ICP Test Results are in...

[AlanM]

If you do remove all of the sand please save some, and I'll try to get it analyzed.

[Origami]

I was struck by the variety of metals that were elevated according to the report.

 

Nickel 38.76 ug/l vice 0.49 ug/l threshold

Cobalt 1.27 ug/l vice 0.10 ug/l threshold

Vanadium 495.2 ug/l vice 1.47 ug/l threshold

 

Iron is slightly elevated, as is molybdenum and manganese.

 

I've seen vanadium used in tools (steel alloy); same with cobalt. Nickel is used in a variety of places. Wikipedia says that much of the world's vanadium "is sourced from vanadium-bearing magnetite."

 

Just on a whim, I did some more searching on elevated vanadium and Tahitian Moon Sand and turned up this thread on R2R from earlier in the year.  You'll want to read it. They also posted their ICP-OES results and they're similar to yours (but even worse). Post #30 indicates that the tank condition started improving daily after the sand was removed. Notably the Tahitian Moon Sand is implicated in their tank's demise and, after removal, subsequent recovery. A bonus in that thread is that the user replaced the sand with Hawaiian Black Sand (which, under an electron microscope and with spectral line analysis, looks to be very different than the TMS), and their tank seems to be doing fine.

 

Read the thread. I think that you'll find the author's situation very similar to yours.

 

[A.ocellaris]

Thank you all for your advise and help on this issue. It's been 8 long months with many disappointing events with this tank. I've had tanks in the past, but this one is the worst and I think it was just the sand... It is just crazy...

 

Thanks Origami, the thread is very very similar to my situation. I reached out to CaribSea and they discontinued the product, but it looks like that customer can still find it in the LFS. 

 

Update:

 

I guess this will be my last attempt to fix this tank, if not, I'll have to take it down. It's just too much money already spent. I removed 99.99% of the sand and did a 20% WC with a Tropic Marine Pro Reef salt to make sure I dont add extra stuff. I hope to continue changing 20% every 5 days hoping to lower those metal levels. Will this ever be resolved? Who knows... Now everything start to make sense... no hermits alive, no shrimps, fish getting skin sores and dying, SPS going RTN, LPS losing polyps/expansion, Favias losing color/polyps. On the other side, Anemones are doing well.

 

I am not sure how to do 100% WC, I only have a small RODI filter.

 

[madweazl]

Provided your parameters match up well (if anythings still alive) to the salt you're using, make larger water changes (i.e. 50+ percent) vice the smaller changes to lower the levels. 20% changes are going to end up wasting a bunch of salt. Hopefully all is on the mend soon. 

[wildcrazyjoker81]

For good measure you could run some cuprisorb to aid in removing some of the metals. From what I remember reading it will help remove the Nickel, but not sure about the Vanadium.

[Origami]

17 minutes ago, madweazl said:

Provided your parameters match up well (if anythings still alive) to the salt you're using, make larger water changes (i.e. 50+ percent) vice the smaller changes to lower the levels. 20% changes are going to end up wasting a bunch of salt. Hopefully all is on the mend soon. 

I agree that larger water changes are very reasonable in this situation. A 100% water change is possible, but you want to match your key parameters as well as possible: Temperature, pH & salinity. Other ionic content is secondary. The technique would require you to catch your fish and hold them outside the tank while you made the change. However, multiple, partial changes would work to get you on track. Let's look at the math that madweazl's alluding to:

 

Case1: First, let's look at a series of 5 water changes. As a simplified example, let's assume it's a 10-gallon tank.

Before changes: Pollutants (P) = 100%.

After 1st 20% water change:  P = 80.0%; total water used 2 gallons.

After 2nd 20% wc: P = 64.0%; total water used 4 gallons.

After 3rd 20% wc: P = 51.2%; total water used 6 gallons.

After 4th 20% wc: P = 41.0%; total water used 8 gallons.

After 5th 20% wc: P = 32.8%; total water used 10 gallons.

 

Case 2: Now, let's look at two 50% water changes:

Before changes: P = 100%

After 1st 50% wc: P = 50.0%; total water used: 5 gallons.

After 2nd 50% wc: P = 25%; total water used: 10 gallons.

 

In this case, you can see that the total water used is the same, but you've reduced your pollutants significantly.

 

Case 3: Two 75% water changes:

Before changes: P = 100%

After 1st 75% wc: P = 25%; total water used: 7.5 gallons.

After 2nd 75% wc: P = 6.25%; total water used: 15 gallons. (this uses more water, but illustrates a key point)

 

Case 4: 75% change followed by a 25% change:

Before changes: P = 100%

After 1st 75% wc: P = 25%; total water used: 7.5 gallons

After 2nd 25% wc: P = 18.75%; total water used: 10 gallons

 

Case 5: Single, 100% water change:

Before changes: P = 100%

After 1st 100% wc: P = 0%; total water used: 10 gallons

 

Do you see how that works? The larger water changes dilute the pollutants (in your case, the heavy metals) faster, even if the total water volume changed is the same. To achieve these numbers, remove the water first from your tank before adding your change water. 

 

 

 

 

 

[A.ocellaris]

Origami,

 

I see! I can try to filter that much water, but it will be a challenge to keep each 5gal bucket with similar parameters (mostly temp and pH). My reef is more or less 35G, but I only have a 50gpd Filter,  3x5Gbuckets. I still have 2 ocellaris, one mandarin, and one royal gramma alive (the survivors) and a few corals and 5 anemones. I am not sure if the anemones will be able to be exposed to air while remove and add the water. 

 

Has someone used Triton Detox before? 

