Saturday night, for the first time after 20+ years in the hobby, I thought my entire system had been nuked ! Now that the crisis is over, I have time to reflect on why/how this happened.
It may always be a mystery since my reefing practices henders the investigation of the issue. Please read until you get bored, if youmake it to the end, you get a cookie. It's really and interesting tale of near death destruction. A comedy of errors, without the humor.
This past weekend, during the ToT, I picked up some new fish/corals/media for my tank. I came home and started acclimating everything as you normally would.
Now, rather than sticking my hands in the water daily, I wait till I have a short laundry list of things that need to be done in the tank and do them all at once (a practice that I'll be curbing in the future). A spacer I use to crack the lid open on warm days had fallen in the tank, a rock had needed to be moved, two softies almost touching needed relocating. Pretty average stuff.
Also, not so average things like dipping two frag plugs in freshwater, adding some Purgen media, along with 1ml of Seachem Alpha as it suggests adding it everytime you add livestock.
Within a 15 minute time period, I put the two corals in a freshwater tip, dosed the Alpha, opened the pre-bagged box of Purigen and placed it in my sump, and started tempreture acclimating some large polyps I got on the tour.
It occured to me that I didn't know how long to dip the corals after starting the dipping process, posted on ARC, but ended up, the corals were dipped for about 15 minutes, (I now know, 30 seconds or so).
I then replaced the recently FW dipped corals, waited a few minutes, then dipped my new polyps and frogspawn and placed them in the tank.
I stood there for a second and noticed that EVERYTHING IN THE TANK HAD CLOSED UP!!!!!!! Nothing was out! Even my anemone was retracted behind the rocks, something it had yet to ever do. My clam, candy cane, duncans, everything closed . EVEN MY LEATHERS THAT HAD JUST BEEN FULL AND OPENED WERE ACTUALLY NOT ONLY CLOSED, BUT SLOUGHING OFF A CLEAR FILM IN JUST A FEW MOMENTS TIME.
Quickly, I started retracing my steps..... I'd washed/rinsed/tried my hands well before starting. I found the box of Purgien to re-read the directions, which at second glance read to "rinse well before first use" which I had not done, while the thought of toxic chemicals being emitted from the over dipped softies crossed my mind as well.
The odd thing, is the new corals that were last put in the tank suffered no ill consquences at all. Its like an invisible cloud of destruction passed through my whole system once. It was very odd.
Two days (and 50% WC) later, the tank is 95% back to normal, my anemone is full and eating again, all the softies and LPS are openning up nicely.
Unfortunately, I've had to isolate my huge Sun Coral, as it did not fair well in the chemical melee. It's top coat of connective flesh seems to be burnt off, along with all it's feeder tenticles being melted down. I have it in qt alone, with no lights, at a nice warm temp to speed recovery. Of the 70 to 80 polyps, it appears only two small polyps of the sun coral made it out unscathed. I'll make it my mission in life to feed it well (by hand as the mouths are still there), and nurse it back to health in order to pay penance for my (albeit rare) breech in good husbandry practices.....
Moral of the story (and hard lesson learned).........
Do ONE thing,
Add ONE thing,
ONE thing at a time........ Otherwise, you can't track down a treatable cause when the **** hits the fan........
It may always be a mystery since my reefing practices henders the investigation of the issue. Please read until you get bored, if youmake it to the end, you get a cookie. It's really and interesting tale of near death destruction. A comedy of errors, without the humor.
This past weekend, during the ToT, I picked up some new fish/corals/media for my tank. I came home and started acclimating everything as you normally would.
Now, rather than sticking my hands in the water daily, I wait till I have a short laundry list of things that need to be done in the tank and do them all at once (a practice that I'll be curbing in the future). A spacer I use to crack the lid open on warm days had fallen in the tank, a rock had needed to be moved, two softies almost touching needed relocating. Pretty average stuff.
Also, not so average things like dipping two frag plugs in freshwater, adding some Purgen media, along with 1ml of Seachem Alpha as it suggests adding it everytime you add livestock.
Within a 15 minute time period, I put the two corals in a freshwater tip, dosed the Alpha, opened the pre-bagged box of Purigen and placed it in my sump, and started tempreture acclimating some large polyps I got on the tour.
It occured to me that I didn't know how long to dip the corals after starting the dipping process, posted on ARC, but ended up, the corals were dipped for about 15 minutes, (I now know, 30 seconds or so).
I then replaced the recently FW dipped corals, waited a few minutes, then dipped my new polyps and frogspawn and placed them in the tank.
I stood there for a second and noticed that EVERYTHING IN THE TANK HAD CLOSED UP!!!!!!! Nothing was out! Even my anemone was retracted behind the rocks, something it had yet to ever do. My clam, candy cane, duncans, everything closed . EVEN MY LEATHERS THAT HAD JUST BEEN FULL AND OPENED WERE ACTUALLY NOT ONLY CLOSED, BUT SLOUGHING OFF A CLEAR FILM IN JUST A FEW MOMENTS TIME.
Quickly, I started retracing my steps..... I'd washed/rinsed/tried my hands well before starting. I found the box of Purgien to re-read the directions, which at second glance read to "rinse well before first use" which I had not done, while the thought of toxic chemicals being emitted from the over dipped softies crossed my mind as well.
The odd thing, is the new corals that were last put in the tank suffered no ill consquences at all. Its like an invisible cloud of destruction passed through my whole system once. It was very odd.
Two days (and 50% WC) later, the tank is 95% back to normal, my anemone is full and eating again, all the softies and LPS are openning up nicely.
Unfortunately, I've had to isolate my huge Sun Coral, as it did not fair well in the chemical melee. It's top coat of connective flesh seems to be burnt off, along with all it's feeder tenticles being melted down. I have it in qt alone, with no lights, at a nice warm temp to speed recovery. Of the 70 to 80 polyps, it appears only two small polyps of the sun coral made it out unscathed. I'll make it my mission in life to feed it well (by hand as the mouths are still there), and nurse it back to health in order to pay penance for my (albeit rare) breech in good husbandry practices.....
Moral of the story (and hard lesson learned).........
Do ONE thing,
Add ONE thing,
ONE thing at a time........ Otherwise, you can't track down a treatable cause when the **** hits the fan........
