Major problem looking for help....

paweis

We have a 55gal reef tank. It was doing beautifully for a long time...my son had added lots of corals, creatures, over time and it was great. It was not crowded at all.

He decided to start making his own RO water and bought a kit at the fish store to do so. Slowly his tank started going downhill and his fish started dying. Then his snails, hermit crabs, tube worms, evey living creature over a period of days seemed to dye. The only thing living was some of the coral.

He realized he was making the RO water wrong, had the hoses reversed?, and so the wrong water was being added. At this point he made new water and tried to fix the problem.

Next, the tank was pretty much left to see what would happen over time. This reddish algae covered everything.

Months later we took wter in to be checked and the fish store said it was perfect now. Also had his ro checked and it ws fine.

He bought snails/crabs to clean up the tank...20 of them, they died immediately.

We went to another store and they said he probbably had this red cyanine bacteria?? and he bought sometihing to remove it. He followed those directions...tank is looking pretty good; some of the corals that are still alive are opening more. So, he goes and buys one snail after a few days of letting the tank settle. The snail lived longer than the others but started moving pretty slow (for a snail even) and this morning (put him in yesterday afternoon) he looks dead.

Any ideas??? Two stores have checked his water and it is good. Somethng is killing these creatures so we cannot add any until we have another idea what is happening.

thanks for any suggestions.

Paweis

Loman

Pawies,
Welcome to the forum. Sounds like you have a challenging problem. I am sure Aaron will have a few thoughts but this might give you something to consider. You did not share the tank parameters that the fish stored found so it would be difficult to reach a direct conclusion regarding water quality. However, if water quality is as you suspect, fairly good, have you looked at any other potential aspects. For example is the heater still intact? They can blow up and spill some things and/or provide electrical shocks. I suspect that there is a water problem somewhere, but I would also look to make sure I could eliminate any other type issues such as electrical shocks, wild variations of temperature, and the like. These type problems could exist and the water quality test fine while the issue in the tank persisted. That said I would tend to keep coming back to water quality as I think that is the most likely cause. Could it have been polluted via the mix up with the RO unit with some thing that would not typically show up on the basic tests such as heavy metals (lead, etc.)

paweis

Thanks for the reply Loman. The heater is fine so we feel it is something in the water...but what?? We don't know. A small small amount of copper showed up on one test but not enough to be a problem. The coral is doing fine now. I would think if there was a problem with the water that the coral would suffer more. It is so strange. I don't have the paremeters in front of me but ph, salt, nitrates, nitrites, phosphate, all kinds of stuff were tested and were fine.

He is still making RO water from the kit he bought 6 months ago. They said it tested okay also but I wonder if that could be part of the problem.
No one seems to think so.

This is driving us nuts. It was such a beautiful tank and then everything died.

Paweis

ahill3780

Welcome to FishTankForums Paweis! (and UTVol!)

UT - Your question does not really play into the current topic and would be best if placed into a new thread of it own. I have asked to have it removed and placed into its own thread where we will address you concerns more directly. We'll go into more detail for you once it is moved. But for starters, if you're concerned then I would remove the Naso into a QT tank for monitoring to see if he gets better or starts getting worse.

Paweis,

Using the waste water from an RO unit is a baaad thing for an established reef tank, and it easily explains much of what you describe. How long was he unknowingly using the waste water for water changes, and how long has it been since he started using fresh RO?

I would suggest removing the corals into another tank while you clean up the main display. Once the corals have been removed you will be able to do a series of 75-100% water changes without further stressing the livestock that is left.

Do not get anymore snails or hermits at this time. I am sure that the problem with them dying is due in part to the water conditions in the tank, but I also suspect that they are not being acclimated correctly and that, coupled with the other is simply too much for them and leads to their demise.

It indeed sounds to me like the algae bloom is cyano bacteria feeding on the increased levels of unwanted minerals in the tank. So long as this stuff remains and continues to grow then it is a sign to you that the tank is not clean yet and you need to continue changing out your water. Vacuum out as much of the algae as you can as well, this will further help to remove the unwanted nutrients.

Adding snails to the tank is not going to solve the issue for the moment. You need to keep up with the water changes and vacuuming until the algae no longer returns, then you can add the corals back in and start slowly stocking the tank again.

FYI copper is lethal in a reef tank in any ammount and could very well be the thing that killed off most of your tanks invertebrates. You need to make sure that there is 0 copper in the tank. Test the water from different locations in the tank rather than from the surface alone as this will give you a better idea of how things stand in the different regions of the tank.

Lets recap in detail the steps needed here:

• Do not add any more livestock to the tank.
• Remove any current livestock in the tank so that you can resolve the situation quicker.
• Do 75% water changes on the tank every few days for about 3 weeks.
• Once the cyano blooms die away then that is an indicator that you have removed the greater part of the problem nutrients.
• Restock the tank slowly once it is cleaned to allow the nitrifying bacterial colonies time to catch back up to their original population levels.
• Snails are very sensitive invertebrates and should never just be dropped into a tank. They need to be properly, and slowly, acclimated to a tank over a few hours' time before being added in.
• RO units produce much more waste water than filtered water each hour, so the line that drips slowly is the filtered RO water while the line that spews out water constantly is the waste water. This is an easy indication of which side to use for future reference.