 

Edited December 3, 2018 by A.ocellaris

[wildcrazyjoker81]

Sounds like  you need to buy or borrow a large Brute trashcan for a massive water change. Easy to keep stable water parameters that way. I personally use their 32G size to do my large water changes on my 52 gallon system.

[YHSublime]

Anemones will be fine. Like mentioned above, you don't need to use buckets, I'm pretty sure you can get cheap plastic containers at home depot! When I QT'd fish from my 150 many years ago, I used a rubbermaid container, worked great! 

[Origami]

Whatever you do, just remember that the larger your water change, the faster you'll bring those metals down. Bringing them down any amount is an improvement here, so do what you can as soon you reasonably can. 

[AlanM]

If you still have some of the sand, I can get some neutron activation analysis done on it and tell you if it has nickel and vanadium in it.  I can't get concrete numbers, but I can give you +/- 20% for those elements and a bunch more with more precision.  Some elements are easier than others to get exact quantities and NAA is often used for checking for parts per billion, not large percentages.  

 

I can PM you to see if we could meet up somewhere.

[Origami]

19 minutes ago, AlanM said:

If you still have some of the sand, I can get some neutron activation analysis done on it and tell you if it has nickel and vanadium in it.  I can't get concrete numbers, but I can give you +/- 20% for those elements and a bunch more with more precision.  Some elements are easier than others to get exact quantities and NAA is often used for checking for parts per billion, not large percentages.  

 

I can PM you to see if we could meet up somewhere.

Hey, Alan. Check out the R2R post that I linked to a few posts back. I think that you'll find some scans and element analysis there. You'll also find that (expectedly) it's a heterogenous mixture so you have to locate the clusters/grains that bear the target metals. It would be very interesting to see those earlier findings investigated/confirmed.

[AlanM]

Right, the nice thing about NAA is that it's a bulk method, so it wouldn't be as finicky as trying to do scanning microscopy to resolve the elemental composition. 

 

We'd put 100 grams or so of it in a "rabbit" and shoot it through the pneumatic tube that brings it through the center of the reactor and exposes it to neutrons.  Then it arrives back into the lab where it's automatically counted on a gamma spectrometer to see what elements were in it and absorbed neutrons and became activated.

 

Maybe if I got a big jar of it I'd use a magnet to make sure I got some of the metallic pieces...

[GraffitiSpotCorals]

Man I would definitely take it out. Since I first saw the sand I had a wierd feeling about it for some reason...

Alan have you seen that documentary on Netflix called "patient 17" I believe? It was about a small piece of metal this guy had pulled from his leg that turned out to have a whole list of metals in the tiny sample. They were saying it was not something that was made in our Galaxy and were trying to prove it was alien nanotech or something. The smoking gun by Dr Rodger leir, was the guy they were talking about and if you type it in it shows his article on it. I bring it up because it sounds like something to put into your tester

Sent from my Moto Z (2) using Tapatalk

[Origami]

3 hours ago, AlanM said:

Right, the nice thing about NAA is that it's a bulk method, so it wouldn't be as finicky as trying to do scanning microscopy to resolve the elemental composition. 

 

We'd put 100 grams or so of it in a "rabbit" and shoot it through the pneumatic tube that brings it through the center of the reactor and exposes it to neutrons.  Then it arrives back into the lab where it's automatically counted on a gamma spectrometer to see what elements were in it and absorbed neutrons and became activated.

 

Maybe if I got a big jar of it I'd use a magnet to make sure I got some of the metallic pieces...

That's so cool. "Shoot it... through the center of the reactor...." Very cool.

[A.ocellaris]

Thank you all!  

 

I think the tank is slowly looking better. I see better polyp extension on my LPSs. I will be planning a large WC later this week. 

 

Edited December 5, 2018 by A.ocellaris

[AlanM]

You going to stay bare bottom for a while or going to add some white sand?

[A.ocellaris]

2 minutes ago, AlanM said:

You going to stay bare bottom for a while or going to add some white sand?

 

I kind of  like it bare bottom! At least until I am sure there is no much black sand between or under rocks. 

 

What white sand is better? 

[AlanM]

Well, lots of folks swear by special grade and some like fiji pink.  I like Tropic Eden mini flakes which is smaller than reef flakes but big enough to not blow around.  Different folks like different sand.

[Origami]

55 minutes ago, A.ocellaris said:

 

I kind of  like it bare bottom! At least until I am sure there is no much black sand between or under rocks. 

 

What white sand is better? 

A lot of folks like their tanks bare bottom. It's way easier to siphon out detritus. I use Fiji Pink in my tank, but there are a lot of very good, aragonite options.

[A.ocellaris]

Guys,

 

I am getting  ready for a big WC. Close to a 100%. I have a heater that I used to treat my fish with copper so I think I have to buy a new one right? 

 

Well, I will do my best to match pH, Alkalinity and temperature. 

 

Edited December 6, 2018 by A.ocellaris

[Origami]

To be safest, use another heater if it's got any substantial amount of plastic on it. If it's mostly glass, you should be OK especially for short term use. 

 

Mix your water at least 24 hours in advance and, if you have an air pump and air stone, go ahead and aerate the water, too. That will help stabilize the pH and fully oxygenate the water. If you don't have an air pump and stone, drop a powerhead into the Brute and direct some flow upward so the surface is agitated. This helps with gas exchange.

 

Good luck!

[BtmDweller]

Great post!! No black sand it is.

[A.ocellaris]

Tomorrow is the big day. This has been harder that I thought and it is just the beginning lol.

 

I did some maintenance of my RODI filter before collecting this water. Replaced the sediment/carbon filters and the Resin. It was 0TDS before the salt was added. Hopefully the silicon (which was high in my rodi ICP test) is none.  

 

Edited December 8, 2018 by A.ocellaris

[Origami]

Good luck today!