Wit's End

[SkiFletch]

OK, about to loose it here and start breaking things, including every piece of hardware I own. Long story short, I'm running 3 tanks right now amidst my attempts to deal with an aggressive fish, AND kill aiptasia. I have the 65g display with 20g sump upstairs. And in the basement, a small 10g with a powerhead and a heater which is my aiptasia killing tank, along with a rubbermaid trough with MOST of my rocks, some of my corals, a Hydor 3, Mag 7, heater, CPR skimmer, and my old twin 175watt halides hanging over it.

I've been taking rocks from the DT, burning aiptasia in the 10g holding tank in the basement, and once the rocks are apitasia-free, transferring them to the trough. I've simultaneously added 3 fish to the trough, one coral beauty, and a pair of Randy's tank-bred clowns. Last week, one up and vanished like a fart in the wind, so I went and got him a replacement brother/sister. Today I go down to feed, and the CB is dead, both clowns are missing, and there are dead copepod carcasses everywhere. Corals don't look happy either. Acans over-puffy, palythoa retracted, duncan retracted, and war-coral looks limp and shriveled. Ironically, my medium sized Derasa clam is happy (as a clam? ). Current water stats are:

Salinity 1.025 (and yes, I just verified it's cal with a cal solution)
pH 8.2
Temp 78
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 0
calc 430
alk 11dkH

The chemistry checks out fine, but something is not right in there... I've just started a fresh carbon run. I'm using the SAME salt upstairs as down, same RO water (TDS = 1), same food, and the test kits all say similar stats between the two tanks, so I can't imagine I have a failed kit. I'm going to bring a sample to ARC tomorrow for a sanity check, but I'm looking for any other ideas. I have been dosing a LITTLE carbon to the trough, but I've been doing that upstairs too. The trough is open-topped, and there's plenty of surface agitation, egg-crate covers it. Please tell me I'm missing something?

 

[teamdulski]

Carbon dosing reduced the amount of available O2 to a critical level. That is my guess.

 

[NirvanaFan]

Carbon dosing reduced the amount of available O2 to a critical level. That is my guess.

O2 depletion would be my first guess too.

 

[SkiFletch]

But how? The tank's got a skimmer running in it, along with more surface agitation than I could get. I dose the carbon upstairs too with less surface agitation and everything up there is fine. Edit: there's a hood upstairs too with little airflow... No problems there, lot's downstairs.... Doesn't add up

 

[Randrew215]

What do you mean when you say burn? Like with a laser, a torch, or chemically? Is it possible that whatever heat/chemical you are using to burn aiptasia is creating molecules/compounds harmful to your fish when you transer those rocks to the trough? Just throwing another line of thinking out there.

 

[Randrew215]

Also, I find it suspect that ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite are zero with a pair of presumably dead clownfish in the trough. What do you think?

 

[SkiFletch]

Good thoughts Randrew. I'm burning them with fire, a butane soldering torch to be exact. Pinpoint destruction. The rocks stay in the 10g for a while before transfer to the trough and I do a full water change on the 10g every time before I transfer to the trough.

Pair of clownfish and a coral beauty. I'm not really surprised that nitrogen is zero as there is a LOT of rock in the tank right now, probably 40lbs at least, and the carbon dosing kicked the nitrate down from 20 or so a month to 0 not too long after. FWIW since the tank has/had a low bioload I only dosed about a 1/4 oz per day of vodka. Very small amount on a trough with probably 60gal of water

Edit, in addition to the copepods, every tubeworm, bristle worm, and even a pistol shrimp I didn't know I had are dead

 

[josepha]

Hey Fletch,
It sounds like something toxic got into the tank, something you arent testing for perhaps: Metal, aerosol spray, something chemically bad is poisoning the water for everything to be dead like that. All you can do at this point in my opinion is do a 100% water change. JMHO

 

[SkiFletch]

