Guest airframer007 January 20, 2007 January 20, 2007 I have been in the hobby for awhile but sense I have no tanks to compare mine to I have nothing to go off of... And on top of that I have alot of problems with my 40gal bow. dieoffs, perimeters way off, nothing going right lately with this one. I have a fairly successful 75 aggressive although I really dont know I would love to find an experienced person around the Chesapeake Beach area that wouldnt mind coming out and taking a look and give me an idea, Ive left post after post on Saltwaterfish which is what pointed me towards here... Im just about at witts end and well the end of my wallet also and Im about ready to back out... HELP PLEASE !!!!!!
BeltwayBandit January 20, 2007 January 20, 2007 I have been in the hobby for awhile but sense I have no tanks to compare mine to I have nothing to go off of... And on top of that I have alot of problems with my 40gal bow. dieoffs, perimeters way off, nothing going right lately with this one. I have a fairly successful 75 aggressive although I really dont know I would love to find an experienced person around the Chesapeake Beach area that wouldnt mind coming out and taking a look and give me an idea, Ive left post after post on Saltwaterfish which is what pointed me towards here... Im just about at witts end and well the end of my wallet also and Im about ready to back out... HELP PLEASE !!!!!! First off, welcome to WAMAS! If you have some time tomorrow afternoon and are willing to take a road trip we are having our winter meeting in DC tomorrow. If not, tell us some more about your 40 bow that is having problems. You mention that the parameters are way off, what are they? What do you have in the system? What is your lighting? and more importantly what do you want this tank to be? BB
davelin315 January 20, 2007 January 20, 2007 I agree with BB about coming to the meeting, also, lots of problems can be diagnosed by listing the specs of your tank. Here's some good things to start with: Water Source (Tap, Bottled, RO, RO/DI) Salt Used Water Change Schedule Substrate and Type of Substrate (deep sand bed, depth of substrate, age, bare bottom, etc) Biological Filtration (live rock, bio balls, bio-wheel, etc) Mechanical Filtration (protein skimmer, hang on back filter, canister filter, etc) Chemistry (Specific Gravity, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, pH, Phosphates, Alkalinity, Calcium, etc) Temperature Lighting and Lighting Schedule Add Ons to Tank (refugium, sump, UV sterilizer, etc) Inhabitants and Size Feeding Schedule and Type of Food Water Movement (pump type(s), how they are set up) Lots of things to list, but this should give a good idea of what's going on in your tank. For instance, if you have a lot of fish and they get fed a lot with a 4" crushed coral substrate that's been in your tank for 2 years, I would guess that your substrate is causing your problems. So, provide us with as much information as you can and there's some really smart people here who can diagnose without making a house call (and even some that may make the house call!).
Guest airframer007 January 21, 2007 January 21, 2007 I agree with BB about coming to the meeting, also, lots of problems can be diagnosed by listing the specs of your tank. Here's some good things to start with: Water Source (Tap, Bottled, RO, RO/DI) Salt Used Water Change Schedule Substrate and Type of Substrate (deep sand bed, depth of substrate, age, bare bottom, etc) Biological Filtration (live rock, bio balls, bio-wheel, etc) Mechanical Filtration (protein skimmer, hang on back filter, canister filter, etc) Chemistry (Specific Gravity, Ammonia, Nitrite, Nitrate, pH, Phosphates, Alkalinity, Calcium, etc) Temperature Lighting and Lighting Schedule Add Ons to Tank (refugium, sump, UV sterilizer, etc) Inhabitants and Size Feeding Schedule and Type of Food Water Movement (pump type(s), how they are set up) Lots of things to list, but this should give a good idea of what's going on in your tank. For instance, if you have a lot of fish and they get fed a lot with a 4" crushed coral substrate that's been in your tank for 2 years, I would guess that your substrate is causing your problems. So, provide us with as much information as you can and there's some really smart people here who can diagnose without making a house call (and even some that may make the house call!). OK, well heres the breakdown I do use tapwater and I know thats not the best but I havent had the ability to get a RO/DI unit. I use the salt that comes in the blue containers I cant remember the name, I have put it into a tupperware bin since I got it so I could use the container thats why I dont know what it is. My substrate consists of about 1 1/2" of sand, not sure how old it is it was in the tank when I bought it. I have approx. 