I'm back, but with lots of bad news!
The past month has been hell for my tank and myself! The colors were doing good and then they started turning brown. The PE decreased and the growth became slower. All my parameters were stable and consistent.
My yellow tang started to have something like seizures. I thought it died, but after 15mins he started to swim again. Few days later my cleaner shrimp disappeared. I had it for a long time and didn't have any problems at all. Then my favorite fish, the starry blenny, died. He was so healthy and happy! When I found him he was swollen and one of his eyes had popped out. Around the same week my fire shrimp disappeared too. I was so upset and frustrated bc I wasn't doing drastic changes to the tank and I normally don't put stress on my fish.
One day, trying to find out the problem of my crash, I found that the ph dropped to 7.4 from 7.9 (my normal ph). I opened the windows and did all I could for the tank to get back the O2 needed. It went up to 8!!! Weird!!! I closed the windows and in less than a hour the ph dropped drastically to 7.6.
The next day, I went to my LFS and bought the Zeovit balance, a ph buffer. I started dosing my tank and at the same time figuring out the problem. I blame not having enough O2 bc it is cold and the a/c was turned off and the house is lacking air movement. Every time I was off work I opened the windows to bring the ph up as much as I could. I was dosing the tank A LOT anyways to keep the ph in control. It was strange because years before I never had this situation, but I couldn't found the problem behind all this.
One day I was off from work, and I was having my breakfast. While I was eating I was looking at the tank and saw my clownfish not swimming normally. I grabbed a stick that I made and move him around and he started to swim normally again. Not even 1 min and he did the same thing. I move him again and everything went back to "normal" until the female started to do the same thing!!! Ooohhh sh&$!! My yellow tang started to swim really fast with seizures. My blue tang was doing the same thing and my clowns swimming slow.
Not knowing what to do I started to move my fish side to side and then I smell something burning. My first thought was the thermostat. I tried to turn it off from my surge protector and it wasn't responding. I unplugged it and this is what I found...
<a href="http://s1014.photobucket.com/user/omie11/media/reef%20central/F3EFD45B-B352-4CEB-AF92-35BD9B2003E2.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1014.photobucket.com/albums/af269/omie11/reef%20central/F3EFD45B-B352-4CEB-AF92-35BD9B2003E2.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo F3EFD45B-B352-4CEB-AF92-35BD9B2003E2.jpg"/></a>
My thermostat exploded and it was electrocuting my fish. After I removed the broken glass and the residual of the thermostat from the tank the clowns started to swim better, but my 2 tangs were laying on the sand breathing heavily. I did a water change right away and spent over two hrs trying to make my tangs swim again.
I went to the store and bought an expensive thermostat that doesn't break and went back to the house and did another water change. 7hrs after the incident, the tangs were swimming. All corals were fine, but some of them started to turn white bc of stress with the w/c. The next day my yellow tang died. He looked almost the same way as my starry Blenny. It's frustrating, but it could be worse.
Right now I'm on vacation, hoping that the tank is stable. My mother-in-law is taking care of it and so far so good! My ph stays over 8 and the fish are happy.
***I need some answers!!!***
A broken/cracked thermostat that is transporting electricity in to the tank can decrease the ph of the water??? After I removed it, my ph has been over 8 and I'm not dosing anything at all, (as far as balance).