Yeah, I'm mixing a full tank of water as we speak. Would love to know what got in it

 

[tmz]

I only dosed about a 1/4 oz per day of vodka. Very small amount on a trough with probably 60gal of water

.25 oz is roughly 7.4 ml which is more than double what I dose routinely,ie 34 ml vodka equivalents for 600 gallons.A bacterial bloom with O2 depletion is a strong possibility,imo.Die off in the rock may have bumped up organics too. Sometimes new plastic containers have residual plasticizers,etc. from manufacturing processes which can be harmful. I always wipe them down with vinegar and the n rinse them before use to takes care of anything sticking on them.

I'd stop dosing for a while and run some gac and some cuprisorb or poly filter to deal with any metals that may have been freed up from the heat or the trough.

Sorry for your loses.

Tom

 

[SkiFletch]

Thanks for the sanity check Tom, perhaps the 1/4 oz was too much... The rubbermaid is well used so I doubt there was any residual chemical funny business from that, and things were going fine in the tank.

I may have stumbled upon a portion of the problem by accident. Happened to be in the basement in socks instead of the usual shoes and stuck my hand in the tank while standing in water and got a nice tingly in the fingers... Broke out the DVM to find a stray 60VAC with respect to ground. Turns out the Hydor3 is more old and less trusty than I thought. Perhaps then we have a combination of factors, stray voltage causing stress to where even some O2 depletion was enough. Still running GAC, prepping the 100% water change, and doing the sanity check at ARC for chemistry's sake. Hoping the corals recover.

 

[josepha]

Polyfilter

Polyfilter

I'd stop dosing for a while and run some gac and some cuprisorb or poly filter to deal with any metals that may have been freed up from the heat or the trough.
Tom

Thanks for the reminder Tom, I used to run Polyfilter pads religiously as a saftey net/precaution way back when. Got away from it over the years, got raptured with Rowaphos and Biopellets and forgot about the old faithful. Seemed to forgive a lot of my sins back then... and probably will agian.

 

[tmz]

Don't want to over endorse poly pad or other metal adsorbers. So to be clear, whether or not poly pads are needed as a preventative is debatable.
They claim to maintain copper at 30ppb for example which is still high for free copper but they do lower it if it is above that level. As a treatment for water with detectable levels of free copper or other metals they are clearly useful. I use some and some cuprisorb regularly . I'm honestly not sure if it's needed but take a little comfort from the thought of a safety net .
Cu and other free metals are deadly to inverts including corals and mollusks even in undetectable amounts in the lower parts per billion range range. Fish tolerate higher amounts.
There is an excess of heavy metals in reef tanks from food ,supplements etc. Fortunately 99% of it is bound to organics. , encapsulated and essentially non toxic in that form. Free copper gets an organic coat after a while in a tank with organics in it.More good news, many of the organics involved in binding metals are refractory( resistive to bacterial breakdown as most of the energy in them has been used up by bacteria already). A shift in localized ph could cause some release. Heat on and in the rock could as it changes the calcium carbonate to calcium oxide and breaks up organic molecules via oxidation could cause some enhanced toxicity . Seems like lot's of unknown chemistry and biology would occur from burning live rock for example. So some form of toxin may be in play.

 

[SkiFletch]

An update: Sanity check at ARC confirmed, my kits/refractometer are in fact functioning as thought. Returned home today from work to see a tank with crystal clear water, all corals open/happy and a cup full of skimmate. Lesson learned, don't push the envelope without trusty equipment... Gonna head down and do that 100% waterchange now for giggles, just in case there are any heavy metals in there and vacuum up all the rest of the pod/worm carcasses as well. Man, I had some BIG ones too... Oh well, at least the DT still has some leftover to rebuild the populations. I didn't kill them ALL.

Thanks for all the brainstorming and the reality check. Will proceed slowly for now. Oh, and I took my frustrations out on the Hydor... There's always uses for an 8lb sledge