40 - 50 lbs of live rock. Afluval 403 canister filter ( I messed up at first when I got that filter because I had a 25 gal eclipse tank and stopped running the eclipse filter and put the canister filter on all at the same time EVERYTHING died off. Nothing has been good since then.) parameters Salinity .22 Ammonia 0 PH 8.2 nitrite 0 nitrate 140 - 160, I know its really high but Ive done everything I can to get it down Temperature stays at 79 - 80. lighting is a satellite 65 watt dual actinic with moon led ( I think ) they come on at 7:30am - 9:00 am then again at 6 pm - 11:30pm. I have a Berlin skimmer hanging on the inside seems to work really well. All my fish have died all together probably 15 fish all together, but have had about 10 hermits surviving in here for almost a year. I put a coral banded shrimp in about 2 mo. ago surviving well, along with 5 nos snails all surviving well. A green mushroom along with about 8 small purple polyps. all seem to be working out very well. feeding schedule used to be mysis shrimp at about 8pm every nighty. I have the output from the filter coming in at the top left right next to that is a small powerhead I dont remember how many gph I know when I bought it the lfs said that was plenty enough water movement for my tank but since I started seeing a weird film floating on the top I aimed that powerhead to the top and on the other side I put a real small power head on the other side to agitate the top but didnt work very well to get rid of the film, every once in awhile I run a bubble maker to break up the film that works ok to get rid of the film but as soon as u shut it off it comes right back. To go back in time alittle Ive been in this hobby for almost 3 yrs I had a 150 gal at first and I was very successful with it never had dieoff had a bout of ich and made it through everything seemed to thrive. But I had to downsize due to moving and stuff, so I got a 75 gal and a 25 gal for trade with alittle boot. And the 25 has been running since last Dec with no problems of dieoff my trates have always been off the chart but never had a problem with any of the fish, I didnt like the fitration setup of the eclipse it kept me on my toes to make sure it didnt overflow, so I found a good deal on a used canister screwed up and threw that on and shut the other off everything that had been living for 9 months at the time all died everything, marking it up as a stupid move and a very expensive learning experience I basically started over with a damsel hes been the only thing to survive since the problem, but I kept trying new things finally SUCCESS everything was thriving again it was awesome then 3 wks ago I added a cowfish didnt take long to look like he was covered in ich so I tried to dose the system but just friday everything was dead. My 75 gal is set up as an aggressive running great I dont have any time for it due to it being set up at my house and I am now staying at my gfs house so I have roomates to feed them but no waterchanges for awhile and still everything is running great, I will be able to get that one back on a schedule at the beginning of march we will be getting a house together so I can start taking good care of that one again... But the reasoning for telling u about that is I use tap water for that tank and Ive had a couple of those fish since Feb when I first set that one up... Sorry so long winded but I am alittle excitited that I have people that seem to want to help and I just want you to be able to read this and understand and not have to ask ?s for another month.. Anyway thanks in advance... BTW I would love to start getting involved in things but unsure how to start getting included in things... [quote name='BeltwayBandit' date='Jan 19 2007, 11:05 P First off, welcome to WAMAS! If you have some time tomorrow afternoon and are willing to take a road trip we are having our winter meeting in DC tomorrow. If not, tell us some more about your 40 bow that is having problems. You mention that the parameters are way off, what are they? What do you have in the system? What is your lighting? and more importantly what do you want this tank to be? BB I didnt see this post till today so Im alittle late for this but thank you very much for the offer I will be watching for the next ones... if you take a look at the next post it explains all parameters and what I have in the system... And I would like this tank to be a reef tank, some corals and fish live rock all thhat stuff. thanks for taking an intrest I really appreciate it
quazi January 22, 2007 January 22, 2007 WARNING WILL ROBINSON! TAP WATER ALERT! WARNING! Before you do anything else, get an RO/DI unit, change a lot of fresh RO/DI water and see things improve. go to; http://www.buckeyefieldsupply.com/ http://www.thefilterguys.biz/ Of find your own. DO IT NOW!