HTH,
Aaron

paweis

Aaron,

Thanks for your reply. I will review this with my son this week. He is in college and lives at his dorm but is home on weekends and once or twice during the week. I believe he said he would be home again on Tuesday afternoon to work on his tank some more. (His dorm is only 20 minutes away)!

I'm not sure how to remove the corals but my son should know how.....It looks to me like they grow on the live rock and there is a lot of live rock in this tank. It is covered in brown stringly stuff too.

We don't have another tank set up for the corals. We have two tanks packed away in the garage ( but I really didn't want to set another tank up at this time if I can get by without doing that.) One is a 29 and the other a 55. I wonder if we could use the 29 and just put saltwater in it and a light on it and leave it in the garage without anything else temporarily while making those changes. I don't know how all the rock would fit in it though......

Does the rock need to be scrubbed??

I'm sorry I sound so confused. I'll get my son to read your replies and send the next note.

Thanks again.

Paweis

ahill3780

You could get by with leaving the coral in the tank - this would be better than sticking them in a hastily set up tank to be left in the garage this would not be suitable for the length of time they would need to be housed for - you will just need to take the water changes more slowly (15% every few days instead of 75%) over a longer period of time.

paweis

I just wrote a long reply and it dissappeared?? Oh well..here goes again.

My son has been working hard. He is coming home every couple of days from his dorm and working on his tank doing water changes, cleaning the rocks, adding cyano bacteria killer, suctioning the sand, babying the tank and it is still doing bad. We are so confused. He did get a snail to live for two days but then it died while he was gone back to school one day. I looked in on it and the tank had gotten covered in brown slime over the top overnight and the snail died. I dont know if that caused it or not because when he used to have stuff living and doing great he would get the brown stuff on the top and have to skim it off sometimes. It looks like the stuff in his protein skimmer.

Anyway, his rocks get covered in this slime that looks like it would be in an alien movie. It is brown and clear like. It has bubbles at the top.

His water checks out fine.

I may call the maker of his RO machine tomorrow. Maybe they will have a suggestion. The first time he used it he messed up and had the hoses reversed but that was months ago. Could it had ruined the filters? But, if so, wouldn't it show up on water tests?

I feel bad because he works so hard on this thing everytime he comes home only to be disappointed. It had been such a lovely tank until we bought that RO machine.

Any more suggestions?

Pam

Tommy Gun

I may get myself into trouble with this posting, so PLEASE WAIT to see if anyone will disagree with me or can prove me wrong. I am new to the saltwater side of the hobby, but I have dealt with cynobacteria a couple of times in freshwater and have felt the same way as you and your son must feel. ( I may also be repeating some information because I stopped reading in order to get my thoughts down before I lost them, so bear with me)

Cynobacteria is/was the very first living thing to inhabit the Earth and can absolutely thrive in any freshwater tank or saltwater tank. In my FW tanks, I had some small outbreaks and read until I decided it was blue-green algea (cynobacteria) even though it was not blue nor green. Color is not an indicator of the type, so dont be fooled like I was at first.

The secret lies within the name cynoBACTERIA. Being a bacteria, it is susceptable to anti-biotics and in the end, this was the only way I could get rid of the stuff. It covered absolutely every thing in the tank and grew extremely well in my filters and filter media. Every time I tried to vaccum it out, I would knock into a plant and more would go floating around.

So, here is the grey area that I do not know too much about. If you can find an anti-biotic for use in a saltwater tank (????? the part I am not sure about), then it is relatively easy to get rid of. Once it is gone, it does not come back either as I think some of the medicine will also grow in the filter media. I am unsure of the reasoning, but I know from my experience that it has never came back.

The antibiotic that I used was erythromyacic (sp?) and I found it in the form of a common fish medicine that is used to treat dropsy, clamped fin disease, septicemia, and fungus problems in fish. The 'active' ingredient is erythromyacin and is actually the same treatment used for human dropsy (which until I just checked, never knew was possible).

The copper issue is a really hard one though and I have a good friend and coworker who has had some copper problems in his tank. He has so far been unable to get it out of his tank as it takes a some pretty serious acids to get it out of the tank forever and completely. I am scared for you because even if you can rid the tank of cynobacteria, you may not be able to get it copper free.

Again, like i said, I am not a saltwater expert or anything but I just wanted to bring up another point for you to research or look into in order to help you out. I know how frustrating it is to have a tank up and running really well only to have it all crash down around you. It is entirely possible that the 'bad' water from your RO unit contained some cynobacteria and simply added enough nutrients and minerals to cause an epidemic in your tank. I do not know of any saltwater fish that would eat it (or would I suggest you add any more living things to the tank) and know of only very very very few freshwater fish and/or inverts that will swallow the stuff.

paweis

Thanks for the reply. I imagine the stuff we are using to kill the cyanobacteria probably is an antibiotic but I am not sure.....would have to go and look at the box when my son is here and can show it to me.

I took some pictures of this slime tonight with my digital camera but dont know how to upload to this site. I know how to email the pictures but is there a way to upload here? I'm not great at this stuff.

Pam

Tommy Gun

Yea, for pictures, check out this thread:

http://www.fishtankforums.com/2-fish...-pictures.html