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Help - Tank Crashing??


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Last night I went to bed with a little bit of stress about my tank and left at 5 AM still stressed...  Yellow Tang swimming sideways, but eating and laying on rock.  Trigger also laid on the rock.

 

75G FOWLER w/10g sump (LR), 5g refugium with nothing in it but Julian's sand 

 

Parameters:

Ammonia 0

Nitrate < 10

PH 7.6

Alkalinity tested at LFS and they said it is fine.

 

I started adding PH Up (white bottle at home) to raise PH because snails keep croaking.

 

Ph Up makes tank very cloudy for a while.  Yesterday I added it and a tablespoon of sugar back to back.  Previously added No4 and Phospahat efighting additive (10 ml)

 

Tank remained cloudy all day.  Protein skimmer going crazy, bubbles on top of water. Still cloudy.

 

Ideas, hope they survive me at work...

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1. I think you should stop adding things.  

 

2. No idea what "fine" means for alkalinity, but I wouldn't add stuff to raise pH.  You might add stuff to raise alkalinity, though, and should get a test kit or checker to keep track of alkalinity and a test kit for calcium and ignore pH in your FOWLR tank.

 

3. Sugar?  What's that about?  I've been around a while and have never heard of people just adding tablespoons of sugar into their tank.  That's a lot of sugar and I'll go out on the line to say you should stop doing that and not do it again.  

 

4. I don't think your problem is/was nutrients like nitrate or phosphate.  I suspect another water quality issue or maybe a fish addition that has everything in the tank infected.

 

5. You're probably going to hear it from people that a trigger and yellow tang are probably not the right fish to have in a 75g tank unless they're really little.

 

You didn't mention salinity or temperature, but I assume they're OK?

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1. I think you should stop adding things.  

 

Agree

 

2. No idea what "fine" means for alkalinity, but I wouldn't add stuff to raise pH.  You might add stuff to raise alkalinity, though, and should get a test kit or checker to keep track of alkalinity and a test kit for calcium and ignore pH in your FOWLR tank.

 

Agree

 

3. Sugar?  What's that about?  I've been around a while and have never heard of people just adding tablespoons of sugar into their tank.  That's a lot of sugar and I'll go out on the line to say you should stop doing that and not do it again.  

 

Agree. See #1. Also, there are threads were folks are using sugar to lower nitrates. I follow a guy that doses honey in a really nice established LPS tank, but I still think all these concepts are a little wild. The best thing you can do is water changes for that!

 

  4. I don't think your problem is/was nutrients like nitrate or phosphate.  I suspect another water quality issue or maybe a fish addition that has everything in the tank infected.

 

Something added that caused it to go cloudy perhaps?

 

5. You're probably going to hear it from people that a trigger and yellow tang are probably not the right fish to have in a 75g tank unless they're really little.

 

IME if the fish is sideways, or laying on rocks, it's on its way out. 

 

 

Good points on temp, and salinity. I would look to changes you've made recently, things that you've put into the tank. What's your feeding schedule, and what are you feeding? Also, how old is the tank? 

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I have no idea how much carbon a tablespoon of sugar is, but most people start carbon dosing truly minute amounts, many orders of magnitude less than a tablespoon of sugar.

 

My current guess would be that you now have a bacteria bloom removing all of the oxygen from your water and suffocating your fish.

 

The cloudiness from adding pH up is probably precipitation of calcium carbonate which is harmless and should go away quick. Cloudiness from sugar, not so much.

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Big water change! Water changes are much safer and effective than trying to fix problems with additives.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

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Update:

 

Just arrived home.  Tang did not make it.  Everyone else seems good, but need to watch.

 

Tank is still cloudy.  Its about 10 weeks old.

 

I will stop dosing anything.

 

With a 7.6 Ph how do I raise it?  Water changes? Salinity is 1.025

 

Temp is ~80 but my thermometer sucks.

 

Adding AlgaeBarn Pods and Chaeto to refugium today.

 

Thank you all. 

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if your tank is only 10 months old the cloudy could just be a bacterial bloom. your tank is still young and cycling be patient and just do regular water changes

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Your tank is only 10 weeks old? Are you sure your tank is completely cycled? It's taken me upwards of 12 weeks to cycle before. What other fish do you have in your tank? What ammonia test kit are you using? What are your nitrite levels?

 

For a FOWLR, you don't need to worry about alk, calcium, or ph.

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What you describe sounds like a bacterial bloom that ended up suffocating your fish, as others have said.

 

In future there are a couple easy things you can do to save a fish in this situation.

 

- You can fill a 5 gallon bucket with different saltwater and drop the fish into it. Add an airstone if you've got one.

