HELP! I have the reef blues!

[lyncher14622]

New to this forum... we have been in the salt water aquarium hobby for many years, and although we have had moderate success, we have big troubles now.
About six months ago we upgraded from a 75G to a 120 reef and fish tank. There has been no success in adjusting since for our corals. We have lost several thousand dollars worth of coral and cannot get any help from local stores.
Our fish are doing well. We have a few different tangs, a marine beta, a clown fish, and a clown wrasse.
Everytime we test our levels they are near perfect. (nitrates,ph,calcium, alkalinity,phosphates,etc..)
When we switched the tanks over, we used 75 gallons of the old water, the 75 lbs of live rock from the old tank, 40-50 lbs of the old sand (added another 30lb of new sand), changed to T5 lights from VHOs. We are running Sea chem carbon, purigen for nitrates, have a large protein skimmer, and a fine particle filter bag. All of which we have used for 15+ years without much problem.
We have added a R-O system in our basement to make our own water, which we have never done before. Have used tap water in past, or reef store R-O water.
If we add a coral or invertabrates they last 3-4 days and die. If we switch them over to our nano tank (uses same water, etc.) they thrive.
We tried waiting a few months to let the tank cycle. Recently the tank has been looking better, and the diatons are gone. We elected to try 2 new corals this week, 1 died, and the other we had to switch to the nano tank before it met it's demise.
Has anyone ever heard a story like this?
We sure would appreciate any feedback you might share.

Thanks

 

[MellowReefer]

I think the first thing people will want to know is your exact parameters for calcium, alkalinity, nitrate, phosphate. And what test kits are you using and how old they are. Also your salinity and if you have calibrated your refractometer lately. I know these may seem basic to you since you have a lot of experience but people want to know these are definitely correct.

Many people who suspect some type of contaminate will put in some polyfilters because they are known to remove all contaminates more effectively than carbon. You could give that a try.

I only have a few years experience myself but have read many threads with an unknown problem killing corals. Did you add any rock or sand that was used? Possible that person used copper in their tank and the rock is continually leaching out the copper killing your corals. Copper is usually the main suspect in cases like this.

 

[DeepThought]

have you run a copper test kit yet? That's my first gut instinct.

 

[DeepThought]

jinx

 

[greg1786]

I would agree with the above poster that copper is a suspect especially since all fish are ok but inverts and corals are dying so quickly. Was the tank used? And the rock as well? If so, if the person before you ran copper in the tank or in the tank holding the LR it as earlier stated could be leaching copper. Petco sells an api copper test for about 8 bucks id get that as my first move to eliminate the possibility

 

[DeepThought]

Personally, I think I would stick in a poly filter and see what kinds of colors come up. The colors will tell you what kind of problems you are definitely having. A copper test kit will tell you if you have any copper in the water column...

If you are using any kind of brass fittings in your new RO reservoir system, remove them immediately. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc... and in wet conditions, can leach copper ions into the water.

I'd also check around your system to see if you have any types of exposed metal surfaces, any exposed metal in or around magnetic holders, pumps, powerheads etc.

I would also use a multimeter voltage meter and check your tank for stray voltage. Grab your heaters and see if they shock yah! (I did this a week ago... successfully.)

Get your LFS or yourself to test your water parameters, as suggested by the previous poster. temperature swings, salinity swings, alkalinity spikes, high nitrates, a source of ammonia... a varying pH or very low pH... those kinds of things are what needs to be looked for and might need to be corrected.

Also, I see that you saved some of your old sand... did it have a rotten egg smell to it when you were moving it? How many water changes have you done... (IE frequency) since the new tank has been set up?

I've been having my fair share of problems lately and although I do have nearly eight years under my belt, I still feel like a noob sometimes.

 

[hollister]

First you should have introduced the new lights little by little. Like an hour per day a few days and increse by 2 hours untill full time reached. This alone would stress the coral out but then you added 30 lbs of sand if at one time thats a stress on the bio load , you should add a few lbs a week. I would have used all the old sand and added more.
I would reduce light time .
Whats used for water flow in there?

 

[lyncher14622]

well thanks everyone for all the great feed back. We have two realy great reef stores in town and i received better feed back in one night than in 6 months with them. very diapointing. I went thru the whole heater thing, we have a 800 watt titanium heater with a sepreat thermastate, one day i came home and the suction cup let go and the probe fell out of the tank and my tank was 92 degrees, lost every thing except 6 fish. ( now it is wire tied in the sump ) dont ever trust a suction cup. then we had stray voltage, not much but found out it was the heater ( should have stayed with the cheap one ). I went and changed it for a new one and installed a grounding rod. voltage is finally gone.
I just looked at old picture and all fittings on my old tank were pvc, but I have installed two brass fittings on this new tank on my main pump and my return line ( damn that really is a newbe mistake ) they will be changed tomorrow. I will be picking up a copper test kit in the a.m. i will post all test results tomorrow.
I really don't know anything about poly filters I will check with our reef store and see what they know tomorrow also.
I am so happy to have some things that might be the problem, cause we spent a ton of money going to a bigger tank. with no luck and were thinkin of taking it down.
thanks again and I will post results tomorrow

 

[lyncher14622]

I belive there is plenty of water flow, this is a single corner over flow 120 gallon tank. with two 750 gallon per hour power jets and one 500 gallon per hour poer jet.

