no circulation for 25 hours

[bennla]

OK...I just had my 60G tank set up and added the live rock (80lbs) and sand. Tank ran around 6 hours before noticing a leak in the return line bulkhead fitting.
In attempting to correct leak, the bulkhead snapped. Seeing that this happened late night, I was not able to get the part until the following day. Tank sat 25 hours without circulating.

When tank was repaired and up and running again the water was very cloudy. I noticed many inhabitants of the live sand and rock to have perished :death: . In the following days a while filmy mucus has formed on almost all the live rock. Tested the water and ammonia is through the roof.

I'm changing 15 gallons today hoping that this will help. Is my sand and rock still alive? Do I need to throw it out and start again?

Please help!

One Stinky Tank :frustrat:

 

[bkv1997]

well i would do a couple more fairly large water changes..one a day for the next few days.

Remove anything that has died, snails etc... might want to take a power head stir up anything off the LR and then vacuum the dirty water as part of your WC.

Let us know how it goes... I would do that for atleast 2 to 3 days....

when you say thru the roof what is the PPM.

For future reference, get a power head so you can atleast have circulation inside the tank if this happens again.

Hope all goes well.

 

[fishman]

Your ammo could have been up because of die-off .Buy you a turkey baster at the market .Blast all that white film off of everything and clean your filter media the next day after the water has cleared up.Keep going you have come to far to turn back now .Do you a good water change in a couple days .Keep testing your water parameters Everybody will make mistakes and have trouble with there system sooner or later .Keep triing .

 

[jhnrb]

Do water changes and let the system settle a while clean up any debris and use a pump or turkey baster to blow off the rock once a week like a storm and just let things settle in. keep testing and when system has fully cycled and amonia, nitrites are 0 and nitrates are low below 5ppm you can start to add again. go slowly and be patient. test test test and keep a log. you will know shortly when all is well again.

 

[bennla]

Started today by removing the muckiest rocks and brushing them down and placing them back in the tank. Installed a rotating powerhead and agree that water changes are necessary. Changing out 20 gallons today and removing all the dead stuff when I see it.Two days later will change another 15. Work schedule has got me tied up.

Boy, did those rocks stink. The ammonia level was off the charts by far. Dark green became black.

Is there anyway that the rock still has living things still in there?

Thanks for all the advice. Will keep you all posted.

 

[bkv1997]

Question where did you get the 80 pounds of live rock?

Was it cured already?

Let us know more about the live rock you bought.

Also what else besides the live rock did you add?

Thanks
Brandon

 

[bennla]

Only live sand and rock was added. We got the rocks from a guy at a LFS (I assume he bought it from downtown LA). The rock was a combo of Figi, Marshall Island, and Tonga branches. He says the rock was fully cured. It had small feather dusters and sponges already growing on it as well as purple coraling algea.

The guy from our LFS has 3 reef tanks of his own and bought his live rock from the same location so I guess it's safe.

We did a 20 gallon water change yesterday and today we notice light green, bright green as well as yellow brown growing on the rock. Some of the rocks also look brightly white which we did not notice before. I will take some pics and post for you to see. Is all this good?

We were very scared today because power was out in most of L.A. but fortunately our location was not affected. :bounce:

 

[Chris]

You will probably lose most of the creatures on the live rock over time anyways. Your rocks and sands main feature other than looks is to help convert ammonia to nitrites. It should be fine, the bacteria was probably not all killed off and will replenish itself. Just keep doing water changes.

 

[jhnrb]

very good (strong) circulation is one of the best medicines now to help your rock bounce back. be patient and keep up the maitenance. do not add anything until your system has settled and then start with clean up crew. snails and crabs if you like etc. not too many though. your amonia and nitrites need to be 0 and nitrates below 5ppm before adding anything to the system that is alive. and add slowly when you do like a couple snails and or herbivor crabs at 1st and one thing at a time for the larger items. hope something here helps. the white is bleached or dead coral. it will eventually repopulate so not to worry at this time, just be patient and keep up the water changes.