Tank is crashing :(

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Frogger

If the issue with your tank is stability associated with all the changes that have happened how is a large water change going to help with stability. You might be better with many smaller water changes.

I don't think a large water change is a good idea.

[iceman86]

Ok I'll let it roll for a few weeks and see how it goes. Parameters are perfectly steady so fingers crossed!!

Thanks for the help everyone!

[Myka]

Originally Posted by iceman86

Ok I'll let it roll for a few weeks and see how it goes. Parameters are perfectly steady so fingers crossed!!

Thanks for the help everyone!

That's the trickiest part! Keeping the numbers steady for weeks and months at a time. When the numbers are steady for a long time we get lax on testing/monitoring and we do stupid things like let a doser run out of fluid or don't test for a month and find out that growth has taken off or even tapered off and KH is at 5 or 12 dKH. Ugh.

Two months ago I accidentally turned the doser off on my own tank, and didn't notice until I could see the corals reacting to low KH. The KH hit 5.7-5.85 dKH (depending which test you believe), and the damage was already done. The first thing I did was turn the T5s down by 50%, then I corrected the KH by taking a week to slowly bring it back up, and then I sat back and waited for the apocalypse. After about 3 weeks I started seeing the affects. It takes quite awhile to see the affects - usually just when you start to think you're in the clear. Now two months later the Acros still aren't back to where they were - maybe another month.

[shiftline]

Is there somewhere who does the triton test within Canada?


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[iceman86]

Originally Posted by shiftline

Is there somewhere who does the triton test within Canada?


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One of the LFS sells the kits so I'd imagine he has some method of getting them sent In.

[shiftline]

How much are they? I have been curious about doing it


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[iceman86]

Originally Posted by shiftline

How much are they? I have been curious about doing it


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I have no idea at all but it's a pretty cool method of testing.

If you want more info, his website is https://www.marineexperience.ca his name is Neil.

[Myka]

Originally Posted by shiftline

Is there somewhere who does the triton test within Canada?


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Most LFS have the packs you can buy for sampling which gives you a sample number and labels then you send them to an address in the USA. It's about $60 for the sampling pack, then postage to USA. You get your results online in about 3 weeks.

[iceman86]

Hey fellows it's been a week now since I took out my sandbed and everything looks stable again. I Haven't had any losses since then or tissue loss and the corals are opening up nicely again and coraline algae has been growing quite a bit. Some of my corals which I thought were dead are actually showing little bits of colour on some branches as well so I might be able to save them.

I can't really pin point the loss on anything other than my sandbed. The water was quite dirty in the bin that I siphoned all the sand and detritus into but I dont think it could have been the detritus traped in the sandbed that caused this because my ammonia nitrites nitrates phosphates alays came up as 0.

All i can think of is if the power heads were blowing the sand around which caused hydrogen sulfide to slowly release into the water? I think carbon neutralizes the hydrogen sulfide but maybe it was a steady slow release? I'm stumped...

This barebottom thing takes some getting used to but I think it's growing on me

Thank you everyone for your help!

[MitchM]

Glad to hear things are improving.
One thing to keep in mind, depending on how old your live rock is, it could be contributing an extra amount to your detritus buildup through a process called bacterial turgor.
Basically, turgor is when the pressure builds up in bacterial cell walls and forces waste products out.
The bacteria in the top few millimeters of your live rock could just be cleaning out the old live rock.