New tank crashed :(

C

Corona007

Member
Hi reefers, New guy here.
So last month 3/5 I purchased a used tank from my neighbor.
She crashed it too, And gave up. I didn't use her rock or sand.
Threw away the sand. The 5 lbs LR (cultured Real Reef Live Rock) she had is on my balcony.

It's a Clear for life 20 gal with api canister filter with phos zorb and activated carbon.
I purchased an RO DI (ro buddie), AquaticLife EDGE LED, Hydor Koralia Nano power head, Vacuum thinga ma jig, Api reef and salt water kits, 20lbs of cured fiji LR, 10 lbs Caribsea Arag-Alive Fiji LS and red sea salt.
I did as much reading as I could after putting water in so I wasn't totally clue less.

3 weeks later it did the cycle thing. Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate <5.0,
ph 8.0, Cal 420, kh 11 and phos .25 The next day I threw in some inverts.
2 hermits, 2 mexican turbo snails (took them back after 1 week, They cleaned my rock really nice but just too big for my tank) and 2 Nassarius Snail. Waited a week with all parameters unchanged and purchased 2 ocellaris clowns and a cleaner shrimp. At 5 weeks I was seeing copepods and a few worms. The clown were eating them non stop so I only fed them every 2 days.
The night of the crash 5/13 I did a 25% WC vacuumed front part of substrate and rinsed out filters with WC water. I woke up in the middle of the night (1:00 am) to relive myself and noticed my clowns breathing kind of heavy and the cleaner shrimp laying on his back. Immediately I tested the water and found the ammonia was spiking. Took all the livestock out and placed them in a ready mixed 5 gal bucket with heater and HOB marinelife filter (bought this for just in case). Where they sit now and look very good for what they went through.
Except the cleaner didn't make it. :(.
Fortunately I found the cause of the spike (I think) Unfortunately I wasn't paying attention when I slid canister back into place during maintenance and my intake hose got a kink in it and I'm almost positive that caused my crash.
My water is at 8 ppm ammonia and have done a few 25% water changes. Changing water as fast as I can make it. :(.

p/s, I really don't like that canister so I started designing and cnc'ing a custom protein skimmer to fit my tank and just waiting on Solvent Acrylic Plexiglass Glue that should be here tomorrow. Don't have room for a sump and none of the models will fit in my tank (weird cut outs) and the HOB's are eye sore. I do want a media reactor and think I could fit a nano in one of the hole without modification.

My query's. Do I just ride it out by doing water changes? More less WC?
Will my livestock be ok in the home depot bucket for a while?
Do I wan't to dose my livestock with anything beneficial?
Really appreciate any advice.
Lou.
 
One other thing, I had a little bit of Cyano too but that dissipated.
Did the crash kill it off or is it because there is nothing feeding it?
Thx.Lou
 
It's really sad reading about other newcomers tanks crashing and losing livestock I'm not sure if I'm really lucky but my tank has been running almost four month and I've never had any major problems anyway I hope it all works out for you and good luck.
 
lock up the ammonia with something like Prime. 20 G tank needs 20lbs or more of live rock and a HOB skimmer to house a pair of clowns
 
The clowns would be okay in a bucket, but they do need biological filteration or their ammonia wil spike fairly quickly. If you have no livestock in the tank, don't waste time and water with 25% WCs, go straight for a single big (80%) water change. Just make sure to match salinity and temp closely. With no livestock it will be fine and save time/money. Monitor the bucket of water with the fish to make sure the water isn't cycling. If it is, do water changes for them too. Likely need to do every day while they are in a bucket unles stheyhave some live rock.

