NEED HELP, Water went from cloudy to ORANGE!

[loglew]

Hey guys I need some help with my tank, 125 gallon tank, established for 4 years, mixed reef with mostly soft coral, 40 gallon sump, skimmer, GFO and carbon reactor, started to get a white haze about 5 days ago, my first thoughts where a bacteria bloom due to the vinegar dosing that I have been doing for the past 6 months. I cut back on the dosing and did a 40 gallon water change. After the water change things looked a little better. I also noticed that while cleaning the skimmer the skim mate was not its normal dark green paste but more of a light brown film. Water kept getting more and more cloudy. Yesterday my fish started to show signs of stress, heavy breathing; I cut the vinegar doser off and added an air pump to maintain O2. This morning I woke up to a brown almost rusty looking tank, one fish lost, 3 year old blue hippo tang. Working on water parameters now, and making more RO/DI water for a large water change, also changed out carbon and cut GFO. Any thought or ideas. Thanks in advance.

 

[loglew]

Water test;
SG 1.026
Temp 78.8
Calcium (hanna) 499
Alkalinity (hanna) 172
P04 (hanna) 0.00
N03 (red sea) 0.00 - 0.2
PH (salifert) 8.2

 

[loglew]

Wet Skim

Also noticed when I pulled out my prefilter sponge it had over 50 dead small brittle stars?

 

[sean2sean]

It could be rust? My red dragon pump did something like that. I had a pump failure.

 

[loglew]

I am working my way through all the equipment now, so far I have not found any failures, heaters are all good, return pump mag 18 is good, power head korlia and MP40 are good, skimmer is working fine, and both reactor pump look good. Any other thoughts?

 

[Painted skin]

IMO I don't think it's rust, it would have to be a lot of rust in order to do that.. Plus you mentioned it's starts off with a white haze.. I still think it's bacteria, from my understanding when carbon dosing you have to slowing decrease the dosing and work your way down and not just cut it off and shock the system.

 

[loglew]

From my understanding and where I think I made a mistake was not backing down the amount dosed once phosphate and nitrate bottomed out to maintain good numbers.

I'll deal with that latter, the task at hand now is trying to get the tank cleared up and not loose any more livestock.

 

[Slystone]

Bump

 

[loglew]

After wet skimming 20 gallons of water and running a couple filter socks things are looking a lot better this morning. I will get some pictures when the lights come all the way on.

 

[davjbeas]

Run some polyfilters or at least carbon

 

[loglew]

Run some polyfilters or at least carbon

Already did both, changed out both my BRS media reactors with freash ROX carbon.

 

[MARINECRITTERS]

Definitely algae bloom, I have heard of rustly looking algae blooming in the ocean, not very normal in a reef. All you can do is water changes and cutting back on the carbon dosing. UV would help.

 

[loglew]

Lights are on and water looks good...

 

[Chihuahua6]

Glad to see things are looking better. I have never seen orange water before.