Emergency! Need Help!
- Thread starter patrick214
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Take your fish to a local fish store. some will actually hold them for you. esp if you are a regular.
This may be a dumb thought, but can there be a dead fish (from the ich or other) somewhere in your system, just rotting in a corner somewhere? Couldn't that cause nitrates to go crazy? Just a thought if your out of ideas.
This may be a dumb thought, but can there be a dead fish (from the ich or other) somewhere in your system, just rotting in a corner somewhere? Couldn't that cause nitrates to go crazy? Just a thought if your out of ideas.
My suggestion would be to take all the live rock out and let it cure in a tank or trash can for a few weeks to get the nitrates out of the rock...unless there are corals on the rock of course. Then pretty much what everyone else has said.... do a big (70-80%) water change and remove the denitrator. You should think about your fish problem too when changing the water...ie if you have ich then mae sure to keep the salt content down (hyposalinity) and eventually bring the temp up so you can kill this problem as well. Try fresh water dip to your fish when doing the water change as well. Again this depends upon your corals in the tank as they would not like hyposalinity or high temps!
good luck
good luck
How deep is your DSB? Another possibility is that it might have gotten too shallow to support denitrification anymore.
I'd be surprised to see a DSB crash in a year. In reality, that's when it's probably really hit its stride. Denitrification ultimately produces nitrogen gas. The denitrifiers (is that a word?) in your tank don't bind up the nitrate, they process it out, so they shouldn't leach that much back into the system even if they crashed.
My question is this: Is the 100 nitrate the problem or the symptom? At a level of 100, I'd think your SPS would be suffering at least visibly, if not greatly. I know 100 is a problem, but lack of symptoms on your corals is a red flag to me. How are your invertebrates doing? With 100 nitrate, you should be loosing snails/hermits/shrimp as well.
I think, as suggested, you may have some dead and decaying organics. It might even be as simple as buildup on the rocks. Another possibility is a crashed algae population which could be on the live rock out of sight. Did you test for phosphate?
A functioning DSB in a 215 is a big enough denitrator to run without live rock, certainly for a while, so you could cure your LR (if needed) without a complete teardown.
I'd be surprised to see a DSB crash in a year. In reality, that's when it's probably really hit its stride. Denitrification ultimately produces nitrogen gas. The denitrifiers (is that a word?) in your tank don't bind up the nitrate, they process it out, so they shouldn't leach that much back into the system even if they crashed.
My question is this: Is the 100 nitrate the problem or the symptom? At a level of 100, I'd think your SPS would be suffering at least visibly, if not greatly. I know 100 is a problem, but lack of symptoms on your corals is a red flag to me. How are your invertebrates doing? With 100 nitrate, you should be loosing snails/hermits/shrimp as well.
I think, as suggested, you may have some dead and decaying organics. It might even be as simple as buildup on the rocks. Another possibility is a crashed algae population which could be on the live rock out of sight. Did you test for phosphate?
A functioning DSB in a 215 is a big enough denitrator to run without live rock, certainly for a while, so you could cure your LR (if needed) without a complete teardown.
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Personally, I think moving the rock rubble had a lot to do with it. 30 pounds of rock that, when moved to the overflow, suddenly became totally aerobic. OPerhaps all the denitrification foom that rubble rock has gone away.
I am with the group in thinking it is unlikely the sand bed had anything to do with this.
I am having a hard time understanding how the higher nitrates would take out a fish as sturdy as a yellow tang before the other fish, or any corals/inverts. Are you sure there is nothing else that could be going on?
I am with the group in thinking it is unlikely the sand bed had anything to do with this.
I am having a hard time understanding how the higher nitrates would take out a fish as sturdy as a yellow tang before the other fish, or any corals/inverts. Are you sure there is nothing else that could be going on?
Agreed, I also would think the inverts and coral would at the very least show signs of distress way before a YT would drop, they are known to be real hardy fish
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alright ive been trying to post in here all day but it wont let me.
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The reason i thought it was my sandbed was because the no3 would had to jump from 30 on wednesday to 300 on sunday to not be affected by two 50% changes. The sandbed has some sand from a wretched 46 gallon that is closer to 2 1/2 yrs old and was prob pretty gross too. Ultimately the only thing that changed from wed to sun is the rubble was moved from the last chamber of the sump to right underneath the overflow into the sump, and a denitrator was added. It isnt the denitrator bc it woulda either lowered ph or released h2s and it has not, although it isnt working yet lol. Initially i thought it was the rubble rock and that moving it had either released organics causing an ammonia spike killing off animals on the lr, or perhaps released a bunch of inorganic nutrients such as no3 and po4. i even thought it may have released dormant ick cysts. but since the no3 reached such ungodly high levels i thought the only thing with the capability to release so much would be my sandbed.
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The yellow tang that died had ick pretty badly, and all my other fish are still kicking today, while some look worse than others. all invertebrates look fine and are alive, and the corals continue to look better than ever, i really dont understand why the corals look so good but they seem to be doing great even the acros. ive had an offer to borrow a tank to keep the fish in while i remove the sandbed correct whatever is wrong and do a series of large wc's. at this point im not sure what to do, i feel like im killing my fish leaving them in there, and yet im not sure how to fix whatevers wrong if i got them out. to make matters worse if i decide to move them, i have to be in my cousins wedding next week and i wont be around if i decide to deal w whatever problems will certainly happen if i decide to move them out of the tank to do maintenance in the display. ugh. all of you guys have been very helpful and i appreciate all your help and opinions. maybe u guys can help me save the fish.
