Major Problem in my Tank

[richardg6409]

After setting up my reef tank (from a FOWLR)for over 1 year and enjoying really great growth and stability, a disaster has hit me in the past week and I am at a loss to explain what has happened. Basically, almost all of my corals have bleached and died.

Despite the shock of losing so many prized corals, more frustrating is that I can not identify anything that can explain the rapid decline of so many different types of corals, all at once.

The first to show signs was my green and red blasto, once a large colony of 15 large and fleshy polyps, it has now been reduced to skeleton and one just about dead polyp

The next to be hit was my purple milli, the neon green birdsnest, several acros, undatas and montis. The only coral that shows some life now is my nana, and as you can see from the photo, will be gone by tomorrow.

My Chemistry is and has been as follows for the past several months

Amm, Nitrite are 0
Nitrate at 0 on a salifert test
Temp range from 78-79
pH range from 8.25-8.42 (time of day)
Calcium at 410-430ppm
Alk at 9.8-11
Magnesium 1200-1300

Tank is a 125g with a 50g sump/refugium, 3X150W 14K metal halides, actinic lights as well, deltec skimmer, chiller. Fish load is extremely light, purple tang, helfrich firefish, dracula goby, wrasse, 2 chromis, usual cleanup crew.

My 12" brain is now showing signs of being unhappy, so far the candys, rics, zoos, mushrooms, xenia, clams are not showing any distress yet.

The loss has been very depressing, made several large water changes, consulted with 4 professionals locally, nobody can come up with an explanation.

I am hoping that someone will be able to figure out this mystery. The only thing that I can think of is outside contamination, but the tank is covered on the top and everyone in the house knows not to spray cleaning solution near the tank.

I appreciate everyones help.



Thanks
Richard

 

[chernandez]

Did you do a copper treatment when it was FOWLR

 

[Garage1217]

Any work around the house involving paint or other chemicals?

Were do you get your water / how old are your filters if you use your own unit? What is your water change schedule if you change your water?

Do you run a skimmer? Any anything out of the ordinary with skim production?

Do you run carbon or GFO?

Any new corals recently or fish?

Any temp spikes recently?

 

[richardg6409]

Thanks for the quick feedback everyone.

No copper treatment in the tank, have a qt tank in the garage where I treat fish. No copper detected in the water.

I make my own water, spectrapure, filters changed 3 months ago, still showing 0 on the meter. No carbon and no temp spikes. I did add a purple tang (small) and dracula goby recently, but nitrates were completely 0 and I did not add any of the store water to the tank, I drip acclimate and basically hand transfer them to the tank. The fish were added weeks before the disaster hit

 

[scorpiocasper]

The above questions and..
What about phosphates?
How old are the bulbs?
Any change in flow?

 

[richardg6409]

Nicole/Rick

Thanks for the questions.

The lights are 6 months old, no phosphates--brought my water in the store for the special test. No change in flow, have the closed loop plus 4 koralia 4's

 

[Philwd]

Hi Richard,
DJ asked me about this Sat. From the conversation we had my guess was when you turned off the skimmer to do the no ich you lowered the oxygen saturation in the tank. This led to a die off in your sand bed. Not major but started a chain reaction. If it was truly major you would have lost the fish.

Now once you lost a couple corals due to the toxins in the water it fed the chain reaction leading to the other corals decline. It's possible you have sponges dieing in the rock also which would explain why just running carbon and WC are not fixing the problem. It's also possible the corals were just too stressed and you are seeing a delayed reaction in some. This is very common.

I come to this conclusion having seen several tanks collapse after taking a skimmer off line. The toxins hypothesis is supported by the fact all params tested in line. It has to be something you can't test for.

I know how depressing that can be. I once had a single seriotopora die from too little flow. Took out every bird's nest in the tank. Every one I tried for 4 months died. Some of this reaction is long lived proteins and some is bacterial based. My suggestion after having gone through a smaller episode is take it slow for 3 months or so. Enjoy your fish. They try 1 single coral. See how it does over a couple weeks. If it's good then slowly add more.

 

[Garage1217]

Ah there we go. A lot more insight on a possible cause. Makes more sense now. Most of the time things never just go south without some variable.

 

[richardg6409]

Hi Phil

DJ and I thought about your hypothesis. It might be possible, however, even with the skimmer off, there should have been enough oxygen in the tank from the close loop which basically is a waterfall in the sump and the 4 koralias churn up some bubbles on the top water level in the main tank.

Should I remove the dying corals?? I kept the ones in the tank that have some life and polyps. Or are they further exacerbating the problem

Also, wouldn't these toxins kill off the clams and soft corals?? Why are the candy canes unaffected??

Thanks for your advice

 

[jerryz]

We had to use 20 pennies to the gallon to cure them until they came out with liquid copper and test kits ~ Paul B

LOL - Zinc is a treatment for Ich?

