Tank devastated by paly toxins (and my stupidity)

[scolley]

I've had my reef a little over two years now. But my mistake a couple of weeks ago was a true newbie mistake. So I'm posting on this forum so people can learn from my mistake.


Here's my little reef two weeks and a day ago.

And here it is one day later.

It all started because wanted to remove a a weed-like brown paly that was beginning to take over my tank. You can see it near the top left. 3 or 4 polyps quickly became a monster coral that smothered many nice corals and was spreading on to other rocks. It had to go. It's the HOW of making it go that did so much damage to my tank.

One night I took out the rock that the paly was on, scraped and cut off all of the paly that I could, rinsed the rock, and put it back in the tank. But when I did, not only did I find that I had not gotten quite all of the paly, but some of that nasty "œpaly juice" went back in the tank with it! It didn't look like that much though. I've seen more crap floating around when I p*ssed off a Green Slimer or touched the underside of a monti cap. So I was truly taken by surprise when I saw my tank the next morning. Algal bloom and death everywhere.

Overnight deaths included:

• All birdsnest SPS
• All Montipora and monti cap
• All trumpets
• All brittle stars
• All snails
• All peppermint shrimp
• All dendros
• My only chalice
• Most asterina stars
• Some porcelain crabs
• Longspine urchin
• And apparently all pods and bristleworms (that I can see)

Slow deaths "“ taking a few days "“ included:

• Most acans
• Most heads of my hammer and frogspawn

And damage "“ but apparently recoverable - was done to:

• The remaining acans
• Serpent star
• Duncans
• Blastos
• Open brain
• A chalice-like coral, Lithophyllon sp.
• A superman mushroom

Thankfully a few things seemed unaffected:

• Fish
• Hermits
• Zoas
• Blood Red, Cleaner and Sexy shrimp
• Zoas
• Ricordia
• Trach
• GSP
• Small leather
• Maxima clam
• And (amazingly!) a single neon green SPS

Now it's quite clear to me that I should have just pulled that rock with the palys on it, and left it out. It will take me 18-24 months to rebuild from the damage done due to my foolishness caused by my not wanting to lose a nice live rock.

I'm passing that little tidbit along to the community. Hopefully documenting the damage injured palys can do, and possibly helping some of you avoid my mistake.


Happy Reefing.

 

[Crazy fish eye]

Man that sucks. Hope you can rebuild better than before. Was a nice tank.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

keep the faith!

keep the faith!

your aquarium was nice but it will be nicer after this!

Thanks for sharing this information.

 

[SeabassSA]

Sh$t man, your tank was looking nice and mature, sorry about that, makes my worried about just what the possibilities are about what can go wrong with a tank. Best of luck getting it back up and in pristine condition. You can do it. Keep me posted on the progress.

 

[iamwrasseman]

wow , that suks man thanks for sharing .

 

[Sheol]

Brings back many BAD memories of my 36 Reef's meltdown last year (January 2010), because I got complacent after 5 years and ignored a warning sign. A heater malfunction took 90% of my corals and 50% of my fish.
I hate tank crashes!
Rebuild it, BETTER, seems the only answer..

Regards,
Matthew

 

[scolley]

Thanks very much folks for the kind words. Really.

Yet my key motivation for sharing and documenting was to help others not screw up as I did. I should post some later pics, just so you can see the skeletons of what had been some really nice corals. Maybe some before/after just for effect. It's ugly.

When it happened I was gut sick. I did do a 95% water change as quickly as possible, along with dramatically increasing the volume of fresh carbon in my sump to get the toxins out. That all happened within 18 hours of the offending event. But many things kept on a slow progress to death.

It was days before I could bring myself to really look at my tank - to take stock of how bad it really was. However, there IS a bright side to this...


I went whole hog into this little tank as my first reef learning experience, before I upgraded my 180g to reef later. So I threw a little of everything into this tank, because I wanted to try it all. Just for the experience before the upgrade.

But then my ability to upgrade the 180 fell through. My wife loves it the way it is now, and won't let me change it. So I found my self stuck with my little "training wheels" tank long term. And due to the learning experience that it was, it was not laid out as well as could be. And the corals were not particularly compatible.

So this is my chance - as Sheol said - to rebuild BETTER. And I will. Count on it.

But please do heed my lesson, and DO NOT put injured palys in your tank. If you have to remove them... remove them AND the rock work that they occupy. Or better yet, maybe not mess with palys at all.

 

[JoeRonda]

That is crazy because I did the same thing! I had a brown button polyp that was getting way too space hungry and took out the rock cut off all of it only to put the rock back in the tank and find a slime coming off where I did the "surgery". I even tied the button colony to a piece of rubble rock after I cut it off of the big rock. I can't believe my tank didn't experience any ill effects from the paly toxin. I wonder what saved my tank?

 

[sjwitt]

Steve,
VERY sorry for your loss... that is heartbreaking but I'm glad you see this as an opportunity. Thank you for the posting, this is valuable information. Also, I've read that Paly toxins are bad news for PEOPLE to the point of some going to the ER. So, added advise ... If you're going to mess with these coral BE CAREFUL and wear gloves.

 

[scolley]

Thanks. And I WAS wearing very thick gloves (the big up to the shoulder variety!), and eye protection. Great point. I knew it could be very nasty stuff. But clearly did not extend that same level of caution to my tank.

