ahreno Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Well I dont know if this post will show up or not since i'm still probationary or whatever... If you didn't read my previous introductory post, i'll paraphrase: I just bought a house and it came with a 300 gallon tank and i'm all but a complete newbie. I came home today from 5 days back in wisconsin for the holidays.... 80+% of my corral is dead. I had just added a sea apple before i left and i'm thinking it died and killed all my corral. something definately died and spike my ammonia levels up to 1.0-2.0 ad that caused a domino effect. I think i lost close to $1000 worth of corral - there were some beautiful pieces in there. Almost all the corral is gone/dead... hoping to save some of the green star stuff... but it's not looking so hot. The weird thing is that the fish all look ok... a couple are missing (haven't seen my mandarain fish, a gobie or two) but the naso and yellow tangs look healthy, a chromi or two has some raw looking spots on them and the others (flame angel, lawnmower blenny, coral beuty, clown etc...) are still alive. So today i had aqua serene come check it out and Austin helped me figure out what was dead and what might be close to salvageable. then i proceeded to do about 110 gallon water change and will do that again tomorrow, followed by some nightly 50 gallon changes through the week. my roommate was watching the tank / feeding and had mentioned to me that the corral didn't look happy but i guess there was a major communication error to the degree of the unhappiness... no more roommates watching the fish tank! I almost cried when i walked in the house and saw it today... i feel so bad and ****ty. I know $1000 worth of corral may not be that much to some of you, but for me it will take years to replace it all! If anyone wants to come see the tank and offer their tips i live over near 5th and polk... pm/msn/aim me for address... i'll be around all day sunday.... would love to meet some other fish people in eugene... aim: ahreno msn:ahreno@hotmail.com Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dstoneburg Posted November 25, 2007 Share Posted November 25, 2007 Ill come by, have a suprise for you as well Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahreno Posted November 26, 2007 Author Share Posted November 26, 2007 Thanks for stopping by tonight... and i can't express my thanks enough for that pump! I didn't really get a chance to look at it while you were here but now that i checked it out... thank you much! It was nice of you to come over and check out my tank and let me pick your brain... hopefully i can swing this tank around and have you back over when it's looking good. again, thank you for the pump, let me know when/if you want it back... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
180Brandy Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 Hello and welcome to the site!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Nyles Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 Sorry for your losses, nothing I hate more than coming back from being gone and having something like that happen, If your GSP does die let me know and I would be happy to get you some more from one of my tanks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahreno Posted November 26, 2007 Author Share Posted November 26, 2007 Thanks for the offer Nyles... dstoneburg had very positive things to say about you when he stopped by last night... Think i could twist your arm to come check out my situation (being a newbie in this situation with this big of a tank leaves me scratching my head sometimes)... i could pay or have cold beer and food or i'm open to other trades (work) as well... If not, thats cool too, i know everyone is busy these days especially with the holidays. I might take you up on the gsp offer... i have/had a lot in the tank... it still feels pretty solid but it doesn't open up at all... not sure what to do... if it's dead it should obviously come out, but if it's still alive i'd like to keep it in. I'm not sure what direction i want to take my tank... since all the corral is dead, the option to switch to fish only is an interesting idea... gotta get my tank stable though before i start making those decisions.... So saturday i did 110 gallons or so worth of water changes, unfortunately i did them in 50 gallon batches (didn't take all 100 out at once)... Yesterday i did about 90 gallons all at once and plan to do about 40 or so tonight and as often this week as possible. My ammonia level doesn't seem to be dropping... it's staying right around 2.0 all the other levels (nitrate, nitrite, PH) look fine. i'm sure there are dead things in the tank that i can't find which may be the cause for the ammonia staying up it just seems odd that the level hasn't dropped at all even with all the new water going in. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Newreefer02 Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 I hate to say it but maybe you should just do a tare down and re build everything that way you can see everything! I have helped my buddy do it on his 90G when he moved and with his 210G no and it's not fun but sometimes it is worth it. The est thing about doing that is you get to set the tank up how you want instead of how anyone else had it. But eaither way thats a tough call I love my sps, lps, and bta's so i would probably just slowly rebuild the reef rather than goin just fish, but thats just me. Derek Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dsoz Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 That is so sad to hear. I understand about the price of the lost corals. I am on a budget and I only get $20 a month now to spend on new tank stuff (I also get to buy 1 T5 bulb a month so when the time comes to change it does not hit the checkbook so hard). I had a $30 frag go missing last week and I tore my entire tank (only a 75g) apart to look for the stupid thing. The main reason is that I got it at the coral farmers market last summer, and there is only one other person in the Portland area that has a frag of this colony (that I know of). That makes that frag my centerpiece. It is not even that great to look at. dsoz Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay Posted November 26, 2007 Share Posted November 26, 2007 Wish you were in Vancouver. I am still trying to thin out some stuff. Im all with the tear down and redo. This way you know whats what. If you have a DSB you can either wash the bejesus out of the sand or buy new and then you will have the awesome tank you want when you are done. I bet some people here will babysit your livestock while you do it. Jay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahreno Posted November 26, 2007 Author Share Posted November 26, 2007 what is a DSB? I was thinking about trying to find a temp home for a couple of my fish, i have (what i consider) a very beautiful (blonde?) naso tang and a couple angels that i'd hate to see get sick... but on the same hand, the tank probably shouldn't be getting worse, only better, so they've hopefully made i through the hard times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dstoneburg Posted November 27, 2007 Share Posted November 27, 2007 DSB is deep sand bed, depending on what you want to do with your tank. Sand sifters eat the microfauna in the DSB making it near useless. Alot of people chose to do a DSB in their refugium which works great. IIRC he was using crushed coral. The tank setup is outstanding and anyone that has some time should check it out, the gentlemen who set it up truly spared no expense. He went all out. Lemme know what you decide to do, ill be down to help. If you have the time I think the best thing for you to do is... - Find a home for the fish, I think the only one I would try to keep is the naso considering it is just beautiful and expensive. The others are realativly cheap and easy to replace. I have a 30g ill loan you so you can keep a few fish if youd like. All you would need is a heater, ill loan you the filters and tank and lights. - Throw the LR into those trashcans with a heater and powerhead and put the lid on for a week or two. This is going to take care of the algae easily. Plus it will give you a place to store the rock while you work on the tank. - Replace the crushed coral with sand. Livesand will be expensive as hell, I would go against live sand. Use regular and seed with a few cups from peoples tanks, which im sure most are more then happy to contribute. - Take this time to buff the tank. - Add a refugium to your sump. Now why do this? - First the curshed coral is going to just kill you. By Thomas712 Most of us will not use crushed coral because it is a large substrate that traps the fish waste and uneaten food that has to be vacuumed before it creates nitrates, which it will anyway. Crushed coral does not provide a very good biological zone, and many tanks are setup with CC from the get go through lack of knowledge or because it is the only substrate that an LFS sells and tells you that it is all you need, using a selling point of CC has buffering power. I have personally battled nitrates over 100 ppm during my days of CC and UGF doing frequent large water changes. So many of us have been there and had high nitrates, did a water change to lower them and they were back in a couple of days. CC has sharp edges, which is undesirable for inverts, like anemones walking around, pods or worms. No getting around it CC is high maintenance and can lead to poor water quality, frequent maintenance, sick livestock, algae blooms and more. Sand on the other hand has more benefits. These include having far more surface area thereby making it able to handle a higher bio load of bacteria. It is less dangerous to your infauna and has a more natural look in the tank. If going with a DSB Deep Sand Bed you can have other benefits as well like finishing the denitrification or providing sand sifting, burrowing, or tunneling fish and critters a place to play. The denitrification process predominantly occurs in deeper substrates and in areas of stagnant flow where oxygen levels are depressed. And this is why deep sand beds are effective as a nitrogen export mechanism. As water slowly diffuses deeper, aerobic organisms strip all available oxygen for respiration. In the deep, oxygen-deprived layers, denitrifying anaerobes are given the opportunity to convert nitrogen compounds into nitrogenous gases, which escape via tiny bubble out of the aquarium. I believe this process can also work on a limited basis in shallow sand beds. My sand bed is no more than 2 inches deep in some spots. - The algae, since it has overun the tank is going to be tough to take care of. It can be done, you just need pristine water conditions and a way to export nutrients such as a macro-algae - Aquascaping the LR has got to be one of the most fun things I did with my tank. And I can only imagine how fun it would be having a 300g to do it to! Not to mention your into graphic design, I bet it would come out amazing. Theres a ton im leaving out, but I garuntee you if you can find the time to redo the setup you would be very happy you chose to do so. You would then the know ins and outs of the tank. If you do decide to tear-down and rebuild, I would be interested in purchasing the Yellow Tang from you. Def try to sell all the fish on here before you resort to trading it to the LFS as you will get much more from us then them. