HELP!! What Did I Do?!??!

[Beverly]

Had a build up of cyano on the back of my 120g for some time now, so I thought I would scrape it off this morning at about 10:00. Tank got cloudy, but I baste my LR weekly the day before every water change with no ill results from the cloudy water then.

At noon, when I fed the fish, tank was still a bit cloudy, but the fish were all eager to eat.

At 2:30, looked at the tank to find my chevron butterfly dead and removed it immediately :cry: Couldn't find the blue sided wrasse and thought it was hiding. Flame back dwarf angel was swimming around the tank, but not with its usual gusto. Green chromis popped its head out of its sleeping place from time to time, seemed to be breathing heavy :sad:

Called husband at work and told him the bad news. He came right home and we did a 40% water change, siphoning out the crud from the bottom of the tank. Water was extra dirty compared to a regular water change.

Also took the Hagen 802s out and threw away the foam filter media which was black with crud. Have NEVER seen black crud when doing this task weekly. Broke down and cleaned the 802s as usual. Filled them up with carbon and put them back in the tank. Will remove the carbon tomorrow and replace with new foams.

While doing the water change, found the wrasse dead, removed it immediately :cry: Two down, two still alive.

Xenia is doing well as if nothing out of the ordinary is happening, but various mushrooms, button polyps and GSP all closed up.

Just tested ammonia - .5 ppm. Added some Prime to neutralize it.

Will keep an eye on the closed up mushrooms. If they do not improve by tonight or early tomorrow, will discard them.

Sh*t!!!!!!! What the heck happened?!!!??? Everything was fine until I scrubbed off the cyano. Did the cyano build up in the foams cause this catastrophe? Does cyano in the water column become toxic? What is causing the ammonia - the closed up mushrooms?

Feeling pretty bad right now :cry: Sure could use some advice, suggestions.

TIA.

[BCOrchidGuy]

Wow Beverly that's a shame. I wonder if you didn't stir up and release some hydrogen sulphide from under some rock or something... Always sorry to hear about fish loss etc. I hope everything else is fine.

Doug

[Beverly]

Doug,

My three tanks are BB, so I don't think hydrogen sulphide would have played a role.

Any other thoughts?

[BCOrchidGuy]

Nada, that black stuff concerns me though.. Damn that's a real shame. Hope it all settles back down.

Doug

[Edmonton Eskimo]

That's terrible bev. Have you done any google searches? I have no idea what could have happened but I feel badly for you. As far as your shrooms I wouldn't ditch them so soon. I got some off of a guy that were doing poorly in his tank for months and now they are kicken @ss and taken names!

[rusty]

Now you got me scared I had some red cyano growing in my tank and it turned into a black scum on the back of my tank Most of it has gone away but I still have a little bit on the back glass :eek:

[Beverly]

Doug,

The black stuff worries me too. It's all out of the tank, at least the stuff caught in the filters is. Will do some turkey basting tomorrow to see what else the filters can catch.

EE,

I'm so brain dead from worry... what kind of google searches do you suggest?

Also, the shrooms that have closed are less than a tenth their normal size and have their mouths open. Could they be leaching toxins into the water?

[Edmonton Eskimo]

I'm not really sure if they would. Mine were the same and I didn't see any ill effects on other tank inhabitants. Try googling cyano or ill effects caused by cyano I think I might try a few and I'll get back to you.

[Beverly]

Google search: cyanobacteria toxins in aquariums

Near the bottom of the page http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/bacteria/cyanolh.html , my cyano was red:

Nutritious or poisonous?
The cyanobacterium Spirulina, shown at right, has long been valued as a food source; it is high in protein, and can be cultivated in ponds quite easily. In tropical countries, it may be a very important part of the diet, and was eaten regularly by the Aztecs; it is also served in several Oriental dishes. In the US, the popularity of Spirulina is primarily as a "health food", being sold in stores as a dried powder or in tablet form.

Many other species of cyanobacteria produce populations that are toxic to humans and animals. Blue-green pond scums have been linked to the poisoning of cattle and dogs, and occasionally people. It is therefore not recommended that wild populations be gathered and eaten without some knowledge of the organisms involved.

Cyanobacteria may cause other problems as well; a species of Lyngbya is responsible for one of the skin irritations commonly known as "swimmer's itch."

