New tank - what is wrong??

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dswolcott

New member
Hey guys,

Pretty new to this but appreciate all the posts out there to help with the learning. Had a 35g hex for 4wks and was successful in cycling, and adding livestock - fish, snails, crabs, and some beginner soft corals. Made the typical newbie mistake and went too small so bought a Reefer 350 and went big ;-)

Transitioned fish (2clowns, 2 damsels, mandarin), inverts, corals and live rock to new tank after reading many threads about process but seemed ok. But then the corals and snails did not make it. I am now 7weeks into the new tank and have tried to add some more clean up crew and a green star polyp (hardy, easy), blue banded shrimp twice at 4weeks and at 6weeks and nothing made it except hermit crabs. I also noticed that all of the life on the live rock (70lbs) has pretty much died off. I did however add a tang and some chromis which have been doing well, but cannot figure out why we can't keep snails, shrimp or starter corals alive??? Is it just that the tank is new and we need to be patient or are we doing something wrong?
Here are the stats:

Temperature: 79°F
Specific Gravity: 1.025 (using refractometer & is accurate)
PH: 8.0
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nirate: 0
Phosphate: .37
CA: 479ppm
Alkalinity: 10.9 dkh
Magnesium: 1250
Flow: 2 x MP40s
Lights: 3 x Prime HDs (same lights from old tank and some distance)

- have been doing 10% water changes weekly
- starting to see coraline growth now

Appreciate any thoughts!
Dave
 
Your ALK looks a little high (should be 8-9 ish range, people keep it at different levels for personal preference). Mag also looks a little low - should be 1300ish.

Snails dying - maybe there isn't enough to eat since it's newish? Hard to say for sure, maybe your hermits are killing them off if there isn't enough food?

Shrimp can take changes in salinity pretty hard (I added some peppermint shrimp too quickly once and they all died), so maybe your acclimation when purchasing is too fast from LFS salinity to your tank salinity?
 
Thanks for the input. Will work on ALK and Mag as tank is evolving. Waiting for things to settle a bit before I start dosing or adding a reactor.

We did acclimate slow and with the drip process, albeit there are lots of opinions on this topic.. but have seen that snails can be sensitive to salinity so that could be it. In the first tank the green star was added early and did great so frustrating to see this attempt just shrivel up 6wks in.
 
I also noticed that you have a Mandy, these are awesome fish to look at but from all I've read need a mature tank to graze, as they are slow eaters and will not compete well with fast eaters. their digestive systems are designed for all day picking at copepod populations. These populations can be enhanced by stocking copepods, having a robust sump refugium and tranfering rock from sump to display tank and various other methods. Do your Mandy a favor and look up what it needs to stay happy in your tank. And welcome to a rewarding hobby :)
 
yep, thx for the Mandy input. This was another one of those beginner mistakes but we have been building out the refugium for him.
 
When you upgraded, did you increase the amount of rock? If so, dry or live? Did you re-use sand or get new? If new, live or dry sand? If re-used, did you rinse out first?
 
I think you are onto something cymonous... we did a bunch of research on tank upgrades and had a plan in place. We needed to leverage the existing live rock and water from the old tank for the new one, but maybe when we added the new live rock and live sand on top of it there was a new cycle? We were testing and didn't see any spikes but did see a diatom bloom for about a week. But now we are 7wks past that so it seems things should be stable to at least add some inverts/easy corals??
 
How long after you added the new 35lbs of LR did you add the inverts? Adding that much LR at once could have caused an ammonia spike. What are you using for substrate? Where did the new LR come from?

Seems as if something may be killing them off or water parameters are off. Maybe take your water to LFS and have them double check the tests.

Sent from my SM-G930W8 using Tapatalk
 
the second batch of LR was added 1 week after starting the new tank. It was cycled at the LFS. Using Live Sand for substrate. But have had this issue with snails & corals when adding at 6wks in and 8wks in.

Also, I just had LFS test the water. Phosphates are a little high so setting up refugium and GFO for this, but it is not the one mysterious issue. Have sent full water spectrum analysis to Triton for examining. Continues to be very strange and no one can seem to diagnose...
 
I'm willing to bet you had a big cycle. If you weren't testing there is no way to know for sure. I'm gonna go from a 55 to 90 soon so I'll keep an eye on this thread for info.
 
Wanted to provide an update for all and hopefully help out someone else for the future. My LFS recommended a full Triton test which identified I had copper and heavy metals in the tank that was caused from a brass fitting on the return...ugh! So that was the issue

Now working through mitigation with polyfilter and cuprasorb but may end up taking it down and starting again from scratch... what a brutal $1 mistake!!
 
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