Sulfur smell in QT.

[Kurkis493]

I'm curious about this...

I'm QT'n fish some Dispars, Princess Anthias and Blotched Anthias in a 40 breeder.

I am using a brand new HOB filter, cured live rock thriving with coraline and sponges from a vat that I keep going for situations like this.

I also have various broken frag plugs, fluval and seachem media, acro skeletons and leftover zeovit media from my display that I also toss in these systems for extra biological help.

Just to be safe, I also added stability to aid in the increased feedings. I like to feed new fish aggressively when I first get them. I siphon the bottom of the tank every night and do a healthy 20% WC of aged saltwater.

I've QT'n many, many fish and I am at odds right now as to why both of my QT systems have the sulfur smell. While typing this, I just had a princess anthias do cartwheels across my water column and is essentially gone.

I do not want to contribute this to the sulfur smell but it is there for a reason. I used Prime in the water when I mixed it which was days ago and the sulfur smell has since increased...

I'm prep'n new saltwater now (my RO/DI cartridges are brand new) and I've added another capful of stability and a hefty amount of carbon to the system.

I plan on doing a 20 gallon WC for ea 40 gallon tank.

Any ideas what would have caused this problem?

 

[mattcoug]

Prime makes my dirty qt water smell like sulfur, I just do 80-100% water change if it ever gets stinky. I don't notice much sulfur smell in "clean" water that has prime, so maybe prime reacting with ammonia allows the sulfur to off-gas somehow.

 

[Kurkis493]

Hurm, perhaps that it is.

I just did a 75% change on one of the tanks and will probably do 25% on that tank tomorrow and a 75% on the other one when more water is made.

I don't typically use Prime but I was waiting for some new RO/DI cartidges to arrive and used the Prime while I was waiting for my new carbon blocks to arrive.

 

[Newsmyrna80]

A sulfur smell is due to anaerobic activity. Was there a lot of water movement in the vat? I've had this happen in my refugium when there are dead spots under the rocks. If you pick up any of your LR is there a gray area?
Sulfur is bad for the tank/fish (obviously). In your situation it can be remedied by increasing the oxygen in the vat and moving the rocks around.
As for the QT you could remove the rocks or run carbon depending on how bad it is.

 

[julie180]

Prime says right on the label "sulfur odor is normal"

 

[Kurkis493]

Yeah, I moved some rocks around and did a water change and that seemed to help the situation.

I take all of my zeovit stones and random media that I have collected and keep it for biological filtration. This makes it easy to toss if I run into a problem with ich or such...

Alot of it was stacked in a corner and I think when I shuffled it around I started something.

I've sinced removed it and will probably run it in a reactor of some type moving forward to ensure that doesn't happen again.

I did lose a fish during this process and whether or not the two were related, I am unsure.

 

[Deinonych]

prime says right on the label "sulfur odor is normal"

+1

 

[Newsmyrna80]

The sulfur smell from Prime will not increase over days as stated in the original post. Prime has a sulfur smell in the bottle but I've never experienced the water smelling once adding it to the tank.

 

[julie180]

Crazy thought, do you have a drain in the area that might have dried out? Could be sewer gas

 

[Deinonych]

The sulfur smell from Prime will not increase over days as stated in the original post. Prime has a sulfur smell in the bottle but I've never experienced the water smelling once adding it to the tank.

I've had the water smell when there wasn't any/enough ammonia for Prime to react with. Typically notice this during TTM when I'm super paranoid about NH3 buildup.