Disaster button stuck on repeat!

[Flashy Fins]

Came home to a disaster tonight. 😫

A day ago, my QT tank looked like this, just with a bit more algae on the glass (pic taken a few weeks ago):

I left home before the lights came on this morning, so I didn’t pay it any attention and can’t say what it looked like then. Came home around 7 to this:

If you’re having trouble making much out, that’s exactly the experience I had. I noticed it was incredibly cloudy and discolored, then noticed corals stripped of their flesh. Sure enough, a closer look reveals skeletons of a lobo, trachy, & scoly; the ones that appear to have some tissue left did not really; it slid right off as soon as I went to grab them out of the tank. 

I was able to yank out (and put into a bucket of clean water from my display) the sun coral, a grab bag frag (acan’ish, not sure what it is), the candy cane coral (half the polyps dead, half hanging on), a fire shrimp, an urchin, and 2 of 3 rock flower nems (the 3rd is lodged in the rock; can’t get him off). Dead are the lobo, trachy, & scoly, the largest of the colorful corals I bought on Black Friday to spruce up my tank after the last disaster, a move that went poorly and killed most of my corals (more on that below). The starfish melted in the middle and felt lifeless when I picked him up, so he’s presumed dead. 

I don’t know for sure what happened, but I have a guess...

There is a laundry basket next to the tank, and I remember I sprayed a sweater with stain remover last night. I was very careful (or so I thought) to move several steps away from the basket and to spray in the other direction, but I can’t imagine it would do a tank good if any got in.

The other possibility is that it was a problem with the tank not being fully cycled. I started with live rock from a local shop and determined it cycled when a couple of weeks of heavy ghost feeding (dumping in tons of pellet food) failed to raise the ammonia level (I figured the live rock was working and processed it; I should’ve double-checked by testing for nitrates but admittedly didn’t do that). I removed all the rotting food, did a massive water change (90%+), added a HOB filter with carbon, and went coral shopping.

I lean more towards the stain remover being the culprit, because the corals looked perfect up until today. Would a non-cycled tank look fine between Black Friday and now, then suddenly crash in a matter of less than 24 hours? I don’t know. Almost no food has gone into the tank during this time.

 

Accidents/mishaps/dumb mistakes during my move in early November:

Container leaked water all over my car (unbeknownst to me) and left some corals without water for hours (a tube nem actually survived this, although it still looks rough)

Temperature mismatch between the buckets that had been in my freezing cold car (long night; moving sucks), versus the overheated water in the new tank. I filled it the day before and overlooked the high temp setting on a heater I tossed in to warm freezing ro/di water, so corals went from 68’ish to 80’ish; I tried to cool the new water and acclimate corals slowly, but that meant they were in shallow floating trays snuggled up next to one another for a day, which some did not handle well

Salinity mismatch - in my frazzled state after discovering the problems above, I started panicking that everything was going wrong and forgot that I was supposed to use water in buckets from my old tank to fill the new tank the rest of the way (10 gallons in a 40 breeder that holds around 46 gallons); instead, I dumped in too much freshwater, not only lowering the salinity too much but also forcing the corals into entirely new water (stupid mistake, 100% my fault) 

 & a few other things I’ve either forgotten or blocked from memory. I was so tired after a long night of cleaning my old place and packing up the rest of my crap (my furniture was moved on a prior day, but there’s always a lot of last minute stuff your last day in a place), I think my head was not clear, but mostly it seems I’m just really freaking terrible at this whole reefing thing. 

That’s not to say I’m giving up. The silver lining here is that some corals I bought today were not in the aquarium. I had too many things going on and no time to dip and acclimate, so they’re still in the bag. I’ll deal with them tomorrow when I figure out what my plan is. Unfortunately, they’re nowhere near as flashy as that scoly or trachy, but what’s done is done and what’s dead is dead, so I’m trying to shift the focus to what I can save. 

Long day. Had several mishaps unrelated to reefing, as well, and I just needed to vent about this one to people who understand how much this kind of thing sucks. Even when it’s our own stupidity, we don’t intend to flush money down the toilet when we buy corals or kill living creatures. It’s frustrating. 

Time for sleep. Tagging @Gumby since it’s too late to text, and he’ll hopefully have some ideas for me tomorrow. I think I should probably not use the tank or rock this disaster happened in, if the chance of contamination from the laundry spray is likely. Perhaps I’ll pull old rock from my display and stick it in a new tank.

[Flashy Fins]

Sorry if the font size appears large in some spots and small in others; whenever I copy and paste to rearrange paragraphs, it happens.

[milesmiles902]

That's scary.

I hope it gets better, Cherany. You don't deserve that.

[TheClark]

Awww that stinks, heck of a day sorry!!

[Jeremevans]

That's a bummer. Sorry to hear.


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[youcallmenny]

Whoa! That's brutal.  Sorry that happened.  Did you test salinity/alk to see if something was out of whack?  Too late for those corals but forewarned is forarmed in the future. 

