I got a call Monday morning from my girlfriend, who was very worked up, about my fish breathing heavy. I calmed her down by saying that if there was something wrong with my water my starfish would be affected first then my soft/hard corals and that my fish would probably be the least affected. After her description of the other corals and starfish we decided that it was probably because the lights just turned on and that they were nervous that she was staring so close to the tank, bright an early in the morning.
-----The tank is 29gallons, has a fluval 204 canister filter, heater and a Rio Power head, 135watt power compacts, Male and Female Maroon Clown Fish and one Male Golden Midas Blenny…. Hard/Soft coral mix, deep sand bed, Rose Bubble Tipped Anemone, est. December 2003----
Friday night we went out to eat and returned around 8pm… when we looked at my tank, my starfish was missing two legs! I was stunned that exactly what I told her to calm down about was making me nervous. Now that I knew my fish were breathing heavy and my starfish was on its way out I didn’t know what to think. I went to bed and in the morning all of my xenia polyps were dying/dead… very shriveled. The starfish was still alive and hanging on the wall… but moving out of the current. I tested the water…
(I admit I rarely do that, I’ve touched it probably four times since Easter, when I bought it… my reasoning was bad which is that I had a great coralline algae growth and everything introduced into my tank did great I even had budding with my hard corals [frogspawn, candy cane coral] and enormous outbreakish growth from my xenia polyps which were now dead.)
…ok so I tested the water and the nitrate, nitrite and ammonia levels were at zero but my PH was at 7.0! I got real nervous because I knew that if my starfish died for water quality it was because of the PH. I went to my LFS and told them, they asked if I do water changes often, which I do 5gallons every other week… and if I cleaned the sand which I said sure (which means I take out whatever I see that I don’t think a crab would enjoy…) They said that it could be because of dead spots in the tank where no current is getting too… where waste build up. I explained how I have many leather corals that are branching onto two rocks that are big… so it’s hard to move those around to get behind so I just leave them and clean around the other rocks. But since I only have like 5 large rocks I can’t clean too much. I bought a Maxi Jet 1200 for more circulation, with the pre-filter. That was way too much, blowing all my dead polyps off the rock, so I traded it back for a Maxi Jet 600… which works fine (I love the feature to add oxygen into the water, it’s nice.) So we did about 15gallons of water changing throughout the day to get the PH back up and then went to bed.
Sunday morning I’m on my way out to work and we see that my polyps that were still alive on Saturday were now dead. When I was at work my girlfriend took a sample of water to my LFS who told her that all the levels were up from the day before, still LOW PH, but there was a spike because of the die off of the polyps and actually apstaia, which was something I wanted to rid from my tank anyway. So they tell her it’s because of the lack of cleaning the sand this time. And to make sure there is nothing released into the water when I’m not ready, she would have to clean all of the sand and we’d be lucky if anything lived. She tells me this at work, which made me sick (literally) and worried all day. She called our friend Tom who was a great help in setting up my tank, with his experience… and they both went to work moving my tank around and getting Fish/Inverts/Corals out of there for when the sand storm hit.
When it rains it pours, the saying goes… I told you earlier how I have leather corals growing on two rocks and since I’m not prepared for an event like this I have no room to put all my rocks in tanks with lights a heater and some sort of filter… so they have an over stocked 10gallon tank and a super cloudy 29gallon tank with stuff in it… I come home and we try to fix this situation, with the LFS already closed.
10 gallon tank 1: Actinic Lighting, Heater, Rio Power-Head, Large piece of live rock, both Maroon Clown Fish, Golden Midas Blenny, Two Skunk Cleaner Shrimp, Snails/Crabs, Frogspawn (floating), Sponge (floating), Orange Lobo (floating)… over stocked tank…. So I threw together another 10gallon tank.
10 gallon tank 2: 135 Power Compacts, Heater, Smaller Rio Power-Head, Piece of live rock with a Rose Bubble Tip Anemone, and a 18” + Bristle worm (which I want out), Lettuce coral, Candy Cane Coral and Brillo Pad Algae for a filter I took an old penguin HOB filter and took out everything and placed in some small pieces of live rock.
29 gallon tank: It had 7” of water when I got home, we added a lot more water and kept sifting out the “ash” type junk that settled on the sand again, and again, and again… in this tank there was a Toadstool Leather, two Green Finger Leathers, misc. Inverts, and three Peppermint Shrimp whom wanted nothing to do with being caught, a heater, Maxi-Jet 600 with pre-filter, and a Fluval 204 canister filter.