davelin315 January 22, 2007 January 22, 2007 OK, your biggest problem right now is the nitrates. Nitrates that high will be a problem for everything in your tank. Even with tap water, you won't have nitrates that high. My suggestion is that you begin to do some small water changes and then build them up. Your remaining animals are acclimated to the water you have and will get shocked if you outright clean it up. Also, as you do this, you may want to slowly siphon out some of your old sand. If you don't know how old it is and it's been in a system with a lot of die off, it's likely harboring a lot of nitrates and detritus in it. If you siphon off the sand slowly as you change water, you should alleviate some of your problems. You don't even have to toss the sand as you could rinse it out and reincorporate it later if you wanted to. If you wanted to save it as live sand, rinse it thoroughly with mixed saltwater and then store it in a shallow container that has good water movement. Don't simply put it into a bucket as if you pile it up too high it'll basically crash on you as you'll turn parts of it anaerobic. Back to the water changes - I'm guessing it's Oceanic salt as that's the only bucket that I've seen that's blue, but I can't be sure of this. I would guess that Oceanic makes a pretty good salt but it's not what I use so I don't know a whole lot about it. Otherwise, I think that Tropic Marin comes in blue boxes and I have no experience with that brand of salt. In any case, if you choose a different type of salt, read up on them as there are some brands that you can't switch between. Most in the club use Instant Ocean and you can find great deals on it periodically. OK, for water changes, I would start with a couple of gallons every couple of days. This will start to dilute your water problems down, even if you are using tap water. Gradually you can start to do larger water changes until you have diluted your nitrates down or completely eliminated them. This will get you off on the right foot. I periodically do massive water changes but I have never had my nitrates up at such a high level before. Also, something that you will want to do is to raise your salinity. You mentioned yours is .22, I'm guessing that means 22 parts per thousand (ppt) - could be wrong since you said your fish get ich like the cowfish? If so, you're at 1.017 or basically what is called hyposalinity (check out this calculator http://www.saltyzoo.com/SaltyCalcs/SgPptConv.php). This is used to kill off undesireables such as the ever popular Cryptocaryons irritans aka ich but is not good for invertebrates long term (or really even short term). So, you should also begin to change water slowly with a higher salinity as well to bring your salinity up. Also, instead of topping off with fresh water, top off instead with salt water. These two things combined will help to raise it slowly to where you want it without simply dumping salt in and shocking your system. It's not that you will kill it off moving it up more quickly, but it will save you some time and effort and ease the transition from "bad water" to "good water". Now, if you can also get ahold of an RO/DI you'll be golden. If you have some containers, you're welcome to swing by my place and I'd be happy to give you some RO/DI. I typically have around 40 gallons or so on hand, sometimes even more, and if I don't, it's easy to make! The last thing to be concerned about right now is why the canister filter use coincided with the die off. I would clean that puppy out and use it just for mechanical filtration. For the time being, get yourself a couple of chemipure bags and a couple of polyfilters and maybe some phosphate sponge. Put these in there (put the phosphate sponge last and remove it after it's been used for the proscribed period of time) and let them do their thing. It'll also help your overall water quality. Last piece of advice for the here and now, don't buy any fish. Let your system settle down and when it's healthy again, add fish back into the mix. You'll pretty much kill anything off that you add anyway with the water quality (it's surprising that you have ich that can survive the hyposalinity - how long has it been at that level?) so patience will go a long way towards helping you buy that RO/DI unit!
davelin315 January 22, 2007 January 22, 2007 May have misstated hypo... is it 1.017 or is it 1.009? Can't remember which one, either way, though, it's a bit low for inverts.
dandy7200 January 22, 2007 January 22, 2007 Hypo is 1.009 I wonder if he meant 1.022 not .22 ? 140ish is a wee on the high side for nitrates even for a fish only system and basically out of the question for a reef. I would also suggest going the poly filter route and put it in your skimmer rather than the canister. The canister in question I would throw away and not look back. There had to be some sort of chemical or copper or something in there and to be honest if it crashed my tank I would take a bit of sick joy out of taking a hammer to it If you want to fix the problem and get it going again you are in the right place to get that help if you take it seriously and are willing to understand that most of what we say is based off experience but much is opinion which may or may not work for you so be sure to do your own research to cross referance as well. BTW welcome to WAMAS
Sugar Magnolia January 22, 2007 January 22, 2007 Can you give us a list of what fish are in the tank?
