Solid Brown Tank, Nasty Smell

reefraiser

Reefing newb
Okay, soooo......this is going to be quite the story.

My tank is approximately 7 weeks old. It is a 75 gallon tank with a built in overflow and I am running a skimmer and sump and have a level 3 Hydor powerhead on the one side. The tank had 4 65w bulbs. Two 420/460 actinic and two 6000/10000k daylights. In my previous post I was told this was not enough for reef tanks or an anemone. So I bought another light that was recommended and it has two 54 watt bulbs I think. It arrived today.

Now for the PROBLEM!
For the past couple of weeks the tank has had a dust-like brown coating on the bottom and on the rocks. I simply cleaned the tank out and changed the filters frequently. This was tolerable and I was told it was normal. Now for the big problem. We returned from vacation and I cleaned the tank. Later that afternoon it was already dirty again. This was unusual. The next day it was solid brown and the water has became cloudy. I removed both of my fish and anemone along with most of the inverts to my old tank which is stable. I then removed the lighting and covered the tank with a blanket to block all light. Today I got home from class and the entire house smells like a huge FART. The tank is so couldy that you can't distinguish the few live rocks I left in it. It smells god awful. What do I do at this point? I am half tempted to empty the whole bastard and start over. I don't understand what would cause all these growths. I have replaced my lights, done frequent water changes recently with distilled water. The only difference between this tank and my old one was that I used sand from the LFS instead of crushed coral.

Anyway, thanks in advance for any input.
 
I will test everything here in a bit but the salinity is good, phosphates were zero, calcium was 480. I am going to re-test the PH and amonia/nitrates/nitrites in a bit. Everything was kosher before I left.
 
What kind of skimmer do you have. If the tank water is brown and smells bad I would think the skimmer would be pulling out some nasty stuff. Has anything died. It sounds like you are having a really bad cycle and algae bloom. I would do a large water change and run a lot of carbon. That should help with the smell.
 
If it was me, I would start over.
I'm not sure how you went about your setup, but I would start with RO/DI water with a good salt mix, some live rock from an established tank and some packaged live sand with some live sand added from an established tank.
Something in your tank went horribly wrong and I would want to erase all chances of anything getting left behind. Set up properly, you shouldn't have any problem like you are having.
 
My initial setup was with Red Sea salt, live rock from my old tank, and the dirty filter from the old tank placed in the sump to introduce bacteria. I monitored the ammonia and saw it spike and fall. I question the sand more than anything. I think that the sand was loaded with silicates or something.

Anyway, I am really considering restarting but I think I am going to try like a 50% water change tonight and see what happens.

***Testing the water right now***
 
yikes that doesnt sound good. i would have to say im with d2mini but thats only cuz im crazy anal about things and wouldnt want anything harmful lurking in the shadows to. but i would say try a fifty percent water change and see what happens. at least you had a stable tank to move your live stock into.
 
Yeah, the empty tank running was an eye sore but now it has become a life saver for some creatures haha.

Okay, so the levels aren't looking too great, ammonia is up, I assume this could be because of the dying mysterious algae.

Ammonia - 1.0
Phosphate - 0
Nitrite - .25
Nitrate - 0
PH - 8.2-8.3
 
i dont know how big of a hurry you are in, i would do a fifty percent water change, wait a week, test the water and do another one. if that doesnt help then i would just start over.
 
Dustin, agreed.....
Nitrites registering are definitely a good indicator of a continued cycle.
I doubt anything died, as you removed your creatures alive you said.

Do the water changes often, keep the skimmer going, and give it some time to see what's up.

I can't imagine that new sand would give you this kind of grief......
Let us know what happens 24-hours after your 50% change.

Good luck (ps....get some Ozium for the fart smell....unless you like it???)
 
I gotta agree.Something has kicked off a cycle.
I forget who it was,but one of guys on the site added new sand,that caused his tank to crash,killing almost all his livestock.
 
Well, I am working on filtering water today, hopefully tomorrow night I will be able to do the switch. The blanket over the top seemed to do the trick. The water is starting to clear up and the skimmer is going crazy now. It had about 1/4 inch in it earlier and I just caught it starting to overflow.

I also added some API algae fix stuff so hopefully that will be the end of the crap.

Thanks for your input. I will keep you posted.
 
That algae fix is probably what caused your skimmer to go crazy.
Its not a good idea to use chemicals for algae in the tank,since they just mask the real reasons for the algae.
 
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