Ace25's 75G Build Thread

Well.. all good things must come to an end it seems.. my good luck finally ran out and the last 2 days my tank has been crashing. :( Already lost 1 $80 acro coral and a few heads off of my duncan. I have a few ideas on what caused it but nothing concrete. Several changes have happened in the last 2 weeks that could have all contributed.

1. Added a used chiller, hooked it up, then 24 hours later get a call from the person telling me "BTW, I had flatworms in my tank, not sure if they were AEFW, thought you should know" after I already did just a quick rinse of the chiller and hooked it up. If there were any worms or eggs in the chiller my quick flush probably didn't kill them.

2. Changed salt to Reef Crystals against my better judgement, every time I use that salt something really bad happens to my tank, happens way to often for me to call is a coincidence.

3. SCWD broke on my closed loop only putting flow out one side, the side that had the Acro that died. I thought the acro died just because it was being blasted by flow all of the sudden, but now I am not so sure.

4. Over the weekend removed all my zoas and mushrooms I could get out and used an exacto knife to cut out the others I could get to... which released nasty stuff in the water when I cut them. I did have 2 new bags of Chemi-Pure running in the sump and did a big waterchange after so I doubt that was the cause.

So far the damage is just limited to 2 corals, an SPS acro and an LPS Duncan, which kind of rules out AEFW on the duncan. Needless to say I am a little depressed and running around the house like a chicken with his head cut off. I did all the normal water tests and I know this is cliche, but everything is good. 0/0/2/0 Am/Ni/Na/PO4, Alk @ 9, CA at 500, and Mg at 1300. I don't suspect water quality is the issue, I suspect flow change and possible bad critters as the cause, but not completely sure. I am mixing SW right now and will do a 50% waterchange tonight at 10pm when the lights go off just so I can sleep tonight, but unfortunately I will be using more Reef Crystals salt.
 
Oh ya, I also changed out my RowaPhos in the last week, which I have read is also known to cause RTN on SPS corals, which is exactly what happened to my crayola acro. So just one more "cause" to throw out there.

So far, I can't see anything wrong with any other corals today, but 2 days ago when I first noticed my crayola acro not looking good it just had a slight dead spot at the base, within 48 hours the entire coral tissue disingrated, so it happened very fast (hense the term RTN, Rapid Tissue Necrosis).

The 2 heads on the duncan that died off were getting rubbed by a mushroom and was losing that battle. I removed the mushroom, but it appears a little to late for 2 of the heads.

I am really hoping these 2 things are just spot problems and not a problem with the tank, but I can't be certain at this point. I never had 2 different types of corals go from looking good to looking so bad in such a short time, but I am hoping and leaning towards flow problems still being the reason since both corals were placed where it had random flow and then all of the sudden the duncan got none and the acro got 100%.

So.. scary question, how long can fish survive out of water without any long term effects? Reason I ask is I can't replace the SCWD without draining my tank completely. I can't take out the fish unless I take out the rocks which adds hours to the process. If I could drain the tank, swap out the SCWD with a PVC T in around 60 seconds then fill the tank back up I could do the repair in under 10 minutes, but if I have to remove the rock and fish it is going to take hours.
 
Well i dont know how long a fish can last out of water but i hope everything turns out well, good luck.
 
Thanks, I hope someone has the answer I want to hear. ;)

I am wondering if it would be more stressful tearing down the tank and removing the fish vs having them flop on the sand for a minute. My SCWD is attached with just hose clamps that I can loosen before I drain the tank, then the second it is drained I can pull off the SCWD and slap a T in its place really fast and then start filling the tank right back up. Takes me about 3 minutes to drain the tank, 1 minute to do the work, and 5 minutes to fill it back up. I am hoping if I do this in the morning when the majority of my fish (wrasses) are still in bed/sand and wont be too disturbed. Only my engineer goby and Potters angel along with my other gobies would be my biggest worry being out of water. About 3 years ago my engineer jumped out of my tank once and I didn't notice for 10 minutes because I was in another room and heard it. I ran out and looked what the noise was but didn't see anything right away because he wiggled under my subwoofer next to my tank, but he survived just fine even being covered in cat hair.

I just need to get the water level below my PVC frame my rocks are on so the sand will still have all the water in it. If I don't drain the tank and pull off the SCWD all the water will pour out my closed loop holes which in just above sand level so I have to drain the tank. I had a T on it before but some stupid reason I put a SCWD on when I re-setup my tank in December, and was in such a hurry I neglected to put valves on each side so I could remove the SCWD without draining the tank. Within hours of getting it all up and running I knew that mistake was going to cost me down the road. SCWD lasted a whopping 5 months before breaking.
 
Don't you have any containers to put the fish in? Seems like you need to get behind the tank to do the fix.
 
Idk if i am missing something but can u remove some water into a container or something and place the fish into that until u finish removing the SCWD? I know it might not be fun caching the fish
 
I dont think it would be a problem. If nothing else put some egg crate over the top of the tank in case of jumpers. As long as the lights are off you should not have to worry about the wrasse.
 
The problem is, I can't get any of my fish out without taking out the rock. I am not about to try putting a net in there around all my corals or else I will end up with 1000 coral frags and no fish in the net.

Plan was to drain the water into 3 32G trashcans, do the repair, and pump the water right back in vs draining some of the water, removing rock and corals into multiple rubbermaids, then catch the fish, drain the rest, do repair, put some water back in and try and stack the rocks again (we know that never goes well, especially in a hurry) then put the fish back in. Seems like a lot more stress on everything doing it that way vs the fish flopping on the sand for 60 seconds.. but I don't know if that is true, just hoping that is the less stressful method.
 
Maybe you should install some unions and check valves in the lines along with a ball valve so you could make repairs if needed.
 
I wouldn't want my fish flopping around in the sand, reason being without enough water that sand will act as an abrasive much more than it already is, it'll be in their eyes...etc.

Would you rather be picked up and put into a small closet for 20 minutes, or would you rather be stuck on your side in the mud? I recently acclimated a fish in a 5g bucket, the bag did not have enough water for the fish to swim, instead he laid on his side and flopped violently until I tilted the bucket and it gave him enough water to be upright and swim, he was visibly far less stressed being able to swim.

Should prepare for your repair job not going as planned and running into more issues, regardless of how straight forward the repair should be, just to protect your investments.

As for your salts, do you purchase them online or locally?
 
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