That brings us to today… I’ve done many water changes, ran out of salt, and chromaplex/zooplex… and I went on my way to the fish store when the opened to have my water tested again. This was at noon today… the 29gallon tank was pretty good… low PH just below 8.0 and some trace of nitrates… which I can just do another 5gallon water change to correct. The 10gallon tank with the fish in it has pretty much the same water quality as the 29gallon tank so I’m going to gradually reintroduce the fish and corals back into the tank later tonight…. On the other hand the anemone 10 gallon tank is perfect and has the best quality, I’m not sure if my anemone is going to make it and I don’t want to put a dying animal in my newly cleaned out tank or for my fish to beat up until it dies (since they are really aggressive) so I’m going to see how its doing when I get out of work tonight. I also bought more salt (another 5gallon bucket) and some chromaplex.
There is a bad/good side to this. I messed up by only having one thing to sift my sand, other than some bristle worms. And as far as I can tell that is what made my tank’s levels go crazy, since I haven’t checked the quality in awhile… but since my starfish was new (2weeks… and it was a sudden decline over night, I’m going to say something kicked up some sand and made the problem noticeable) So I lost a starfish, all my xenia polyps and possibly my Rose Bubble Tip Anemone, but I ordered a new tank. By the end of this week I might be the owner of a new 65gallon AGA Aquarium. I figure that this could very well happen with a larger tank but I think that since I know my faults I can make this tank much easer to clean/keep stable. It will have an overflow built in as well…
29 gallon tank: 36x12x18
65 gallon tank: 36x18x22
So there is more height and width to the tank, and I can still put my power compacts on it for now, I’ll just have to move my corals up higher, this is where the photo journal will start when I get the tank in. I’m going to need peoples input for sets ups and options with the sump and other equipment though!!!! Since I never got my sump going on my 29gallon tank I never had a protein skimmer which my new tank will definitely have to have. I also need to know peoples option on what I should do with my anemone, I have no problem leaving it in a 10gallon tank until it recovers, but it wouldn’t take silversides from me today and since I’m going to be moving my corals back into my 29gallon tank I will need to put my compacts on that tank… leaving me with no sufficient lighting to put on the anemone, should I buy 20 compacts for a 10gallon tank??? I don’t know what to do. But thank you for any input/advice/comments/corrections/anything ha-ha….
I’d like the tank to be fully ready to add salt two weeks after I bring it home, this way I can have a two month cycle till my 29gallons 1 year anniversary… so that’s kind of like a present? I don’t know. But thanks for reading; I hope someone learned from my misfortune.
-----The tank is 29gallons, has a fluval 204 canister filter, heater and a Rio Power head, 135watt power compacts, Male and Female Maroon Clown Fish and one Male Golden Midas Blenny…. Hard/Soft coral mix, deep sand bed, Rose Bubble Tipped Anemone, est. December 2003----
Friday night we went out to eat and returned around 8pm… when we looked at my tank, my starfish was missing two legs! I was stunned that exactly what I told her to calm down about was making me nervous. Now that I knew my fish were breathing heavy and my starfish was on its way out I didn’t know what to think. I went to bed and in the morning all of my xenia polyps were dying/dead… very shriveled. The starfish was still alive and hanging on the wall… but moving out of the current. I tested the water…
(I admit I rarely do that, I’ve touched it probably four times since Easter, when I bought it… my reasoning was bad which is that I had a great coralline algae growth and everything introduced into my tank did great I even had budding with my hard corals [frogspawn, candy cane coral] and enormous outbreakish growth from my xenia polyps which were now dead.)
…ok so I tested the water and the nitrate, nitrite and ammonia levels were at zero but my PH was at 7.0! I got real nervous because I knew that if my starfish died for water quality it was because of the PH. I went to my LFS and told them, they asked if I do water changes often, which I do 5gallons every other week… and if I cleaned the sand which I said sure (which means I take out whatever I see that I don’t think a crab would enjoy…) They said that it could be because of dead spots in the tank where no current is getting too… where waste build up. I explained how I have many leather corals that are branching onto two rocks that are big… so it’s hard to move those around to get behind so I just leave them and clean around the other rocks. But since I only have like 5 large rocks I can’t clean too much. I bought a Maxi Jet 1200 for more circulation, with the pre-filter. That was way too much, blowing all my dead polyps off the rock, so I traded it back for a Maxi Jet 600… which works fine (I love the feature to add oxygen into the water, it’s nice.) So we did about 15gallons of water changing throughout the day to get the PH back up and then went to bed.