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay Posted November 27, 2007 Share Posted November 27, 2007 Very very well put Dstoneburg. He is exactly right. If you have crushed coral lose it asap as your many water changes you have been doing are all for not plus expensive salt. You need the DSB of fine sugar type sand or smaller. 3 inches is about minimum for nutrient export. Look here to learn more about DSB. http://www.wetwebmedia.com/deepsandbeds.htm Use this wetwebmedia.com google search engine to search their website for any question you may have. It is a huge huge huge source of info to soak up. Be sure to check the box that says search their site not the web. Get the refugium figured out soon also. Make sure you have lots of current in your tank. I go by as long as the sand is not getting blown too much by the powerheads its not too much current. My tank has lots of flow. The current will help the liverock filter the water and help your corals shed slime when they need to as well as deliver food to the corals and filter feeders. Also the current keeps the fish poop and other mulm detritus suspended so it can go down your overflow and get mechanically filtered by a filter sock or skimmed out. Also keeps your sand bed from being a nutrient sink although if your sand is live with worms and micro fauna they will help keep the sand clean. I am a user of nassarious snails that burrow the sand and eat crud. Probibly have 20 in my 120 gallon tank and thats not too many to have IMO. Get your tank stable....as in constant temp of between 78 and 81, Cal and alk and PH stable without swings one way or the other. Lighting needs to be on the same time and out the same time all the time. Preferably on 2 timers with the actinic on 1.5-2 hours ahead of the halides and actinics on 1 hour longer after the daylight halides shut down. Lets see....change the carbon every 2 weeks or 3 at the latest. Hope this has helped some questions. I know what it was like getting started...expensive and frustrating but look forward to many years of beautiful aquariums if you stick it out and learn the basics. Dont jump into difficult corals right away. Do soft corals and LPS they are beautiful and easy to keep. If you get up to vancouver let me know and I will give you some to get your tank stocked back up If the tank is new to you do you know how old the bulbs are in your lights? If not I would replace them also when the funds permit. Get the refugium going and use this bulb to grow Cheato algae to export the phosphates and nitrates. http://www.melevsreef.com/fuge_bulb.html Good luck Jay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jay Posted November 27, 2007 Share Posted November 27, 2007 You are useing a Reverse Osmosis unit to make your water right? Checked the output with a TDS meter also right? Jay Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dstoneburg Posted November 27, 2007 Share Posted November 27, 2007 Yeah he has an RODI Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahreno Posted November 27, 2007 Author Share Posted November 27, 2007 I don't know what a TDS meter is... man, i swear you can take any random three letters and it's an acronym for at least three different things... makes it tough as a new person! I did about 40gallon change last night and the ammonia level seems to have dropped from close to 2.0/1.5 down to .5... i'll check again tonight to make sure it wasn't just because the water hadn't fully mixed up... hopefully i'm on the end of the bad times and can start trying to figure out what to do next... Since i bought the house, i'm invisioned putting this tank in the wall... not sure what that all involves though... maybe this is the right time to do that... i love the tank but it just takes up sooo much room in my small living room. My thinking on it is that i don't have time to dedicate to it right now, the whole building the wall thing... or to dedicate to buffing the tank and curing the algae on the live rock (LR ) so i may just try to get the tank stabilized for now and in a month or so start this project... would that work? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cyenna Posted November 27, 2007 Share Posted November 27, 2007 I don't know what a TDS meter is... man, i swear you can take any random three letters and it's an acronym for at least three different things... makes it tough as a new person! I know exactly how you feel. Here is a site that I found really helpful in figuring out the reef-keeping lingo: http://www.nano-reef.com/glossary/?letter=All Good luck on figuring out your tank! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dstoneburg Posted November 27, 2007 Share Posted November 27, 2007 If you want to put it off for a while you just need to.. - Get the water quality a little better. The fish will survive in the conditions currently but it would be much better to improve the water quality a little. - Sell any of the salvagable corals. They are going to wither away unless you get everything into check(thats gunna take alot of work as listed above). Take out all the dead ones. If you do these two things, the tank will survive for a very long time. The fish wont be the happiest, nor will the algae go away, but nothing should die. For a fish only you can 'get away' with a water change every two months. Although monthly would be better. Your tank is very lightly stocked currently so your water quality should stay decent. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahreno Posted November 27, 2007 Author Share Posted November 27, 2007 what sort of project am i getting myself into? I don't have a problem doing the framing and restructing for the wall, i have a friend that can help with that, just the whole buffing the tank... the back of the tank is painted black, anyway to get rid of that so the tank is visible from the bedroom as well? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dstoneburg Posted November 27, 2007 Share Posted November 27, 2007 You can take a razer to it I think, I know you can on glass, questionable on acrylic. You gotta remember you are going to be able to see your bedroom through your living room if you do this... The back of the tank seemed to have alot of LR on it which usually means scratches. Its gunna take alot of elbow grease to get everything out. Also moving it all at means its going to need to be supported. He has supports under the house currently for where it is and if you move it you are going to go under there and throw up some more supports. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mister crabs Posted November 27, 2007 Share Posted November 27, 2007 sell the fish as mentioned above and put the coral into a smaller tank (the ones you can salvage). that way you dont have to re-buy them all later. putting the tank is easy especially if its not a load bearing wall and even better if theres a clsoet behind the tank to hide your stuff. or even a garage wall. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahreno Posted November 27, 2007 Author Share Posted November 27, 2007 You can take a razer to it I think' date=' I know you can on glass, questionable on acrylic. You gotta remember you are going to be able to see your bedroom through your living room if you do this... The back of the tank seemed to have alot of LR on it which usually means scratches. Its gunna take alot of elbow grease to get everything out. Also moving it all at means its going to need to be supported. He has supports under the house currently for where it is and if you move it you are going to go under there and throw up some more supports.[/quote'] there are no extra supports right now... i had asked him about that he hadn't made anything special... i thought it was kinda weird... i think there is a concrete column under the wall that it would get sunk into... i'll be crawling under there soon enough and can check it out. I am quite sure it's a load bearing wall... but there are ways to do it with that... i have carpenter friends. i dont think the razor blade thing works on acrylic... i think it needs to be sanded... i had thought about the being able to see into the bedroom thing, but then thought of just have a nice looking curtain/blinds that could come down. Perhaps the thing to do would be to get a smaller tank made/found around 30 gallons and set that up in wall for the bedroom as the place to put fish for three weeks before entering the real tank? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spipedong Posted November 28, 2007 Share Posted November 28, 2007 Yeah the curtains would be a great option I think. It's just like a window, but it's the ocean instead! Also, I'd be happy to hang onto some corals if you need foster homes. I think I met you the other day at the saltwater garage sale. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ahreno Posted November 28, 2007 Author Share Posted November 28, 2007 thanks Mr. Dong... unfortunately, i dont have any corals left... just some green star things... not sure if they're going to pull through or not... you're welcome to come take a look if you like... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dstoneburg Posted November 28, 2007 Share Posted November 28, 2007 His setup is truly something awsome to see, so if you have time spipe you should check it out. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
oxx155 Posted November 28, 2007 Share Posted November 28, 2007 Sorry to hear about your crash. I am leaving for a week this christmas and hope that nothing crazy happens, and that the person that I have watching it will actually understand. I have a 450 gallon and would love to give any of your fish a home if needed. Also, would love to come by some time and check it out, let me know when you have some time. I love swapping ideas. Later Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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