[Flashy Fins]

6 hours ago, youcallmenny said:

Did you test salinity/alk to see if something was out of whack?  Too late for those corals but forewarned is forarmed in the future. 

No, because even if one was out of whack, I wouldn’t know why, and I don’t plan to reuse the water or rock in case it’s contaminated. I’d be surprised if either was off, though. 

Edit: checked the salinity (haven’t emptied the tank of water yet, just rock in there), and it’s pretty high. 1.030 😑

[Flashy Fins]

Seriously, I’m going to rip all my hair out before year’s end. Just came home to find this disaster in the display. I was standing there admiring how a few corals are starting to bounce back, focusing on the positive... then noticed this. 😢

My poor forktail blenny, one of my best/favorite fish. And of course, his body was wrapped all the way around, so trying to pull him out only got me the body and left his decapitated head inside. I could only see the fangs from that side and had to use tweezers down his mouth to remove.

I guess I jinxed myself with this thread title. Ugh. 

[Flashy Fins]

No idea if I need to worry about any poison released from his demise, but the tank otherwise looks as it did before.

[albertareef]

Oh man... so sorry to see this.  Been a rough few weeks for you for sure.  Hope things stabilize soon.  Wish I could offer you some replacements but, as you know, I'm still trying to dig out myself.  Let me know if I can do anything to help.

[Flashy Fins]

New mystery. Was breaking down the crashed QT tonight and found this white chunk on the heater. It popped right off and crumbled easily. Too opaque to be salt creep; I confirmed by stirring into a glass of water and getting a 0 reading on the refractometer. WTH is this? Looks like a soap sliver, but it wasn’t slimy and did not cause suds when wet, so that’s a no.

[TheClark]

8 hours ago, Flashy Fins said:

New mystery. Was breaking down the crashed QT tonight and found this white chunk on the heater. It popped right off and crumbled easily. Too opaque to be salt creep; I confirmed by stirring into a glass of water and getting a 0 reading on the refractometer. WTH is this? Looks like a soap sliver, but it wasn’t slimy and did not cause suds when wet, so that’s a no.

Could be calcium carbonate?  Did you hit it with vinegar?  RHF article looks good on this topic:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-07/rhf/index.php#3

 

[youcallmenny]

My bet is calcium carbonate.  Yikes, what a week!  We've all been there to one degree or another. 

[albertareef]

5 hours ago, TheClark said:

Could be calcium carbonate?  Did you hit it with vinegar?  RHF article looks good on this topic:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-07/rhf/index.php#3

 

 

5 hours ago, youcallmenny said:

My bet is calcium carbonate.  Yikes, what a week!  We've all been there to one degree or another. 

This would be my guess as well.  Sorry for all the struggles lately Cherany.

[Flashy Fins]

On 12/11/2018 at 7:41 AM, TheClark said:

Could be calcium carbonate?  Did you hit it with vinegar?  RHF article looks good on this topic:

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-07/rhf/index.php#3

 

Whoa, information overload in that article! 😅  It mentions that it can clog pumps, but I don’t think that was an issue in this case. Would this have otherwise caused the tank to crash as it did? 

I don’t have any of the precipitate blob left, but I’ll clean the heater with vinegar. I’m assuming that’s what you meant?

[Blue Z Reef]

Have you checked the heater itself? I had one crack and almost nuke my tank, something leached out of it (not the temp change). Just something to double check. I don’t think the calcium carbonate is an issue.

[Flashy Fins]

4 hours ago, Blue Z Reef said:

Have you checked the heater itself? I had one crack and almost nuke my tank, something leached out of it (not the temp change). Just something to double check. I don’t think the calcium carbonate is an issue.

I looked it over and couldn’t see anything amiss, aside from the calcium carbonate on it. I’m nervous to use it in another tank, though, so I plan on tossing it. 

[Jeremevans]

I agree it looks like a calcium deposit. That usually is related to dosing two part in the wrong proportion and having the CA level rise but could have to do with the high salinity. For what it's worth that is most likely to happen on a heater just like you saw.

On a site note, whenever you get up and running I can give you a few frags if you want to test out the tank before buying the high end stuff.




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[SuncrestReef]

The calcium carbonate can also precipitate if your 2-part liquids are dosed in close proximity or in low flow water.  I use a small powerhead in my sump right below the dosing tubes so the liquids are rapidly dispersed before they have a chance to precipitate.

[Flashy Fins]

Thanks, everyone. I don’t do any sort of dosing, so I can really only shrug and hope I don’t have more problems coming. 

[Mandinga]

That stuff builds up on pretty much anything that gets hot, and the more carbonate available in the system, the more buildup overtime. Had this stuff destroy my pumps in the past.

 

 

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[Flashy Fins]

3 hours ago, Mandinga said:

That stuff builds up on pretty much anything that gets hot, and the more carbonate available in the system, the more buildup overtime.

Tank hadn’t been set up long, but the heater definitely would’ve been super hot to touch, b/c it’s having to work hard to heat the water in the cold garage space it’s in. I set up a new tank with a new heater and used water and rock from my display, so hopefully it’s smoother going this time.