 

[30reef]

You said you could not identify anything in particular that could have caused such a loss of life in your tank, but you have failed to inform the majority here of the ich treatment. Details such as that which are not mentioned could lead to an inaccurate diagnosis of the problem.

I would have to think that an agitated surface would adequately oxygenate the water for any amount of life in the tank. But at this point, it's all just a guessing game. As Phil stated, enjoy the fish and add a coral or two and see what happens. You can use a Poly-Filter pad and see what color it changes, that will give you a good indication of what's in the water.

IMO, water changes don't dilute the problem enough to be of any benefit, unless you change all of it. If you know for certain no alk or ph altering agents have been added, and no other major changes have been made, carbon and/or poly-filter use will remove any amount of toxins from the existing water without the major changes in chemistry a large water change will cause. Again, just my O.

 

[buffalobunch]

+1 for the poly filter pad. This will help remove any toxins in the water. Like 30reef said it will change color and indicate what is in the water. Did you possibly have a temp swing? SPS are extremely sensitive to temp swings. Do you have any inverts in the tank that are dying (snails, hermits, shrimps)? Do you have any children that could have put something in the tank? I would take all of the corals out that are dying or have dead spots on them and put them in a different tank if possible. If you cant move them perhaps do a lugol's dip on them and frag off the dead parts. Like Phil said if it's bacterial, it will continue to spread. I'd also do large water changes over the next few days. Dilution is the solution to pollution jmo

 

[richardg6409]

Thanks for all the advice, I will change another 20% today and then another 20% on Friday. Will try the poly filter pad and report back. No chance of a temperature swing, power was not out in the house at all, the chiller is working fine and everyday I log parameters morning and night. I do have 2 small children, but they can not reach the top of the tank. But who knows, that is what is just so frustrating.

At this point, all I can do is enjoy the fish. Took this picture last night. After a few weeks, the dracula goby finally came out of hiding--such a neat looking fish, wish I could see more of him

 

[smadascott]

It sounds like your corals may be suffering from RTN (rapid tissue neurosis). If this is the case, you would have seen a slight die of in tissue followed by a large rapid die off in tissue. The only thing i could think of as far as the bastomussa go is a detectable amount of phosphate in the water, most stony corals are very sensitive to phosphate because it directly effects there growth. You could try increasing your KH a little to around 10 to help stabilize your PH in this time of stress. The PH usually drops in the dark cycle of aquariums due to the CO2 being released by all photosynthetic animals. Also you may try fragging off any remaining parts of your colonies to try and save whats left. If it is indeed RTN, then fragging and seperating the healthy parts of the colony from the damaged definitely helps. Good luck!

 

[Pyrrhus]

I dont think this is a case of a chain reaction from one coral dying or lack of oxygen.

If it was oxygen your fish would absolutely perish before the corals did as they have a greater metabolic demand for o2.

Electrical discharge is a possibility, check all your in tank pumps and heaters carefully for frayed cords.

Have you changed lamps recently? If using SE lamps, are there any cracks in the outer glass envelope?

Is the event tank wide? or is it confined to a particular section or the tank (left, right, center, etc.)?

Running a polyfilter and carbon is a very good idea right now until things are figured out.

 

[Garage1217]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15043301#post15043301 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jerryz
We had to use 20 pennies to the gallon to cure them until they came out with liquid copper and test kits ~ Paul B

LOL - Zinc is a treatment for Ich?

Pennies were 95% copper until 1982. Paul B was speaking from when he was into reef keeping in the 70's. Nice try You should read up on him sometime. Very interesting theories. Not all I agree with but good reading to say the least.

 

[Philwd]

The only reason I thought O2 is because the skimmer got turned off. I don't believe the corals died of O2 I believe something in the sand did. This problem is too closely tied to an ich treatment followed by a skimmer turn off. It's not a coincidence.

I have seen lots of tanks have chain reactins start when skimmers were turned off. I have seen tanks with skimmers off a week with no issues. Biggest difference? The tanks that survived were barebottom.

I can't remember exactly which book but Borneman had some good reading on what happens to a sand bed in a time of reduced O2 saturation.

 

[Garage1217]

It is possible the ich treatment actually killed off a large qty of something ther than ich? And I do not know what type of treatment he used but generally ich treatments are copper based, I assume this one has no copper? Sorry just rambling random thoughts...

 

[K' Family Reef]

dont know if this has been mentioned already

but is there a DSB in the system
that may have been disturbed in any way?... pump falling over etc...

have seen this same story before
from others who reported the dsb had been disturbed which ended up causing problems... one time for me - in process of removing a pistol shrimp the dsb was disturbed and wreaked havoc on several corals - some of which were lost altogether...

just something to consider if it might apply.

definitely recom using the POLYPAD
probably the best thing to do right now.

good luck.

regards

 

[Philwd]

It wasn't a Cu treatment. Rid ich I believe. DJ mentioned Roxanne had used it in her reef tank with no ill effects so they had discounted that as a cause in this case. Hard to say if that killed something else off. Definitely possible.