Honestly I thought there was some value in classifying the effects this had too. That's why I broke it out as I did. In a morbid why, some of effects were fascinating:

1. Why did I have one SPS (in the middle of the others) that remained unscathed?
2. How did my serpent star survive when it killed hundreds of brittles? And that is a SAD looking star. On each leg about two thirds of the legs are gone, as if the thinner portions of the legs were eaten up. Strange. And sad to see.
3. Why did most of acans go into massive, fast RTN, where one or to others started to RTN (on the side water flow was coming from), and then stop? Maybe the ones in more flow took it worse.
4. Clearly stony corals too the worst of it. Softies less so, with things like palys (zoas) not caring at all.

The big PITA in the aftermath is stabilizing the tank. With all that death and decay in the tank, I've got algae in abundance where previously I had none. I run an alge turf scrubber that would normally take care of that. But in my panic to drain and replace the bad water I got salt water on it and toasted the LED array that runs it. It's rebuilt now, but not before I got algae everywhere.

I made the decision to do normal, daily small water changes, and continue to run abundant carbon. It's too expensive to do many separate water changes as things rot. So I deliberately let things rot in the tank for two weeks. Today's just over two week's later. I've got a full tank's worth of new water ready to go. So I'll rip out all the dead stuff that I can and replace a good 95% of the water. And I've got more pods and mini-brittle stars coming in next week.

That should help get the tank started on the road to recovery.

 

[Dono]

Do you run a carbon reactor or anything of the sort? If I do any work on my softies in my tank, I take a Koralia 3 I have laying around here and give the coral a quick blow toards my overflow, then my carbon reactor does a pretty good job with the rest.

 

[scolley]

Do you run a carbon reactor or anything of the sort?

Great question... and likely a part of my problem.

I do not run a carbon reactor. I do keep a small amount in my sump in bags, and I suspect it's why I've been able to keep a small amount of softies in with SPS. But unlike a reactor, it will not pull things out of the water quickly.

And possibly worse, I have a pretty light skimmer; a Tunze 9002. I've been really happy with it because it does not over skim. Prior to this event I had a nice diverse population of critters in this tank, and I suspected the 9002's relatively mild skimming helped. But it was the last thing I needed when I had a bunch of crap in my tank.

And finally, I made another terrible mistake. I had been trying to boost my pod population - possibly to get a mandarin. So I was doing nightly feedings of phyto and zooplankton. And to keep that in the water column, my skimmer turns off for six hours every night. So when I put the nasty rock back in the tank, I was not running my skimmer at all. Or for the next 3-4 hours.

So I guess in retrospect, this might not have so bad for some people. A carbon reactor and heavy skimming might help. But after what I've seen... I honestly would think twice before I put a rock with injured paly juice back in my tank.

 

[Sport507]

So sorry, that is a beautiful tank. I just posted a Poll in this forum on Diatom filters. This is a prime example where having one would have most likely save it without even doing a water change.

 

[rjinct]

Steve, extremely saddened to hear about this! I know that your planning, attention to detail, and experience from this will cause version 2.0 of your tank to be better than ever!

RJ

 

[scolley]

This is a prime example where having one would have most likely save it without even doing a water change.

Thanks Sport! That's an interesting assertion. IMO you'd have to have massive turnover on that filter. Would be a good thing to know... but I would not volunteer to try it.

Steve, extremely saddened to hear about this! I know that your planning, attention to detail, and experience from this will cause version 2.0 of your tank to be better than ever!

RJ

Thanks RJ. Practice makes perfect!

 

[TellyFish]

Would Kalk paste kill them safely, or same problem?

Sorry to hear about your losses, I am sure it will be even more beautiful in a short time.

 

[scolley]

Would Kalk paste kill them safely, or same problem?

Sorry to hear about your losses, I am sure it will be even more beautiful in a short time.

Thanks. I considered that. Also considered one of those electrical Aptasia zappers.

But by the time I decided that I had no choice but to take action, there had to be at way more that a hundred polyps, and growing fast. So I figured any method of killing a few polyps at a time had to be killing at least enough so that I was killing more polyps than new ones growing. I figured that would have to be AT LEAST 5-6 polyps a day.

And my fear about that was that stretched out over a long period of time, that would put too much stress on the tank. Not to mention all the rotting flesh in the tank.

Maybe that was the wrong decision. But those were my reasons. If someone else knows - from experience - that it was a bad call, please speak up. It will only help the community.

 

[Sport507]

My deepest apologies Scolley.

I didn’t mean to add insult to injury. Please forgive that not thinking, dumb comment. I’m here to support not insult or harm. Again I’m sorry!

Don’t know what else to say.

 

[ReefPharmer]

I am sorry for your losses. This should be a lesson to all of us. How do you recommend people deal w/ a similar situation? just take the rock out and dry it for a few days? Do the pallies release toxins when they are drying up? Do you wash the rocks afterwards?

 

[scolley]

My deepest apologies Scolley.

No need for that friend! No harm - no foul!

The whole point of posting a failure is to help the community learn from the mistake. And some of that will hopefully be in good suggestions on how that failure might have been avoided. Or not. But worth discussion.

So PLEASE think nothing of it! Your suggestion was/is well worth discussion.