Pond scum poisoning of farm animals (don't think it applies in my case, but who knows):

http://www.ext.nodak.edu/extpubs/ansci/animpest/v1136w.htm

[trilinearmipmap]

My hypothesis is that if you had a large amount of cyanobacteria for some time, it may have taken over much of the biological filtration function of your tank, meaning less growth of bacteria/other organisms which normally play this role on the live rock or in the sand bed. Scraping off the cyano would be removing your functioning biofilter. Just a hypothesis though.

[EmilyB]

I've often scraped cyano over the years in the tanks....I would siphon, scrape, and net out the big pieces.

I wonder if the sponges may have contributed to the problem. I agree the bacteria may have killed off some beneficial bacteria....I don't really know, because I use a skimmer and have never seen anything like this. :confused:

[BlkWolfe]

im sorry bev

if you need someplace to move the survivers to i have the room until the tank settles

only thing i can think of is toxins in the cyano...or as mipmap said it was handling a good bit of your bioload. Scraping it removed part of the biofilter and all the loose ends in the filters started releasing ammonia

surprised it happened that fast

[AndyL]

Sorry about the loss bev, that CB was awesome!

I wouldn't put a whole lot of stock in the scraping of the cyano as being the cause. Cyano (at least in freshwater) has the ability to fix nitrogen from more than just water borne NH3/4/NO2/NO3. One of the major reasons why planted tanks can have major outbreaks in very nitrogen depleted/limited systems.

I personally would be looking to alternate sources where a toxin may have been introduced - maybe the scraper came in contact with a chemical... New air freshener maybe? There are a million ways a toxin can be introduced into a tank, figuring out how it happened is always a challenge.

Andy

[Delphinus]

I'm so very sorry for your losses Beverly. Hang in there and best wishes for a speedy recovery of your tank and good luck to the survivors.

I have no idea what the black stuff could be.

Good luck.

[Edmonton Eskimo]

what really gets me is how quickly everything went down. I did some searching myself and didn't really find much. Sorry Bev :cry:

[Beverly]

Thanks, everyone, for your kind comments :smile:

After a very sleepless night, I found the tank to be in slightly better condition this morning. The two remaining fish are alive and swimming about, though not as they had been with their other two fish friends :sad:

Shrooms are enlarging a bit, which I take as a good sign. My favourite macroalgae isn't doing very well, sort of seems limp. Other macroalgae seems fine, but who can really tell since it's a coarse brown variety.

After lots of thought, I'm guessing the black stuff in the foams was dead cyano, which may have accounted for the rise in ammonia.

I may have unleashed a sort of red tide by dislodging the cyano from the tank wall and into the water column, but this is only speculation. Still have this cyano on the bottom of the tank in some places, as well as on some of the rock. The 120g has about 150 lbs of LR.

Only began to notice the cyano growth after using a UV sterilizer to get rid of what we thought was ich on the chevron butterfly. Turns out the fish had a viral infection that was cured by increased tank temps from 77F to 82F for about 3 weeks. Maybe the cyano growth was fueled more by the temp increase than the UV, though cyano growth was at its greatest where the water came out of the UV hose.

A few snails were found on their backs this morning. Put them at the front of the tank and turned them over to watch if they move away or if they are dead.

Still feel really freaking bad about the whole incident, which may not be over for several days as livestock begins to either flourish again or die slowly :cry: :cry: :cry:

Dang :cry: This is not the first major disaster in my reefing career, but that doesn't make this one any easier to handle than the others :sad:

[Beverly]

As the morning progresses, the button polyps are opening, so are the brown and green star polyps. Mushrooms are doing better. Fish are out and swimming around quite well, but their feeding response is a little slow, mostly I think because they are missing the heavy feeders that perished. Looks like the bad stuff in the tank has passed, though :smile: It'll probably take me a few days to get over the shock of the whole episode :cry:

One point of interest is that both dead fish were found with all their fins wide open as if they were in full display. Other fish that have died for various reasons all had their fins clamped closed.

[Bob I]

Although I can't say what happened, I will say that it is very unlikely that Cyano was the immediate cause. I have dislodged tons of the stuff over the years with no bad effects.

