Please forgive me this is going to be a little long but I need help. I am to the point where if I can't figure this out I am ready to give up. I bought a 29 coralife biocube and set it up Jan 1 of this year. I put a 20 lb bag of live sand and a large 15 lb Pukani cured live rock in. I then got a piece of live rock from a local referencing had some zona polyps on it. I added his rock to seed bacteria for the cycle as well as used some water from his tank to start. I immediately removed the bioballs and replaced with a media rack I built from plexiglass and egg crate. In the rack of run filter floss on top, chemipure elite in the middle and replaced the sponge that separates the 2nd and 3rd chamber with a bag of purigen. Chamber 1 has a heater and that's it. I use stock lighting and a wp10 for flow with the wavemaker. That's all I have for equipment.
I have the temp on the heater set to 77. Unfortunately don't have a thermometer or controller. I keep my house at 70. I keep salinity at 1.024. I manually top off. Water is from RO unit that currently does not have a DI and tds reads steady at 5. The DI add-on is set to arrive this week to get that to zero. I have been doing water changes (5 gallon) every 5 days.
Here's my issue. I started by adding two damsels. They were doing awesome. I left them for two weeks with regular testing. Saw the ammonia spike and then waited for it to level. I added two clowns. For a month everything thrived
zoas spread, fish were awesome and active, etc... I started adding frags.
I added a craftsman which quickly died and I attributed it to too early in the tank and I kept moving it dumbly. So I got a duncan and it did pretty well but never really fully opened. I got Rasta zoas 3 heads that were small and would open. I got gsp before the duncan and it never opened. As a note all of these are now in someone else's tank while I try and figure this out.
I got a toadstool leather that would lean over at night. After two days the thing disintegrated. I mean... I came home to nothing but mush on a frag disk. Two days later the corals were looking rough so I moved them to my buddy's tank. Next day... dead clown. Next day... all fish have ich. Next day... dead clown. Next day dead damsel. Last damsel was only thing left and rich was gone (I was treating with rich attack). So I waited a day or two and bought a royal gramma (perhaps unwise). Next day... damsel dead. Next day... gramma dead.
I forgot to mention I have a cuc that consists of 4 astrea snails, peppermint shrimp and two bumblebees snails. As of writing this all snails are fine but haven't seen the shrimp in a few days.
Throughout all of this tests have read fine.
Ammonia never above 0 after the cycle. Same with nitrate.
Phosphate typically right at 0, Maybe .25
I had my buddy test for copper and that showed up 0.
Highest reading I've seen for nitrate since adding chemipure is 10.
I don't have a pH test but he ran it when I took coral over and it was 8.2 if I remember correctly.
As it sits now.... I have dumped a lot of money into a box that holds water a rock and some sand and snails.I have a po'd wife and 5 dead fish and no idea what could possibly be wrong. It's so frustrating because no tests seem off so I have no idea what to fix. At worst I figure the damsels would have lived through these test results.
I don't understand how my snails are still alive while everything seems to die. I don't have a direction and am extremely frustrated and ready to call it quits. I have 25 lbs of dry florida rock coming to increase LR in the tank once it spends some time in there.
Please.... do you have ANY guidance or thoughts?
I have the temp on the heater set to 77. Unfortunately don't have a thermometer or controller. I keep my house at 70. I keep salinity at 1.024. I manually top off. Water is from RO unit that currently does not have a DI and tds reads steady at 5. The DI add-on is set to arrive this week to get that to zero. I have been doing water changes (5 gallon) every 5 days.
Here's my issue. I started by adding two damsels. They were doing awesome. I left them for two weeks with regular testing. Saw the ammonia spike and then waited for it to level. I added two clowns. For a month everything thrived
zoas spread, fish were awesome and active, etc... I started adding frags.
I added a craftsman which quickly died and I attributed it to too early in the tank and I kept moving it dumbly. So I got a duncan and it did pretty well but never really fully opened. I got Rasta zoas 3 heads that were small and would open. I got gsp before the duncan and it never opened. As a note all of these are now in someone else's tank while I try and figure this out.
I got a toadstool leather that would lean over at night. After two days the thing disintegrated. I mean... I came home to nothing but mush on a frag disk. Two days later the corals were looking rough so I moved them to my buddy's tank. Next day... dead clown. Next day... all fish have ich. Next day... dead clown. Next day dead damsel. Last damsel was only thing left and rich was gone (I was treating with rich attack). So I waited a day or two and bought a royal gramma (perhaps unwise). Next day... damsel dead. Next day... gramma dead.
I forgot to mention I have a cuc that consists of 4 astrea snails, peppermint shrimp and two bumblebees snails. As of writing this all snails are fine but haven't seen the shrimp in a few days.
Throughout all of this tests have read fine.
Ammonia never above 0 after the cycle. Same with nitrate.
Phosphate typically right at 0, Maybe .25
I had my buddy test for copper and that showed up 0.
Highest reading I've seen for nitrate since adding chemipure is 10.
I don't have a pH test but he ran it when I took coral over and it was 8.2 if I remember correctly.
As it sits now.... I have dumped a lot of money into a box that holds water a rock and some sand and snails.I have a po'd wife and 5 dead fish and no idea what could possibly be wrong. It's so frustrating because no tests seem off so I have no idea what to fix. At worst I figure the damsels would have lived through these test results.
I don't understand how my snails are still alive while everything seems to die. I don't have a direction and am extremely frustrated and ready to call it quits. I have 25 lbs of dry florida rock coming to increase LR in the tank once it spends some time in there.
Please.... do you have ANY guidance or thoughts?
