the crash, i.e. cloudy water or anabnormally heavy and fast spreading algal bloom.

my money is on either some foreign object falling into the tank or an accidental addition of something into the tank too rapidly (namely alkalinity)... not sure about the orange color,but ide imaging that if there was enough rust in the tank to color your skimmate orange everything would probably have slowly withered away in front of your eyes long before the crash.

sorry to hear about it by the way, hope you figure it out...!

 

[Banjer1982]

No one has sprayed anything in the room and I top off manually with ro water than I run. I don't dose anything cause usually my water stays in pretty good condition. I try to do a small water change once a week and a large water change once a month. I change about 5 gallons a week and 10-15 gal a month. I'm gonna pull out my powerhead here in an hour or so and check it. I have one emerald crab left. I guess he is tougher than everything else

 

[cmoreland]

I hate to come off the wrong way here but you were gone for 13 hours, there is no way you could know if something didn't get dumped into your tank either accidentally or on purpose unless you had a cam on it the whole time. I've never seen orange colored skimmate, and I don't think something would cause rust that quickly. I suspect some sort of foreign fluid or susbstance.

My $.02, don't take that the wrong way, I'm not calling you or your GF a liar but something is definitely very odd about the orange color. Not normal at all. What does the skimmate smell like? You can easily tell if it's some sort of cleaning agent, oil or chemical by getting a good whiff of the stuff.

 

[Banjer1982]

Cant really deceive the smell. About like curing live rock, just a bad smell. I had alot of amphipods and they leave behind an orange shell. I had them sticking to my glass and on my rocks and sand bed. Most of those are gone now as if they dissolved. That's the only explanation I can get out of the color. Because my skimmate and I have a white filter and both of those are now the same color as those shells or whatever they are. I'm about to pull out the powerhead right now so I'll update in a few to say if it's cracked and leaking or not

 

[Banjer1982]

Decieve=describe. Just pulled the powerhead and it appears to be fine

 

[chimmike]

Im wondering if you had a nudi or slug hitchike without know, get out and get sucked into the powerhead.

 

[enasco]

Yes, that is what I did, look at my pictures "after my crash" I changed my water completely, added a polyfilter, and changed my carbon. The only thing I did different was I threw my LR's and live sand away and got new ones and new live sand as you will see in my pictures. Note this also, when it comes to water quality-->snails will hold a big change in water so if they are gone its a major concern at that present time the water quality. Also, yes the same thing happened to me when I came in the house the smelly smell like if the LR's are not cured which is a sign of fowl sea water.

So I would definitly make a complete water change, rinse the LR's (live rocks), put a new carbon even go as far as a polyfilter and wait a few days or a week than check your parameters.

Eddie

 

[enasco]

When it comes to top-off water I have reservoir next to the tank in a closet high on the top shelves and it feeds by gravity RO/DI into the sump were I placed a float.

I dose ESV part I-II every morning, iodine x2 per week.

I do check for everything I dose:--)Cal, Alk, & PH, specific gravity of the water.

In my 46 gal bow tank I presently have: 89 lbs of LR.

I have a simple sump no Fuge, but plan later on to add one and I do run a skimmer, but only from the late afernoon until the following morning.

Eddie

 

[mm949]

maybe someone used your fish buckets to clean somethin else?

 

[Floowid]

Look at anything you added to your tank recently. I only mention this because one time I bought a rock with green mushrooms on it from my LFS. a few days after my ammonia started to spike, followed by the rest. My whole tank would have crashed until I noticed that the "rock" my mushrooms were on was breaking open. Turns out it was some sort of clam or mussle, which died in the collection process. It was a big clam and had I let it go one more day, it would have wiped out the tank. I still use the underside of that shell as a sunshade to kill off nuisance algae and the odd aitpasia.

 

[Banjer1982]

I'm waiting until I have all my ro water ran and aeriated before I drain my tank then I'll check all my live well dead rock now. Should I also rinse off my bioballs. Any of those not familiar with a solana the skimmer water exits onto a polyfilter then trickles down over carbon and bioballs then to the return pump

 

[enasco]

Not really what happened (I SHOULD HAVE KNOWN BETTER) I tried removing the sand bed which had been there for two years and in doing so all the toxins underneath came about causing my total wipe out.

 

[eric@tampa]

Sorry about your loss,I have the same tank and left out the bioballs from the begaining was told they will become a nitrate factory...fyi.Hope to see a rebuild soon and good luck.eric

 

[enasco]

Hi Eric,

I've heard that too, but in may case all the parameters were normal. What happened to me was upon disturbing the sand bed I brought up all the toxins found underneath and made the water poisonous, but everything is back to normal and I'm starting to rebuild my reef again.

Eddie

 

[jtl2]

Do you live in an apartment or house? If apartment, exterminator may have paid a visit.

 

[enasco]

I used Raid on the kitchen once, but have used it before and never had this problem before. I had been told this could have been that and not the disturbance of the sand bed.

Eddie

 

[JoeRonda]

I would set up a LR holding tank, get that running and see if things live in there. That will eliminate the possibility of something leaching out of the rock. Then move on to the next step. And yes I would tear down everything. Sorry for your loss.