aninjaatemyshoe
New member
For those of you that have NPS tanks, here's a word of warning. Be very careful about potential anoxic zones in your tank. I just had a brush with a rather nasty amount of H2S while preparing to clean some pumps. Apparently, my sump had accumulated a decent degree of detritus/crap in it, enough for anaerobic bacteria to gain a decent foothold. When I turned off the pump that feeds my refuge from my sump, I think a large backwash of water disturbed something. Soon after I had shut off the pump, I was smelling that awful rotten egg smell, but this time it was worse than I've ever smelled before. Honestly, I was concerned that I had poisoned myself; let alone how bad it may have been in the tank. My algae blenny started fighting for his life. He practically jumped out of the tank to get out of it. Then I start seeing all of my thousands of mini brittle starts squirming out of their holes to flee the scene...
Luckily, I had some materials around that helped me avert complete disaster. First of all, I removed most of my precious corals into my refuge, which was no longer plugged into the main system. Then, I grabbed an Eheim cannister filter I had lying around with some carbon and ran that on the tank. I also dumped a ton of carbon I had into the overflow. I opened up all the windows and doors and ran all of the vent fans in hopes that I could remove that awful smell. The carbon seemed to remove the egg smell coming from the tank within a few minutes. Soon enough, my little brittle stars stopped dancing around and returned to normal. Unfortunately, my algae blenny did not make it
I've now cleaned out the sump and washed and scrubbed every pump, my skimmer, and even the heater. I also did a huge water change to hopefully put in check any ammonia spikes or pH drops that may have happened from all of the chaos. Now, I'm just waiting for things to settle in before I put the corals back in the display.
In the end, I think the huge amount of nutrients I cycle through this system largely increased the risk and potency of this ticking time-bomb. I've had small amounts of H2S release in other tanks, but they had never been nearly as bad as this and never had they killed anything. I'm not yet sure as to the full extent of the damage. There were a number of things that I could not remove from my tank. I will have a better understanding of the full extent of the damage in a couple of days.
There are a few things I will do different from here. For one, I have organized all of my pumps so they now run off of my Apex. One of the things I had a big problem with was finding which cords turned off what. When you have a disaster like this, time is a huge factor. Also, I am going to be performing regular sump cleans from now on. I am definitely keeping my Eheim filter around for emergencies like this. Finally, I've purchased an ozonizer. I'm going to make a point to keep everything in my tank highly oxygenated and maintain a good ORP in my sump to hopefully mitigate this problem.
Luckily, I had some materials around that helped me avert complete disaster. First of all, I removed most of my precious corals into my refuge, which was no longer plugged into the main system. Then, I grabbed an Eheim cannister filter I had lying around with some carbon and ran that on the tank. I also dumped a ton of carbon I had into the overflow. I opened up all the windows and doors and ran all of the vent fans in hopes that I could remove that awful smell. The carbon seemed to remove the egg smell coming from the tank within a few minutes. Soon enough, my little brittle stars stopped dancing around and returned to normal. Unfortunately, my algae blenny did not make it
I've now cleaned out the sump and washed and scrubbed every pump, my skimmer, and even the heater. I also did a huge water change to hopefully put in check any ammonia spikes or pH drops that may have happened from all of the chaos. Now, I'm just waiting for things to settle in before I put the corals back in the display.In the end, I think the huge amount of nutrients I cycle through this system largely increased the risk and potency of this ticking time-bomb. I've had small amounts of H2S release in other tanks, but they had never been nearly as bad as this and never had they killed anything. I'm not yet sure as to the full extent of the damage. There were a number of things that I could not remove from my tank. I will have a better understanding of the full extent of the damage in a couple of days.
There are a few things I will do different from here. For one, I have organized all of my pumps so they now run off of my Apex. One of the things I had a big problem with was finding which cords turned off what. When you have a disaster like this, time is a huge factor. Also, I am going to be performing regular sump cleans from now on. I am definitely keeping my Eheim filter around for emergencies like this. Finally, I've purchased an ozonizer. I'm going to make a point to keep everything in my tank highly oxygenated and maintain a good ORP in my sump to hopefully mitigate this problem.
