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Nightmare!!!!!! (1 Viewer)

mjoener

mjoener

Former: kmjoen230
Joined
Feb 28, 2008
Messages
672
Location
Eden Prairie, MN
:mad:
I need help and any theories to the following perdicament would be fantastic!
Sorry in advance, this is long!

3 wks ago....
I was experiencing loads of overgrowth of red slime, nasty, furry, disgusting, red slime.
I had been noticing it get worse and worse, I asked questions and added flow among other things to get rid of it.
Finally i decided it was a good idea to use a product to get rid of it.
I used Ultralife's Red Slime Remover.
It says to mix 1 lvl spoonful, that came with the powder, for each 15g of water, I have a RSM, RedSea Max, 34g. So yes I added 2 spoonfuls, added to a "small amount of water from the aquarium".
That went well, I had heard to turn off the Protein Skimmer, no indicated length of time, because it would supposedly go nuts after adding this stuff.
i kept the 2 pheads on along w/ my Koralia One that I have setup, let that run over night.
it looked great the next day got rid of the red, it actually turned it into more of a tan gloop.
Now, the 2nd day, we noticed that the GBTA had gone south.
We tried the Skimmer, not so good, it was going nuts like the advice had said it would.
We left the pheads going and let it go for about 5-7 days, trying the protein skimmer occassionaly.
The GBTA was continuing to decline rapidly.
We finally decided that it needed to be thrown out.
In trying to do so we took the rock it was on and put this in a 10g tank, filled w/ 5g.
We thought that maybe we could get it to come back.
So we waited...

Finally about a week ago, we through out the GBTA in the 10g.
But we did not have any water to do a water change, so last night we finally got to get to the LFS and we bought 5g of water and did a water change, we also added the rock that had been sitting in the 10g for 2 wks, and did some aquascaping.
This morning, everything looked great, fish swimming nicely and the new RBTA that I got was also looking swell.
Jessica, my girlfriend, got home today at about 3:00 pm.
Last night we had also taken the pheads off and soaked them overnight in a Vinegar solution, she had washed these off and put them back int he tank.
She also turned on the Protein Skimmer.
This created TONS of micro bubbles, she left that on for about 30 min.
By 4:00 pm she was calling me, all the fish were "breathing" rapidly and had slime on them, "laying" on the ground.
Our Coral beauty was dead, our Arc Eye Hawk was dead.
This all happened within the hr.
Our clowns and Tailspot Blenny were still hanging in there.
Again they were still swimming near the bottom and covered in sand on their slimy bodies.
The corals were all sucked up and looked bad.
they were oozing, obviousley not improving the situation.
I have, Dendro, Frogspawn, zoas, blasto wellsi, XENIA, mushrooms, and one acro.
I had her open the top and adjust the pheads to get as much surface movement as possible.
The corals finally responded a little bit.
I was not home to find out what was going on.
I called around got some advice.
We did another water change as soon as I got home, that was about 8:30 when we finished.
She did a water test, all parameters were perfect.
Ammonia = 0
Nitrate = 0
Nitrite = 0
PH = 8.3
Phosphate = 0

I am going out of my mind...
:micro:
Please someone help me
 
OK, where to start .....

Salinity? Refractometer or hydrometer?

What kind of test kits? I doubt your nitrates are zero. Got a pic on the tank?

How long has it been up? How many fish are/were in it? how much do you feed?

Why did you have to throw out a GBTA? And how does a 10g fit into this?

After you put in the slime away, how many water changes have you done? Several big ones are probably in order.
 
I've found out the hard way when adding chemicals to the tank that some times It will take all the oxygen out of the water. I used a slime remover and declor together once and killed all my fish at work :(
 
not that this is helpful, but this is exactly why I will only use chemicals as a very very absolute last resort.

Personally... I would probably do more water changes, lots and lots of water changes.
 
I wouldn't do more than 20-30% WC at one time. It can shock your livestock a bit, depending on how old it is. Just curious, when you did some aquascaping did u use new LR? If you end up replacing more than 20% of your LR it can re-cycle your tank.
 
Also, remember that correlation does not equal causation. That's why it's best to rely on a chain of command as far as information goes. Trust what science shows first, and if that is not available then look into what the experts experience shows, and so on and so forth... This is meant to be a general explanation that applys to the experiences we have in the hobby in general. Did I forget to say "in general?" You can get some of the best advice from David Grigor, Mattb, SaltWater Empire, among many others who have been doing this for some time. Perhaps a chain analysis will help you to learn from this experience.
 
If you use red slime remover, you have to keep the water very well oxygenated. I'm not sure how long afterwards the remover will weaken in the absense of larger water changes. Never take out all your powerheads at once. Just clean one at a time. Oxygen levels just got too low and were probably just barely acceptable prior to removing the powerheads.