Guest airframer007 January 23, 2007 January 23, 2007 Can you give us a list of what fish are in the tank? I have no fish left in the tank, I have a coral banded shrimp, 5 snails, 10 or so hermit crabs, a green mushroom and a few purple polyps. Hypo is 1.009 I wonder if he meant 1.022 not .22 ? 140ish is a wee on the high side for nitrates even for a fish only system and basically out of the question for a reef. I would also suggest going the poly filter route and put it in your skimmer rather than the canister. The canister in question I would throw away and not look back. There had to be some sort of chemical or copper or something in there and to be honest if it crashed my tank I would take a bit of sick joy out of taking a hammer to it If you want to fix the problem and get it going again you are in the right place to get that help if you take it seriously and are willing to understand that most of what we say is based off experience but much is opinion which may or may not work for you so be sure to do your own research to cross referance as well. BTW welcome to WAMAS yes thats what I mean 1.022. I am very open to everything and I really appreciate all the help, I have been doing alot of research on this and Ive had alot of suggestions that I have followed like the water changes I was doing 5% every 2 days and had another dyeoff and then someone said that I was resetting my biological filtration so I should do max of 10% per week so I did that and nothing has helped so far... Id love to get rid of the canister and I hate the skimmer but funding issues keep me from eliminating them, Im trying to move and thats not cheap so I have to deal with what Ive got for a few months and I was hoping I could make it work or somthing... OK, your biggest problem right now is the nitrates. Nitrates that high will be a problem for everything in your tank. Even with tap water, you won't have nitrates that high. My suggestion is that you begin to do some small water changes and then build them up. Your remaining animals are acclimated to the water you have and will get shocked if you outright clean it up. Also, as you do this, you may want to slowly siphon out some of your old sand. If you don't know how old it is and it's been in a system with a lot of die off, it's likely harboring a lot of nitrates and detritus in it. If you siphon off the sand slowly as you change water, you should alleviate some of your problems. You don't even have to toss the sand as you could rinse it out and reincorporate it later if you wanted to. If you wanted to save it as live sand, rinse it thoroughly with mixed saltwater and then store it in a shallow container that has good water movement. Don't simply put it into a bucket as if you pile it up too high it'll basically crash on you as you'll turn parts of it anaerobic. Back to the water changes - I'm guessing it's Oceanic salt as that's the only bucket that I've seen that's blue, but I can't be sure of this. I would guess that Oceanic makes a pretty good salt but it's not what I use so I don't know a whole lot about it. Otherwise, I think that Tropic Marin comes in blue boxes and I have no experience with that brand of salt. In any case, if you choose a different type of salt, read up on them as there are some brands that you can't switch between. Most in the club use Instant Ocean and you can find great deals on it periodically. OK, for water changes, I would start with a couple of gallons every couple of days. This will start to dilute your water problems down, even if you are using tap water. Gradually you can start to do larger water changes until you have diluted your nitrates down or completely eliminated them. This will get you off on the right foot. I periodically do massive water changes but I have never had my nitrates up at such a high level before. Also, something that you will want to do is to raise your salinity. You mentioned yours is .22, I'm guessing that means 22 parts per thousand (ppt) - could be wrong since you said your fish get ich like the cowfish? If so, you're at 1.017 or basically what is called hyposalinity (check out this calculator http://www.saltyzoo.com/SaltyCalcs/SgPptConv.php). This is used to kill off undesireables such as the ever popular Cryptocaryons irritans aka ich but is not good for invertebrates long term (or really even short term). So, you should also begin to change water slowly with a higher salinity as well to bring your salinity up. Also, instead of topping off with fresh water, top off instead with salt water. These two things combined will help to raise it slowly to where you want it without simply dumping salt in and shocking your system. It's not that you will kill it off moving it up more quickly, but it will save you some time and effort and ease the transition from "bad water" to "good water". Now, if you can also get ahold of an RO/DI you'll be golden. If you have some containers, you're welcome to swing by my place and I'd be happy to give you some RO/DI. I typically have around 40 gallons or so on hand, sometimes even more, and if I don't, it's easy to make! The last thing to be concerned about right now is why the canister filter use coincided with the die off. I would clean that puppy out and use it just for mechanical filtration. For the time being, get yourself a couple of chemipure bags and a couple of polyfilters and maybe some phosphate sponge. Put these in there (put the phosphate sponge last and remove it after it's been used for the proscribed period of time) and let them do their thing. It'll also help your overall water quality. Last piece of advice for the here and now, don't buy any fish. Let your system settle down and when it's healthy again, add fish back into the mix. You'll pretty much kill anything off that you add anyway with the water quality (it's surprising that you have ich that can survive the hyposalinity - how long has it been at that level?) so patience will go a long way towards helping you buy that RO/DI unit! I will definatley take these things in consideration and try to implement them asap. I had already decided to not buy anymore fish till this all settles down... But I think I have went every way I can with this like I shared in another reply I have already done water change after change after change and to no avail... But I will go by your instructions as u said and see if that gets me anywhere.... But see when I started doing these waterchanges I ended up with this film on the top of my water almost like an oil slick and it hasnt gone away since then... And if my canister had been subjected to copper wouldnt my inverts die off ??? Thank you so very much for your help, I was about ready to give up but with help like this Ill keeep working on it till I fix it...