 

[GroktheCube]

So you know, copper tests do not read low enough to be useful. The threshold for toxicity in inverts is WAY below the bottom end of hobby test kits. If you had brass fittings in the main tank plumbing, that's your culprit.

Pick up some polyfilter. Run it (changing sheets often) until it no longer changes blue/green (indicating copper).

I'd be somewhat concerned about copper having entered the rock to leach back out later.

 

[tfeyrer]

If you are using any kind of brass fittings in your new RO reservoir system, remove them immediately. Brass is an alloy of copper and zinc... and in wet conditions, can leach copper ions into the water.

Does this also go for a garden hose hooked up to the RO/DI that's used to replace evaporated or newly made saltwater?

 

[GroktheCube]

Does this also go for a garden hose hooked up to the RO/DI that's used to replace evaporated or newly made saltwater?

If it's before the RO, it's fine. Pretty much all homes use copper plumbing anyway.

 

[Dapg8gt]

My first instinct was also heavy metal.. Being that you have brass fittings in there you should get them out ASAP.. Grab more poly filter than you think you need as it comes in handy to have around and you are going to want to change the pads frequently.. I might even go as far as adding some prime to the tank since it states to detoxify heavy metal I believe.. Make sure the pump you are using also has plastic impellers I've seen a friend put a external pump on his tank that he thought was a good deal(not advertised for aquarium use) and it turned out to be a metal volute and impeller that he had similar issues but caught it rather quickly after not realizing there was a difference.. Good luck hope it works out for you..

 

[lyncher14622]

Thanks all for the posts. To update, we have just tested for copper, and although it was negative, one of said the test kits don't go down low enough... so I am still suspicious given there is a brass fitting on the main pump. We will remove it tonight.
Other levels: Magnesium 1380, Alkalinity 8.3, calcium 500, pH 8.2 (test kit needs to be updated, so I am not 100% on the accuracy), copper 0, nitrates 0. All test kits are new in the last few months except pH. salinity is 1.024 steadily, and I calibrate my refractometer each time I check salinity.
I will look on the internet for polyfilter, I stopped at our local store but they do not carry them (?).

 

[lyncher14622]

also... I have been on the internet looking for poly filters... it is confusing! Do I need the specific Poly Bio Marine filters (amazon), or has anyone used the c2/c3 filters by fluval (currently in stock at my local petsmart) or does anyone have any specific recommendations?

Thank you,

 

[moondoggy4]

To throw out something else have you recently painted the room and have you used the paint with anti mold properties inside it.

 

[Yogre]

I agree with GroktheCube, you've got copper contamination in your setup from the brass fittings.

The copper test kits we use in the hobby are designed to measure Cu at therapeutic concentrations, such as using copper-based meds on fish in a quarantine tank. They will not measure concentrations that can still be deadly to inverts.

The Polyfilter you need is this stuff:

http://www.marinedepot.com/Poly_Fil...Media-Poly_Bio_Marine-PB1111-FIFMMEPM-vi.html

It will turn blue in the presence of copper, and I think that's what you're going to see.

I hope it doesn't come to taking the tank down, but it might, you may have a significant amount of copper entrained in your rock and sand, enough to be toxic for quite a while as it leaches out.

 

[lyncher14622]

No, no new paint jobs or anti mold chemicals...

 

[lyncher14622]

Ok, this was a much bigger deal than anticipated to get the brass fitting out, but as suspected, it was corroded. When we took the fitting off the bulk head started leaking and we thought we cracked something, but with a few hours of hard work and a couple trips to the local reef store we are back in business. Also, while we were tearing everything apart we found another metal fitting on our RO pump! REALLY! Darn newby mistakes for 15+ year veterans! GEEZ
Looked all over town today for poly filters, but ended up ordering them off the web (thank you for the website).
Once we get poly filters does anyone know how long the copper stays in the tank? Should we increase water change outs, get rid of sand? What about our live rock????

 

[Yogre]

I don't really have an answer as to how long the copper will stay in your tank. It will depend on final copper concentration in the water, substrate type and quantity, etc. Polyfilter and resins like Cuprisorb (also available at Marine Depot) will pull copper out, but it will take time.

You might want to post a question about clearing copper in the Reef Chemistry subforum, there are some great chem brains there.

The only way to know for sure you've cleared the tank and substrate of Cu is lab testing. ENC Labs has a good reputation, but they aren't cheap, last I checked they wanted $65 for a Cu test. This is of course if you want to keep the rock and sand. The other way is to add inverts and see if they die...but I'm not a fan of that method.

I don't want to be a Debbie Downer, but you may need to consider either replacing the rock and sand or going FOWLR with this tank.