Trouble with water...

barclayrl

barclayrl

Premium Member
Posted in the Water Chemistry forum as well:

I have had ongoing issues with water quality in my system for a long time, I mostly have SPS and Had the system running really well for about a year and then poof, everything started going downhill.... All my parameters seem fine... (System is 3 years old.)

Nitrate <10
Amm. 0
Calcium 400
MG 1200-1300
PH 8.0
Alk 8-9 (little low)

My systems consists of a 120 upstairs and a 100G sump downstars… The display recently had the DSB removed (Drained most of the display water into storage bins, cleaned the tank all out, and put the water back in so the mixed up sand never touched the system water, topped off with new saltwater) Been trying to do 40G water changes for a few weeks now with no luck..

Someone suggested my system may have low Oxygen, could that be it? The skimmer is sucking in basement air.. and it is stale air.. I have always thought that could play a part..

I have had some serious pump failures with calcium buildup lately as well.... (the mag 18, deltec skimmer eihem 1260, an both tunze 6100 powerheads...

Most of my fish have died and most corals as well, some are holding on by a thread.. trying to save them but not having any luck, I have tried to use some Kalk to bring up the PH and that is when the pumps started freezing....

I have a kalk reactor and geo calcium reactor setup but the kalk is off now... only the calcium reactor is on, dripping slowly.

I still have some algae in the system, (Nitrates may actually be higher than 10.)

Any help would be great, thanks for reading!!
Sorry about the jumbled post…
 
just rinsed it out and refilled it, lighly wiped out the overflows..

Just tried to get a clean slate...
 
what do you mean by "water quality issues"???

Are you losing love stock?

What are your symptoms?

Your description says you removed sand bed and parameters are now good...

What is everything negative thats happened?

Do you have a designated fish room in basement?

Whats stored near sump?

Anyone have access to sump other than you? ie...kids/pets/kids friends?

I need more info...
 
Just saw lost livestock portion. My apoligies. Not sure how I missed that. My eyes skipped a whole paragraph. Could you answer the other questions?

sry for mix up.
 
Even with a pump failure I find it hard to believe you would have issues with oxygen. Unless they all failed at once and you were away for a long time. The turbulence of the water falling from aquarium on first floor to basement should create enough oxygen exchange on its own. Do you dose vodka. If you were dosing vodka that would exacerbate any oxygen loss issues many time over. Especially if your skimmer pump went shortly after a vodka dosing. If you do dose vodka have you recently raised your dose???
 
How long since the "POOF" happened? Did everything die at once or was it one the a few weeks later another and so on and so on?
 
Did this all occur after you removed the sand. If so it is most likely do to you removing all of that bio-filter. That was a massive part of your tanks natural filtration and to be removed in 1 shot like that can do some serious damage. Ammonia spikes and Nitrite spikes most likely happened. If I were you I would hook up a remote deep sand bed in a bucket as soon as you can. And I would use as much live sand as you can.


I posted this in the chemistry forum also. Just so you know if you wanted to continue in that room also. There are some very knowledgeable people in there. You just don't get as quick a response in there sometimes.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15289394#post15289394 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Shane Hoffman
what do you mean by "water quality issues"???

Are you losing love stock?

What are your symptoms?

Your description says you removed sand bed and parameters are now good...

What is everything negative thats happened?

Do you have a designated fish room in basement?

Whats stored near sump?

Anyone have access to sump other than you? ie...kids/pets/kids friends?

I need more info...
Click to expand...

Are you losing love stock? = Yes

What are your symptoms? = Bleaching corals, fishs died, snails died coraline gone...

Your description says you removed sand bed and parameters are now good... = They were ok before but i removed my sand bed when it basically turned to very large chunks of sand. kind of like mixing concrete...

What is everything negative thats happened? = Posted above sand bed turned to stone, coral problems, fish died, snails died, plenty of algae

Do you have a designated fish room in basement? Yes dedicated room

Whats stored near sump? = reef equipment mostly, furnace 10ft away (shot down for summer), water heater 10ft away, oil tank for furnace 5ft away.

Anyone have access to sump other than you? ie...kids/pets/kids friends? kids dont touch it, just me...
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15289434#post15289434 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Shane Hoffman
Even with a pump failure I find it hard to believe you would have issues with oxygen. Unless they all failed at once and you were away for a long time. The turbulence of the water falling from aquarium on first floor to basement should create enough oxygen exchange on its own. Do you dose vodka. If you were dosing vodka that would exacerbate any oxygen loss issues many time over. Especially if your skimmer pump went shortly after a vodka dosing. If you do dose vodka have you recently raised your dose???
Click to expand...

Never dosed vodka.. THought about doing that, but never did..

Pumps did not fail at once..
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15289453#post15289453 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by evsalty
How long since the "POOF" happened? Did everything die at once or was it one the a few weeks later another and so on and so on?
Click to expand...

Happened over a 1 month span, before the sandbed was removed..
 
Ther is definately some credence to what luther said. However I would assume you were monitoring your nitrates and amonia after sand bed removal. If not, I would feel very certain thats the case. No matter how hard the sand bed was it was still porus. That was probably atleast 50 to 60 percent of your biological filtration (nitrite/amonia remover)......if you did monitor your perameters constantly and they were ok.......after that major change we have some more thinking to do. If you didnt monitor your perameters afterwards luther is spot on with installing a remote sand bed ASAP.......
 
corals (SPS) started to bleach, sanbed bloomed with tons of algae, brown + cyano, roskwork was covered even started covering the sps..
 
Ok so the sandbed was removed AFTER the start of the problems in an effort to possibly fix the issues is that correct?

When did you start loosing fish? Before or after SB removal?

Do you run any phosban or something of the sort? Do you test for phosphates?

High Phosphates and/or Nitrates most likely caused the initial problems, well one of them had to have caused the algae outbreak.
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15292748#post15292748 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by TomRep
Didnt see it above but have have missed it, what test kits are you using?
tom
Click to expand...

Salifert, Lamonte, and some API as backups..
 
<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15292773#post15292773 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by evsalty
Ok so the sandbed was removed AFTER the start of the problems in an effort to possibly fix the issues is that correct?

When did you start loosing fish? Before or after SB removal?

Do you run any phosban or something of the sort? Do you test for phosphates?

High Phosphates and/or Nitrates most likely caused the initial problems, well one of them had to have caused the algae outbreak.
Click to expand...

Sandbed removed to fix problems

Lost fish before sandbed removal - Still have a maroon clown alive and a green chromis.

Running GFO for a few years, seemed to do nothing, quit using it a week ago, (tired of wasting money on it with no results)tested for phosphates, nothing registers (Selifert) - Also quit using carbon a few weeks ago (will resume if needed to clear water etc)
 
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