BIG TROUBLE!! Need advice please.
 

If this hobby will ever make me have a nervous breakdown, today will be the day. I'm on nightshift, I NEED sleep today, and I come home to this. 2 days ago I recieved a high end frag pack in the mail... awesome frags. Come home today, and 2 of 11 are half dead... I frag the parts of them that are salvagable,and then look at the rest of the frag tank. I've got 3 colonies in there... RTN. Oh no! Check the display with a flash light, and there is one colony and one frag RTN. OH NO!

I've know for a while that I've got chemistry problems (see my other post) but everything seemed to be doing OK. In retrospect, maybe I shouldn't have added $440 worth of frags right now, but my impulses got the best of me. For the record, I don't think that it was adding the frags that caused this.

Anyways, here are the facts... short version.

ph 8.26 - very stable. Got as high as 8.52, but came down.
Kh - 14 Was at 5, struggled to get it to 7, and then it sky rocketed to almost 15... I've been doing water changes (I'm now out of salt) to try to get it down to normal levels.
Amonia - 0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 0 (as clear as can be, Hagen)
Phosphates - 0.10 (hanna)
Mg - 1850 The Mg skyrocketed with no explanation that I can find. It hit 1850, and will not come down no matter what I do.
Ca - 200
I stopped dosing Mg weeks ago, it still climbed for a while, it has now stablized at 1850
I stopped dosing Ca and Alk about a week and a half ago... Ca dropped significantly from 400 to 200... Alk has been slowly dropping to it's current state.

I've got hair algae coming out of my yang (only in the frag tank). Many pieces in the frag tank are RTN. Polyp extension through the system went from amazing 3 days ago to little colurful skeletons now. Fish seem to be fine. I've lost 5 of 6 shrimp and 2 emerald crabs.

PLEASE HELP!!

What do I do? I'm lost, and to be perfectly honest, due to this situation, and problems with equipment, I really wish that I didn't buy this tank.

Separate frag tank, or is it connected to display? Since you're out of salt, I guess a water change isn't going to happen. At this point, make some new water, get some salt, do a water change. Add fresh carbon, but try not to change much else. Ya, adding the frags, maybe not a good idea with your parameters like that, but it's done, so try to save what you can.

Actually, I had enough for one more water change.... I'm going to go to the pet store in town and see if they have any salt. It's a pretty crappy store so we'll see. Carbon is fairly fresh, but I'll change it anyways.

Of course!! Why wouldn't the only pet store in town be closed on Sundays?

FML! lol

road trip :)

johnny i tried to call you... gimme a shout back

Steve

Do you use RO/DI? If not maybe something's going on with your local water?

Maybe something died off and released some crap? Run some carbon as already suggested?

Yes, I do use RODI. This is the first time that I have.

I think that I may have found the Mg culprit. I had a bucket of 2Ocean sitting around waiting for changes.... I was at the bottom of the bucket, and today I did yet another water change, and tested the Mg before putting the tank online. 1850! Seems that is the Mg problem. I wasn't smart enough to test the Kh before putting it online, so who knows about that. For the record... yes, yes, I know... roll, shake and disturb salt before use. I have learned this the hard way. Crap. And lots of it.

This all said, who knows... it's a semi old Mg test kit, maybe it's out? I get a new one tomorrow so we'll see.

So, I went onto BRS and used their reef calculator... turns out that I was using too little GFO, so I upped that and the carbon. I dosed a little Ca so we'll see what that does... hopefully bring the Kh down.

One question though... talking to buddy tonight, I was told that dosing for Alk will drop the pH... is this right? Everytime I dose soda ash my pH spikes... I think. I haven't paid attention in a while, but I thought that was the case.


Anyways kids, thanks for the inputs. Wish me luck in saving my little box of ocean!

The effect of Alk on your PH is determined by the recipe you are using. sodium bicarbonate will drop the PH but soda ash (sodium carbonate) will raise it.

+1 soda will raise pH. We use soda ash in our treatment labs here to neutralize acidic waters.