2 things that may have happened would be either removing too much biological filter while your tank is very new with cleaning the sand and rincing the filters, or it was the canister getting kinked and the water in the canister fauling up.

you can dose small amounts of seachem Prime or equivilant, which are suposed to bind up ammonia short term, to help the fish. you shouldn't need to though. Just get the tank back up and running, and once the ammonia is back down you should be okay to put the fish back. Feed lightly to reduce bioload, and if you need to increase your biofilter, you can add more LR.
 
you have to change the water in the bucket frequently there will be ammonia build up....I wouldnt bother with any bacteria, adding bacteria in a bottle is by no means an instant cycle so you are wasting your money.
 
gone fishin said:
Just curious how you did the cycle thing and how long was it.
Click to expand...

Hi, On advice from LFS I used Dr. Tim's, no fish, Fed the tank flake food everyday. By the end of 2nd week my nitrite went up to 1ppm then 0 2 days later. nitrate went up to 10 ppm and it's been there since. 3rd week I put in inverts.
Day after the crash my nitrite went up to .50 and zeroed the next day. Introduced the clowns on forth week since all parameters were all 0. Except PO was .25 ph 8.2 76F. My nitrate is also at 0 since the crash. I didn't see it go up since but did miss a full day of testing.

Thx again for the tips. Lou.
 
I am just not sure a kinked hose on your canister filter would cause a crash.

The 8ppm of ammonia would indicate a large die off to me. You only lost the the cleaner shrimp. I just can't see a cleaner making that much ammonia.

Did you lose any other live stock during this time period? What other livestock did you have?
 
gone fishin said:
I am just not sure a kinked hose on your canister filter would cause a crash.

The 8ppm of ammonia would indicate a large die off to me. You only lost the the cleaner shrimp. I just can't see a cleaner making that much ammonia.

Did you lose any other live stock during this time period? What other livestock did you have?
Click to expand...

The only thing that died was the cleaner shrimp (jr.).
Livestock 2 clowns, 3 hermits, 2 snails.
I think a large quantity of my pods died also.
I took a surface water sample (floating white specks) and put them under my microscope. They seemed to be unhatched pods. Really weird looking as I could see them through the egg while they stroked their little legs.
I don't see any more pods on my plexi since the crash.
Why would the float all of a sudden. Maybe a coincidence?

I'm going to try and find the ammonia sea chem test today.
All the livestock seems fine in the bucket.

Thx, Lou.

IDK, I'm kinda confused.
 
Just my 2 cents, don't touch the substrate. I vacuumed the sand once and woke up at 4 am to half my stock dead. Huge spike in ammonia. After a water change and new filters, there is no way the ammonia spiked that high within a couple of hours unless when u vacuumed u released a large amount of the bacteria in the sand into the water column. I think that was your culprit.
 
Seachem prime and stability made my first cycle completely painless. I naively had a few small inverts in there before the cycle even started. Not one died, though I felt bad and would never do that again. Good luck and sympathies for the crash.
 
Im thinking there could have been some accidental contamination during your maintenance routine - which could have trigged die off.

However, one would suspect your substrate cleaning could have sent it into a tailspin, but to have these things happen so quickly is also quite odd, but it is a ~20g so it could be.

How about your heater, did it get hot and cook your tank?

Lastly, Be absolutely careful of your surroundings, what you do, where you place things, and how you are incorporating other elements during this routine. Some small things that one would overlook - washing your hands, lotion, cleaning your house can lead to some strange behavior in water conditions. you'd be surprised what that small tank can consume out of the air and what little of a chemical can do to even a mature tank - let a lone one that is quite young.
 
Well that was a surprise. (Ammonia spike).
Everything is good again, threw the inverts back in + 2 turbo to clean up my rock. but I'm waiting a few more days before putting my fish back in.
They seem happy in the bucket. The bigger one took a nip at while I was doing maintenance. Suckers have sharp little teeth. lol
Ammonia is .05, nitrite 0, nitrate 5.0, PO <.25, ph 7.8.

Got my 3 in one skimmer (surface skim, mid skim, GFO reactor) done but still needs some tweaks. Pulling all kinds of gunk out.

I'm still puzzled over that crash. I think I'm going to rule, cleaning too much at one time. Plus stirring up the sand. :/
I'm just glad I caught it when I did.
Thanks for the advice.
 

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