I'm not really all that new, but I seem to have nothing but problems. To make it short, I had equipment failure about 4 or 5 months ago due to an electrical storm and everything in the tank died (I was out of town). The tank was drained, new sand was put in, the live rock was scrubbed, and then we let the tank cycle a few weeks. I slowly added some coral, some were ok, some didn't make it, I eventually added snails (I had some surviving snails already in the tank from before) and shrimp (two big ones with claws, 2 blood shrimp, and 4 cleaners), and they all died, some of the snails died as well, I put 3 fishes in total, two clownfish and one coral beauty, only one of the clowns survived (he's doing pretty well, but the other two died within 24 hours). As I continued to add coral, some didn't do as well, some did, however, since last night, everything (except the clownfish) is looking pretty bad, a couple of corals have already died. They've tested the water and it tests fine, the salinity is a little high (between 1.026 and 1.028), my service guy uses natural sea water, the chiller is working so the temperature is anywhere between 77 and 78 degrees. Some suggested that there may be an oversaturation of something maybe in the rocks which is causing all this damage, is this even possible? Does anybody have any ideas? Thanks
Need lots of help with my tank
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little_fish
Moderator
Can you list off all of your water parameters, the corals you tried, equipment on the tank, and how long you waited between adding each fish. Also have you tested for stray voltage?
I had a new light put in after the power failure. There are a lot of of power surges in my area, so I also have a battery backup which has held up pretty well so far.
pH 8.5
Sal 1.026
Nitrate 0
nitrite 10ppm
Phosphate .1
Calcium 500 ppm
Alk 8.8 dkh
Magnesium 1500
I got these readings today, from what I understand calcium, phosphate and nitrite are a little high, the pH is also high, I probably won't be able to get a water change for a couple of days, so is there anything I can do in the meantime?
I don't know all the names of the corals, I've got a bubble coral, red and green donut coral, pink long tentacle plate coral, australian lobo, a brain coral, frogsprawn, and some other ones. They all seem to be pretty stressed, the plate coral and the bubble coral look the worse, actually I think the plate coral is dying, some branches of the frogsprawn corals look dead. The clownfish seems to be doing good. Any suggestions?
I added the two clownfish at the same time, one died. I waited a few weeks before adding the coral beauty, which died the next day. This is a 90 gal tank, I believe a 10 gal sump, 48" solar extreme t5, I don't know the pump manufacturer, protein skimmer, two little fishies phosban reactor 150, aqua euro usa chiller. I don't know what you mean by stray voltage, I do know we have a lot of power surges in my area, but I do have a battery backup which works pretty well.
Any help is appreciated.
marcah
Reef enthusiast
as far as I can see you have two things really that are killing stuff in the tank.. nitrite is a quick killer of fish and a ph over 8.42 is a killer of coral...Also what is your ammonia levels? they do make some detoxifying agents to help but waterchanges will do the trick..
little_fish
Moderator
From the test I did, it appears to be zero. They did a 15-20% water change less than a week ago
Northstar24
The Tang Herder
PH is on the high end, but the larger issue is the nitrite - it should be reading 0. Anything above that is poisonous to fish and inverts, but especially inverts
Sorry, I misread the test results: nitrite is zero, nitrate is 10 ppm