As a side note though. When I lived in Vancouver in the late seventies, we used to light our tanks with Grolux tubes. We had lots of Cyano, but under that lighting it was black. :eek:

[danny zubot]

Beverly, sorry about your luck. I've been thinking about your first post when you said, Had a build up of cyano on the back of my 120g for some time now,
I think you are correct that the black matter was dead cyano, and that cyano had taken over the bio loading in your tank. I'm glad that your tank is recovering now. I believe that we can all learn from this experience; to not let cyano fester in our tanks.

[Beverly]

boB,

There are many species of cyano. The cyano in the 120g was not the usual kind that I have had over the years, which was fluffy, easily blown off by turkey basting, and showed signs of photosynthesis by producing bubbles by mid-afternoon. The stuff in my 120g did not blow off at all when basted and required a reef-safe scouring pad to remove it. Also, there were no signs of photosynthesis in the form of bubbles on this cyano. Maybe I got lucky :evil: and got a species of cyano that emitted toxins when disturbed. That's the only thing I can think of at this point, especially after testing the water from our RO/DI unit this morning and finding .5 ppm ammonia in it :eek: Time to change the RO/DI filters, apparently :neutral:

Danny,

When I look back on yesterday and on the months we had very few snails in the 120g, most of the growth on the back of the tank was green and fluffy like regular old nuisance algae. There were places in the green stuff where the odd snail would venture up to eat it and leave bare spots, so it couldn't have been cyano in those places.

However, since the temp increase three weeks ago, the green stuff began to turn red and where there was no green stuff, the tough cyano began to grow there too. I presume, perhaps incorrectly, that the cyano grew on top of the green algae and that's why it all looked like cyano, though there was green algae beneath it. Underneath both green algae and red cyano, there is a healthy growth of coralline, likely due to the indirect light coming in from the window behind the tank.

I highly doubt the cyano "took over" the bio-load, though. I have three different species of macroalgae (brown, red, and green) in the tank and all are growing like crazy. The brown macro is in four fist-sized clumps, two fist-sized clumps of green macro, and only a bit of red macro in one place. Just last week I removed over half each of the two clumps of green macro that were threatening to over grow their areas.

I dunno. I'm stumped at this point. Still have this cyano on some rock and it won't blow off :evil: :eek:

[Shy_Koi]

I'm sorry for your loss :sad:
I had something eerily similiar happen, last fall:
http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=433454
~Tamara

[Skimmerking]

Isnt when the fins are out on the fish its from a ammonia shock i believe ..

I'm so sorry too BEv , I wish i was there to help out with your troubles. hope for a speedy recovery


Mike

[Beverly]

Tamara,

Thanks for the link. We have all our tanks on GFI outlets, so if the problem was electrical, the tank would have shut down.

Michael,

I suppose the fish deaths could have resulted from ammonia, though I estimate only .5 ppm could have been in the tank before the water change. The ammonia would have not instantly occurred, I don't think. It would have taken awhile for it to build up, right, especially with all that macroa algae in the tank? And even at .5 ppm, that wouldn't be enough to kill so quickly, would it? After the 40% w/c there was .5 ppm ammonia in the tank. Tested water from the RO/Di unit this morning and it was .5 ppm :evil:

[Skimmerking]

Bev when i was starting my 280 i received a clown and a green brittle star and a six line. I was bringing up the salinity and the next morning the clown was like it looked at medusa it was flared out on the fins..


mike

p.s checked the water and had a ammonia spike

:cry:

[Beverly]

Michael,

How high was your ammonia? How low was your salinity? Could both ammonia and low salinity have caused your fish death?

[Shy_Koi]

Tamara,
Thanks for the link. We have all our tanks on GFI outlets, so if the problem was electrical, the tank would have shut down.


Although most that responded to that thread thought it was electrical, I tested out my equipment and it seemed fine (still using it all without probs).
I'm still not convinced that I didn't release something into the water column, when I cleaned off the algae/cyano from the glass. The fish seemed to be affected within minutes, and also died "flared out" :eek:
Mouths were stretched wide open, and they almost seemed to be convulsing...
Anyways, I hope you get to the bottom of it!
~Tamara

[Skimmerking]

the ammonia was at 1 so i think that may of been that. Bev i also had GFI on the tank and found out after that it was not grounded. If you have a GFI plug and it's not ground it will still not work..