Red slime IME, once your nutrients are under contol should subside. Siphoning it out and keeping detritus out of those areas. Chemicals rarely are the answer because without fixing the nutrients they will come right back.

I'm not fond of red slime removers or flatworm exit. Just too big of risk. Only chemical medication I use is interceptor for little red bugs.
 
Ok when I took them, pheads, out, I mean that I removed the koralia One and just removed the "nozzles" from inside the display. I have the RSM, the pheads are on the upper left, in a back chamber. I left them on snad they were still creating flow, I just took off the directional nozzles.
The Tests I use are the Api, Aquarium Pharmaceuticals. Saltwater and Reef kits.
Also the salinity, by using hydrometer, was 1.022.
the tank has been up and riunning since July 07.
I had 2 clowns, Coral Beauty, Arc Eye Hawk, and Tailspot.
I moved the tank in June on 08.

If it is the o2 lvls, why did it not happen shortly after I used the Redslime remover?
I used it about 3 wks ago.
Also, I used it on my 14g biocube as well, same time. Have not done one water change since then and nothing has died!
Thanks all for that advice!
 
I talked to Kyle a bit yesterday. unfortunately, he was at work at the time so we could only run down... we the best we could while he was at work.

His description sounded a lot like O2 deficiency.
My best guesses were:
chemicals (but then I would think Jessica would have noticed that).
bacteria was recovering and eating up the O2. (he mentioned taking a rock out for a while then putting it back).
equipment failure.

Kyle is a serious reef-geek and loves his animals. I was really saddened to hear the news.


Kyle,
What did you end up doing with the corals?

Best wishes,

Fritz
 
Wow, that is a nightmare. Sounds like you have gotten some good advice from very experienced reefers. Oxygen level would make sense. Just a combination of reduced flow, no skimmer bubble contact, and chemicals in the water. Being able to Monday morning quarterback at this point is a luxury you didn't have at the time, but my post analysis would be too many changes at one time. This started a domino effect that took out your animals. RBTA going down hill adds a lot of crap to the water, reduced air bubble contact from the skimmer being off line and the reduced flow added to the problem. Once the fish start stressing out and releasing slime, etc into the water adds to it, removing rock in a smaller system could have contributed, and on and on.

It doesn't make sense that any one of these would cause huge damage, but several at one time and you have a disaster. This is a good reminder for me to be careful. I have been making multiple changes myself lately. I thinned out Cheato in the fuge, fragged a bunch of SPS, increased my Alk level because it was creeping a little low, moved some liverock that had a low light encrusting yellow sponge that I know will show some die off. As I was reading your post it got me thinking I better leave my system alone for a bit and let everything balance out before the same thing happens to me.

Carbon and reasonable water changes seem to be applicable here. Good luck, and sorry for your loss and aggrevation.
 
Thanks Fritz!
The only things that appear to have been lost are fish.
All of my corals are coming back at full force, as of this morning anyways.
Everything was polyped out and looked fine.
The fish, that are left, clowns and tailspot, appear to be improving as well.
I think that one more water change may be in order tonight.
Also I am going to call RedSea and see if they can send me a new skimmer pump, micro bubbles are not ging away like I thought they would with the water changes.
 
Micro bubbles could very easily be from the chemicals. It's too early to be calling RedSea at this point until youv'e run lots of carbon and virtually all water has been replaced.

Corals don't have near the O2 demands as fish and the fish would definately be the first to go. Unless you had a O2 test kit to confirm at the time, it's like was said Monday morning quarterbacking. Nanos can be tough because you have very little wiggle room when changes occur.

Bacteria can definately consume lots of O2. This is the number one concern when people start using vodka and other carbon sources because the bacteria level increase.
 
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If it makes you feel any better I did worse with the display at the store. I'm doing water changes, GFO and Carbon and took out everything not on the super hardy list. After a few weeks its holding ok but super nasty still. I'm confident both our displays will be back looking pretty in a month or two, WITH some hard lessons learned :)
加油
 
good stuff. run carbon for 5 days. buy carbon from SWE as they have the good stuff. don't buy other brands they don't perform as well as the carbon SWE carries. There is objective data that supports that conclusion. Run carbon for around 5 days and replace as it is basically exhausted. Do water changes. Make sure your water parameters meet your tank's water parameters so there is no shock to inhabitants. Some people advocate large water changes. I do not, but in this situation a large water change may be more beneficial than doing smaller water changes due to something being askew with the water, maybe......
 
I have used that stuff many times, though it is a different brand.

The directions on the bottle said to turn off skimmer and do a 20% water after 24 hours then to turn the skimmer back on.

I have done it this way twice in a week before .

I think your fatal flaw was not doing the water change after 24 hours

After so long in the system that chemical dropped the o2 so low stuff started dying, then taking out the powerheads really just did it in.

Just keep learning as you go and dont give up:)
 
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