Sunday morning I’m on my way out to work and we see that my polyps that were still alive on Saturday were now dead. When I was at work my girlfriend took a sample of water to my LFS who told her that all the levels were up from the day before, still LOW PH, but there was a spike because of the die off of the polyps and actually apstaia, which was something I wanted to rid from my tank anyway. So they tell her it’s because of the lack of cleaning the sand this time. And to make sure there is nothing released into the water when I’m not ready, she would have to clean all of the sand and we’d be lucky if anything lived. She tells me this at work, which made me sick (literally) and worried all day. She called our friend Tom who was a great help in setting up my tank, with his experience… and they both went to work moving my tank around and getting Fish/Inverts/Corals out of there for when the sand storm hit.
When it rains it pours, the saying goes… I told you earlier how I have leather corals growing on two rocks and since I’m not prepared for an event like this I have no room to put all my rocks in tanks with lights a heater and some sort of filter… so they have an over stocked 10gallon tank and a super cloudy 29gallon tank with stuff in it… I come home and we try to fix this situation, with the LFS already closed.
10 gallon tank 1: Actinic Lighting, Heater, Rio Power-Head, Large piece of live rock, both Maroon Clown Fish, Golden Midas Blenny, Two Skunk Cleaner Shrimp, Snails/Crabs, Frogspawn (floating), Sponge (floating), Orange Lobo (floating)… over stocked tank…. So I threw together another 10gallon tank.
10 gallon tank 2: 135 Power Compacts, Heater, Smaller Rio Power-Head, Piece of live rock with a Rose Bubble Tip Anemone, and a 18” + Bristle worm (which I want out), Lettuce coral, Candy Cane Coral and Brillo Pad Algae for a filter I took an old penguin HOB filter and took out everything and placed in some small pieces of live rock.
29 gallon tank: It had 7” of water when I got home, we added a lot more water and kept sifting out the “ash” type junk that settled on the sand again, and again, and again… in this tank there was a Toadstool Leather, two Green Finger Leathers, misc. Inverts, and three Peppermint Shrimp whom wanted nothing to do with being caught, a heater, Maxi-Jet 600 with pre-filter, and a Fluval 204 canister filter.
That brings us to today… I’ve done many water changes, ran out of salt, and chromaplex/zooplex… and I went on my way to the fish store when the opened to have my water tested again. This was at noon today… the 29gallon tank was pretty good… low PH just below 8.0 and some trace of nitrates… which I can just do another 5gallon water change to correct. The 10gallon tank with the fish in it has pretty much the same water quality as the 29gallon tank so I’m going to gradually reintroduce the fish and corals back into the tank later tonight…. On the other hand the anemone 10 gallon tank is perfect and has the best quality, I’m not sure if my anemone is going to make it and I don’t want to put a dying animal in my newly cleaned out tank or for my fish to beat up until it dies (since they are really aggressive) so I’m going to see how its doing when I get out of work tonight. I also bought more salt (another 5gallon bucket) and some chromaplex.
There is a bad/good side to this. I messed up by only having one thing to sift my sand, other than some bristle worms. And as far as I can tell that is what made my tank’s levels go crazy, since I haven’t checked the quality in awhile… but since my starfish was new (2weeks… and it was a sudden decline over night, I’m going to say something kicked up some sand and made the problem noticeable) So I lost a starfish, all my xenia polyps and possibly my Rose Bubble Tip Anemone, but I ordered a new tank. By the end of this week I might be the owner of a new 65gallon AGA Aquarium. I figure that this could very well happen with a larger tank but I think that since I know my faults I can make this tank much easer to clean/keep stable. It will have an overflow built in as well…
29 gallon tank: 36x12x18
65 gallon tank: 36x18x22
So there is more height and width to the tank, and I can still put my power compacts on it for now, I’ll just have to move my corals up higher, this is where the photo journal will start when I get the tank in. I’m going to need peoples input for sets ups and options with the sump and other equipment though!!!! Since I never got my sump going on my 29gallon tank I never had a protein skimmer which my new tank will definitely have to have. I also need to know peoples option on what I should do with my anemone, I have no problem leaving it in a 10gallon tank until it recovers, but it wouldn’t take silversides from me today and since I’m going to be moving my corals back into my 29gallon tank I will need to put my compacts on that tank… leaving me with no sufficient lighting to put on the anemone, should I buy 20 compacts for a 10gallon tank??? I don’t know what to do. But thank you for any input/advice/comments/corrections/anything ha-ha….
I’d like the tank to be fully ready to add salt two weeks after I bring it home, this way I can have a two month cycle till my 29gallons 1 year anniversary… so that’s kind of like a present? I don’t know. But thanks for reading; I hope someone learned from my misfortune.