Mike

[Beverly]

Just did a quick siphoning of the crud in the 120g and replaced the carbon with foam. Found 17 dead snails, many of which were the new ones I had shipped from J&L last Monday :cry: There were also several dead snails among the ones we'd had around for awhile :cry: One good thing is that the two strange hitchhiker snails are still around :smile:

The snails that were shipped came in bags full of snail poop and with very low pH. Didn't test the shipping water for ammonia, but I'll bet it was relatively high with all that poop. All the snails that were shipped were alive when they got here and after I put them into the tank, so I'm tending to rule out ammonia as a cause of death in my disaster :neutral:

[KrazyKuch]

Bev i also had GFI on the tank and found out after that it was not grounded. If you have a GFI plug and it's not ground it will still not work..


Mike

He has a point are you sure that your GFCI actually has a ground in it....Cause if it doesn't then it won't trip out!!!

I once had a electrical current going through my tank but nothing died, some of the fish seemed to be stressed but never actually died I found out when I tried to syphon the water and got hit with 120 through my mouth, shortly after my heater exploded.

If you want I can stop by and check to make sure that your GFCI and all your equiment is in perfect working order!!!

[Beverly]

He has a point are you sure that your GFCI actually has a ground in it....Cause if it doesn't then it won't trip out!!!

Not to worry :smile: Chris has a pretty good knowledge of electrical stuff. He assures me that the GFIs our tanks are plugged into are grounded.

[naesco]

IMO what ever happened caused the oxygen level in your tank to fall with the resultant shock and fish deaths.

With any type of material change that sees fish gasping, IME it is a good idea to get as much oxygen in the water as fast as possible.
This can be accomplished by using air diffusers, adjusting the skimmer and placing a large powerhead a couple of inches below the surface of the water and a large water change

[clownchick22]

Sorry to hear about everything Beverly. Hope everything works out for you.

This worries me as I have some black patches on the bottom of a small piece of LR I bought from the LFS last week?
I thought it was kind of weird seeing black patches...hmm... not sure if this is bad or not.

[Beverly]

This worries me as I have some black patches on the bottom of a small piece of LR I bought from the LFS last week?
I thought it was kind of weird seeing black patches...hmm... not sure if this is bad or not.

If it is uncured LR it's probably dead stuff.

Anyway, I have an update on the tank. Read an article on the causes of cyano. Old lighting was a big factor in cyano growth. So we found the box of VHO tubes we'd ordered shortly after we set up the original tank about a year and a half ago. The box was full :eek: So the very old tubes were replaced today :redface:

We're also planning on doing another 40% water change on the weekend and hopefully get nutrient levels very low, even though 2-3 weeks ago that tank only had 5 ppm nitrate.

Will also be doing some serious water chemistry testing, which I think has been another factor in cyano growth. Have pH raising chemicals, liquid calcium and magnesium along with all their test kits to make sure chemistry is up to snuff. Have been neglecting the chemistry of my tanks for the past several weeks. This cyano problem has kicked me in the butt to get everything sorted out. Kalk is brewing as I type and will included in my daily tank maintenance regime again.

BTW, after adding calcium, magnesium and raised the pH in all three tanks today, corals have perked up considerably. Still have to make sure I added enough of everything, so testing begins tomorrow :exclaim:

[BCOrchidGuy]

Bev, I'm not sure if salinity has much to do with ammonia levels but pH does, if your pH dropped rapidly ammonia wouldn't have been a problem however if your pH went up for some reason, ammonia becomes more toxic as the pH rises. Any chance there was dead material under the "cyano" that could have released some nasty gasses? I think a pH crash would have occured through but I'm not sure. That being said, it's a large tank so I would assume you didn't remove enough crud to do that. If those snails had died under the rocks they could have been the problem, and when a snail dies there is lots of black crud as they decompose remember they are almost all protein and they decompose fast.
Glad to hear things are clearing up. Here's to the end of disasters in the reef tanks. (clink)

Doug

[Beverly]

Doug,

Was not monitoring pH during the event. I am assuming that pH and alk were both low low for awhile preceding the event because I hadn't been monitoring my tanks very closely :redface: This situation is now in the process of being remedied.

The dead snails were the result of the event and did not show up until the fish started dying. and in the days following. They were victims of the event, rather than contributors to it. The dead snails were removed daily.

Also, don't think the green algae beneath the cyano was dead, even though cyano covered much of it. There is an east facing window behind the tank and a healthy growth of coralline on the glass. The green algae is now growing back in a few places.