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I find it impossible for the sandbed to only stop denitrating. It would also stop converting ammonia to nitrite and nitriet to nitrate also. I really dont see how that would be possible.
If the only two issues that changed were the denitrator and the rubble (and you're absoluely sure nothing else could've gotten into the tank water), it has to be one of the two. Where did you get the denitrator from? Is it possible it had a foreign substance in it? Either way, I would absolutely take it offline, if you havent already.
The best thing you can do is to keep up with the water changes. I would do smaller amounts, more freqeuntly.
If the only two issues that changed were the denitrator and the rubble (and you're absoluely sure nothing else could've gotten into the tank water), it has to be one of the two. Where did you get the denitrator from? Is it possible it had a foreign substance in it? Either way, I would absolutely take it offline, if you havent already.
The best thing you can do is to keep up with the water changes. I would do smaller amounts, more freqeuntly.
From my years of tech support work I have found that when there is a problem, it's usually related to the last change made in the system.
My guess is that when you moved the '20-30 lbs' of rock rubble you ended up killing some stuff in there during the move and the DSB was able to handle the conversion of the ammonia -> nitrite --> nitrate but couldn't quite keep up with the nitrate at the end of the cycle yet. Since the denitrator was so new it probably didn't have a chance to build up the appropriate bacteria yet.
There's a surprising amount of life on live rock rubble. I had an experience where I had a bunch of LR rubble in one of the chambers on my Finnex M-tank, and I started putting sand in that chamber because I wanted to get a DSB going in there. I was planning to take out the rubble, but hadn't gotten around to it and was putting a little bit of sand in every day, to go slow and easy, right?
So when I took out the rubble 3 weeks later I got an awful stench, and had to do an emergency water change because the sand had killed off some stuff on the rubble, and that was only about maybe half a pound of rubble that was actually covered up, with what ended up to be two inches of sand after I took the rock out.
In both my computer experience and in my coral reef experience I found that whenever you make a larger change, then you have to make 2-3 smaller changes to counter the unexpected effects of the larger change.
Like the time I added carbon to a filter bag and forgot to close the top tightly and the carbon sloooowly started floating out of the bag and into places I couldn't reach -- had to take apart and clean one of the pumps 3 times over the next two months to get all the carbon pieces out.
I think Jmaneypanda has a very good answer -- even when my sand covered the rubble and killed some of it off, and wasn't there long enough (fresh out of the bag 3 weeks ago) and wasn't deep enough to do anything, it couldn't process anything but didn't let it escape out into the water, either.
If your DSB isn't the problem, then you if you remove it you could be getting rid of your strongest denitrating system at the very time you need it most.
My guess is that when you moved the '20-30 lbs' of rock rubble you ended up killing some stuff in there during the move and the DSB was able to handle the conversion of the ammonia -> nitrite --> nitrate but couldn't quite keep up with the nitrate at the end of the cycle yet. Since the denitrator was so new it probably didn't have a chance to build up the appropriate bacteria yet.
There's a surprising amount of life on live rock rubble. I had an experience where I had a bunch of LR rubble in one of the chambers on my Finnex M-tank, and I started putting sand in that chamber because I wanted to get a DSB going in there. I was planning to take out the rubble, but hadn't gotten around to it and was putting a little bit of sand in every day, to go slow and easy, right?
So when I took out the rubble 3 weeks later I got an awful stench, and had to do an emergency water change because the sand had killed off some stuff on the rubble, and that was only about maybe half a pound of rubble that was actually covered up, with what ended up to be two inches of sand after I took the rock out.
In both my computer experience and in my coral reef experience I found that whenever you make a larger change, then you have to make 2-3 smaller changes to counter the unexpected effects of the larger change.
Like the time I added carbon to a filter bag and forgot to close the top tightly and the carbon sloooowly started floating out of the bag and into places I couldn't reach -- had to take apart and clean one of the pumps 3 times over the next two months to get all the carbon pieces out.
I think Jmaneypanda has a very good answer -- even when my sand covered the rubble and killed some of it off, and wasn't there long enough (fresh out of the bag 3 weeks ago) and wasn't deep enough to do anything, it couldn't process anything but didn't let it escape out into the water, either.
If your DSB isn't the problem, then you if you remove it you could be getting rid of your strongest denitrating system at the very time you need it most.
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Well after much deliberation i decided not to remove the sandbed or dose a carbon source and tonight i did another 50% water change. After i was finished i tested my no3 and it was down to 50 and all my fish were out and eating for the first time in days, all my corals seem to look good still and the fish appear to be alot happier. From my calculations that means my nitrates must of reached 400 to be down to 50 after three 50% water changes! Whats odd to me is that they tested around 30-40 on wed of last week and sunday i noticed the no3 was really high....I guess my rubble rock must have just exploded oh well hopefully all this will be an afterthought before long......