Rascal January 23, 2007 January 23, 2007 (edited) finally SUCCESS everything was thriving again it was awesome then 3 wks ago I added a cowfish didnt take long to look like he was covered in ich so I tried to dose the system but just friday everything was dead. Is it possible the Cowfish died first and then took everything else with it? What little I know about these fish is only because Dan's looks so cool in his tank (and avatar) that it prompted me to do a little research. I decided I didn't have the skills. This from www.cowfishes.com: "they have the ability to release ostracitoxin, a poison that can kill all tank inhabitants"; and from wetwebmedia: "Any treatments including medication may be a sufficient stress to induce release of the toxin." Clearly there are other issues going on here (tap water, nitrates) but could this be the explanation for the most recent die off? Edited January 23, 2007 by Rascal
Guest airframer007 January 24, 2007 January 24, 2007 Is it possible the Cowfish died first and then took everything else with it? What little I know about these fish is only because Dan's looks so cool in his tank (and avatar) that it prompted me to do a little research. I decided I didn't have the skills. This from www.cowfishes.com: "they have the ability to release ostracitoxin, a poison that can kill all tank inhabitants"; and from wetwebmedia: "Any treatments including medication may be a sufficient stress to induce release of the toxin." Clearly there are other issues going on here (tap water, nitrates) but could this be the explanation for the most recent die off? I did some studying up on these guys also and found out that they dont have the ability to release these toxins when they die, they only release them when they are around an aggressive eater. Thats the information that I got, it wasnt a release of toxins because he was covered in white dots ( I believe it would be ich ) and his eyes started to turn grey, after that my damsel started loseing all of his color shortly after that is when my clown fish started getting ich, my dottyback also had ich and over the course of 4 days I lost all of them along with my goby. Im not saying its out of the question but I dont think its likely from the information I recieved and also it wouldnt take days for that toxin to kill everything off... Thanks for the insight I will do some more studying up before I buy another one of those.
fab January 24, 2007 January 24, 2007 (edited) Where did you get your information about Cowfish not being able to release ostracitoxin when they die? I got the exact opposite information when I researched these fish a year or two ago. Unfortunately, I can't cite my sources after this long a time. If I recall correctly these fish produce this toxin somewhat on demand. They don't store it up in their bodies. If a cowfish is extremely stressed it can produce this nasty stuff and exude it. If the fish dies during this stressful event, the toxin is there to be dispersed in the tank. So, it can release the toxin during and after death if there is toxin already there to be dispesed. Obviously it cannot produce more toxin once it is dead. So, this little critter can be a time bomb waiting to take out an entire tank when it gets stressed out. fab Edited January 24, 2007 by fab
dandy7200 January 24, 2007 January 24, 2007 My advice on Cowfish. Name him and not any of the other fish in the tank . Run a TON of carbon 24/7 and change religously. They are super prone to ich. They are born in brackish water so get them young and they take hypo very well. They are not a beginner fish nor intermediate level either. They can release a toxin while alive or when dead. Stocking list must be geared entirely around a single fish. Good resources include: cowfish.org cowfishes.com geocities.com/cowfish_pro Just like any other fish everyone has a differant personality. Some eat coral, some not. Some can compete for food some cannot. You get the idea. I doubt it was the cause of your problems. Do some 50% water changes. Do a nitrate test on your tap water out of the faucet. Thow away the CANISTER Run a polyfilter and see what color it turns.
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