Rotten Eggs ???

M

mwilbur1084

New member
I have had my tank set up for a year and recently have had problems keeping anything I added new alive in the tank. I have had 7 damsels and a yellow tang in the tank from day one they all seem to be very healthy. Can they grow immune to whatever is going wrong with the water?

My sump is an old 120 gal tank in the basement with a has a 4 inch deep DSB I have a 140 gal tank upstairs for the show tank with 140lbs of live rock that has grow a nice coating of green and red coralline algae . The pair of Iwaki MD70's push tons of water up the 8 feet of head for lots of flow The 900 W outer orbit lights the show tank up extremely well. I have a reeflo 250 skimmer and a geo calc reactor that keep all of my water parameters just about perfect. all measured water parameters are well with in normal ranges ph 8.2 SG 1.025 CA 400 ALk 9.9 Ma 1250 NH3/4 < .1 NO2~ 0 NO3 ~0

I cant keep anything new that I add to the tank alive, plants, inverts, corals, and fish, everything dies in 2-3 days.

I started doing aggressive 20% weekly water changes and vacuuming deep into the DSB in the sump and found the siphoned water had strong sulphur smell. This smell is starting to diminish with each water change vacuum siphon cycle but is it to late for the tank ? Should I just shut it down and remove all of the sand in the sump and start over with a new sand bed ?

Any advice would be very welcome
 
stirring up the sand bed cant help especially if its a year old are you running carbon that should get rid of the smell.
 
I agree but I’m not sure what to do next

a side note the water is perfect no smell and gin clear I only notice the sulphur smell when I siphon deep in the sand bed from what I’ve read this sulphur smell is never good but no one gives any advise as to how to resolve this situation

thanks for your reply
 
By siphoning you may be releasing toxins into the tank..from what I have read you are only supposed to stir or clean the top layer. If you go too deep you can release a build up of sulfer..might want to look into that, sulfer dioxide.
 
Hopefully someone else will chime in, but I don't think you want to go deep into your sand bed. You only want to vaccumn the top of it. Your releasing all the nasty stuff trapped in there. I upgraded from a 55 to 90, and talked to the people at Salty. Who said I really wouldn't want to use the old sand, except only to seed the new sand. I would stop stirring up the sand, and keep doing the water changes.
 
Definitely hydrogen sulfide, which forms in anoxic pockets in the sandbed. Although I concur with the comments about vacuuming the sandbed as these pockets were obviously disturbed. HS dissipates rather quickly when exposed to O2. This may be a symptom but probably not the problem.

Based on your description, it looks like the only flow is via the return pumps. Do you have any other flow internal to the tank?
 
HI Kevin

How goes the lake in the back yard ?



Yes The only flow is the two Iwaki MD70's returns but the show tank is bare bottom and the tank has a ton of flow as the returns are positioned one at each end and pointed to create a circular motion in the tank I am only using RO so could be letting some chemical in from the water supply that the old fish have grown immune too but the new stuff cant tolerate

really stumped on this as I have tried every test kit known to man and cant find anything out of the normal range so any suggestions would be welcome
 
Depnding on what your ultimate goals are, I would still argue that there is not enough flow in the main display. With no head loss at all, you are turning the tank over ~20x per hr. Once you factor in the the loss, this rate decreases significantly. Still probably not the root cause, but definitely something to consider.

Personally I would do the following:

1.) DEFINITELY add DI to your RO.

2.) Once that is done, do aggressive water changes for the next few weeks.

3.) I would consider removing the remote DSB. It sounds like there are issues here. Personally I would take it out and see if that changes anything. It can always be replaced at a later date.
 
So more flow is in order


asuming I can get Obama to approve a marine tank line item like all the other stupid goverment spending would a pair of the Vortech pumps do the job? I really like the fact that I can installl them with no power lines running into the show tank.

Do you think one at each end of the tank would do the job they claim to be able to do 3000 gph ea but im sure thats only on the dark side of the moon on Tuesday mornings

Is the wireless controller worth the extra cash or would you suggest just running the pumps independantly ?


DO you think it would be safe to vacume out the DSB in stages during my water chages was thinking the shop vac might just do the trick and should minimse stiring up to much of the bio hazard that might be lurking below the surface



Thanks in Advance
 
the smell is hydrogen sulfide from bacteria going anerobic. If you turn off your pumps and agressively stir the DSB in the sump you will release the sulfide and populate the area with arobic bacteria. Then as maintenance, stir the DSB ocassionally. Gravle vacing will do the same thing, just take longer. If your getting a ton of "stuff" out when you GV, I'd just keep doing it, rather than stirring up the whole DSB.
 
For additional flow do you think pair of the mp40W will do the job on the 140 gal show tank? the only complaint I could find online was the pumps kick up to much sand but I have a bare bottom so thats not a problem for me

ANy other concerns with them ?
 
I think they would give you plenty of flow. Personally, I had some quality issues with the gen 1 pumps. However, I hear the new ones are more reliable.
 
Thanks Kevin

next time your in the area give me a ring and first couple of rounds are on me we can call it a consulting fee (Smile)
 
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