 

- You can put an airstone in your tank to raise oxygen levels. If you put the airstone right below an MP-style pump, you'll get an enormous amount of bubbles throughout the tank.

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Why are you trying to raise your pH? 

 

If it's to keep your snails from dying, I suggest your snails are dying for another reason, not the pH so leave the pH alone.  Dose for alkalinity and calcium if you'd like, but you don't really need to do that for a fish only tank. 

 

Just do water changes from time to time with salt water mixed from RO/DI water and aquarium salt to the same salinity as in the tank and that will be fine.

 

Don't dump anything in aside from food.

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(edited)

This is a case of over reaction and hopefully a learning experience. Unless you want to burn through a lot of money and frustration, slow down. In this hobby stability is your best friend. Your tank is very young and needs a while to stabilize, which it will do on its own. As others have advised stop dumping things into your tank. Don't dose anything without truly understanding its effects and having a way to test those changes.

 

Don't chase pH. 7.6 is on the low side and can be caused by several factors. Here is a good article to understand low pH issues http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2004-09/rhf/

 

Take this time to read up on the hobby and learn. Best of luck on your tank.

Edited by WheresTheReef
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I agree with the above. Dont chase the ph. As long as your arent having crazy swings your fine. My ph has always been "low". Staying between 7.9 and 8.0 no problems. I would also add if you do anything in this hobby first tell yourself youll go slow. Then go even slower than that. Most marine life is hardier than people think. Its the instant drastic reaction to a "problem" that kills most things.

If you go to SPS stability is key. It certainly can be done as I dont think SPS with a little research and the right setup is impossible for first corals but personally I would encourage some soft corals or LPS. In a newish tank you will have more instability that may not kill your SPS but wont make it happy. LPS and softies at least mine love high nutrients and will be tolerant of swings a little more and are pretty easy to tell if their happy.

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Dont add an anemone or sps until you figure out what went wrong... It's your satiny and temp stable? Be careful with what you add to your tank, I lost several fish adding  an additive to decrease nitrates and phosphates...

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Sadly its been a bad day, now that the tank is no longer cloudy I see I've lost a few more fish.  With the Tang gone, the Trigger is bullying everything that is blue.  Tank is back to crystal clear I'll leave it alone.

 

I assumed that when nitrated dropped drastically to under 10 that meant the tank cycled, is that not accurate? 

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That would be correct sort of. However, think of it as if the tank cycled to the load you placed on it. As you add fish, corals inverts anything that load will go up. Your tank has bacteria in it but if one goes to quick it may not catch up causing spikes. Im not sure how quickly you added fish but its possible if your tank just got done and you added a decent bioload its going through a mini cycle.

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  • 1 month later...

Big water change! Water changes are much safer and effective than trying to fix problems with additives.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I've done more 50% water changes than I can recall and my tank always look better but you must sure salinity the temperature match perfectly.

 

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

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I was about to start a new thread, but this one is at the top of the list so...

 

The 75g bit the bullet.  It sprung a minor leak somewhere I think along the rim because water would pool between the glass and the bottom rim and comeback after I dried it out.  I broke that all down, transferred what little I have to a 20g rimless and threw the 75g on the curb.  But the carpet continued to get wet so I pulled out the 40g sump which showed pretty clear cracks.

 

My sand is still moist, but the rock has dried out.  After I knock a few items off the honey do list, I am buying another 75g.  I am in no rush to get fish/coral back into the new tank, so I ask:

 

What is I pulled water from my outdoor hose or seriously the sink?  Please don't be aghast....

 

I do not relish carting 15+ buckets for RODI water from the basement.  The above would be easy, but not sure if its sane.

 

Thanks for any opinions.

 

Eric 

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I was about to start a new thread, but this one is at the top of the list so...

 

The 75g bit the bullet.  It sprung a minor leak somewhere I think along the rim because water would pool between the glass and the bottom rim and comeback after I dried it out.  I broke that all down, transferred what little I have to a 20g rimless and threw the 75g on the curb.  But the carpet continued to get wet so I pulled out the 40g sump which showed pretty clear cracks.

 

My sand is still moist, but the rock has dried out.  After I knock a few items off the honey do list, I am buying another 75g.  I am in no rush to get fish/coral back into the new tank, so I ask:

 

What is I pulled water from my outdoor hose or seriously the sink?  Please don't be aghast....

 

I do not relish carting 15+ buckets for RODI water from the basement.  The above would be easy, but not sure if its sane.

 

Thanks for any opinions.

 

Eric 

 

Holy cow! Bad luck. Hope you can salvage what you have.

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I was about to start a new thread, but this one is at the top of the list so...

 

The 75g bit the bullet.  It sprung a minor leak somewhere I think along the rim because water would pool between the glass and the bottom rim and comeback after I dried it out.  I broke that all down, transferred what little I have to a 20g rimless and threw the 75g on the curb.  But the carpet continued to get wet so I pulled out the 40g sump which showed pretty clear cracks.

 

My sand is still moist, but the rock has dried out.  After I knock a few items off the honey do list, I am buying another 75g.  I am in no rush to get fish/coral back into the new tank, so I ask:

 

What is I pulled water from my outdoor hose or seriously the sink?  Please don't be aghast....

 

I do not relish carting 15+ buckets for RODI water from the basement.  The above would be easy, but not sure if its sane.

 

Thanks for any opinions.

 

Eric 

 

Using tap water to help save your back/time will ONLY cause even more problems later on. If your tap water has high levels of copper, that is extremely hard to get out. I've read before of someone who started a tank with tap water, and could never keep an invert alive (corals, shrimp, snails, you name it). If you don't want to cart that much water up the steps, maybe think about rigging up some kind of a pump/hose to pump your SW up the stairs? (highly dependent upon your situation, I know)

 

I've chased BIG issues in the past because I tried to save a few minutes or a few dollars.

 

Example: My first SW tank I cycled the tank at only 1.016 salinity because "it saves me money from running at full salinity". I added my first fish - she was a happy clown. Eating, swimming - so my tank is good, right? I added $100 of coral in a weekend. Everything crashed (fish included). Corals couldn't handle the low salinity, died, caused massive nutrient spike, killing my first fish. So, I wasted $100 in corals by trying to "save" $5 in salt. Neither myself or my wife were very happy with me.

 

DO NOT take shortcuts. Do not over-react. Do not dose what you cannot (or will not) test. 

 

It's easy to want to go all-out, but very rarely does this work. I'm not sure what happened to your display and sump, but were they used? Did you inspect them before filling them? Did you fresh-water test them before going all-in? A little up-front prep in your next setup will aid you GREATLY. Try to think what might go wrong, and test/plan for it. If you're not sure, people on here will be more than helpful with making sure you set up correct. I can probably speak for a many when I say that designing/building a tank is WAY more fun than debugging once things have gone south.

 

Oh, and consider that you'll likely have to cook all of your rock. I've never had great luck re-using sand, so I'm not sure what you can do with it. Go slow, you'll have spikes when you get back going again. 

 

BTW - how many fish (and what species) did you have in the tank before it went bad?

Edited by bues0022
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Ah, I wish you had posted before I moved forward...

 

I filled it with tap water and about half a bucket of reef crystals (160g bucket) and ran power heads.  Its still not clear and I have not achieved expected salinity.

 

The previous tank was bought from a WAMAS member years ago (8?) and has been drained and moved a few times.  I bought it with everything and had no problems until about two months ago.  The sump came with that tank.  When I took it out of the stand, it had several hairline fractures.

 

Now the question is, do i dump the salt water in the tank and start over with RODI.

 

EEH

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Now the question is, do i dump the salt water in the tank and start over with RODI.

 

It's a 75 gallon tank, right? You said you used half a bucket of RC so far and haven't reached salinity? With sump water volume, you should be pretty close, but not quite at proper salinity. 

 

A 160g bucket of RC on Amazon right now is $55 (ironically, the 200 gallon box is the exact same price). You've used $27.50 worth of salt right now. At most shops around town, that's a moderately cheap frag. Would you "pay" the price of a single frag to ensure that you have the best water quality possible? Or, if you end up with phosphate problems downstream, would you pay $27.50 to get yourself out of that jam? Test the TDS of your tap water. It's going to be in the hundreds. We want our RO/DI to be 0, or low single digits at the highest. We also know that high TDS leads to algae/diatoms/frustrations. I've heard of people starting tanks with tap, then switching to RO/DI, but I don't think they were too happy with the results.

 

 This hobby is expensive and time consuming. You could easily spend an order of more magnitude money and time to fix problems like this down stream. IMO, the answer is VERY simple. Dump the tank and start over. Half a bucket of salt and a "free" workout lugging buckets (or buy a long stretch of RO tubing and run the output of your unit up the stairs to your tank) seems like a cheap price to pay to setup correct. Don't be cheap on $27.50 right at the start of your tank.

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I'm not sure what I'd do with the sand to be honest. Thinking on my feet here, I'd probably keep the sand. After the water is out of the tank, I'd scoop it into a couple rubbermaid bins, give it a rinse with RO water, drain, and put back into the tank. Again, that might be where I'd end up, I don't think have too many problems with the sand.

 

On the wife front - I've ALWAYS had much better luck with planning/preparation money spent than spending more to fix/replace what broke/died due to preventable errors that I was to dumb to do the first time. Another good reason to go slow - you won't spend/waste money as fast.

Edited by bues0022
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