It has not been a fun past few days. I had a couple of frostbite clowns in a 40 gal cube tank with a candy cane and a couple of other corals as "tester" corals to start out the tank. I ended up getting a 90 gallon tank, resealing it, and moving everything in the 40 over to the 90. I added some dry rock as well, and more live sand. Since I had the 40 gal running for about a month after adding the fish and corals, I figured the bacteria had a good establishment. I added a couple of more fish and a few more corals to the new tank a few days after moving it over. Everything was testing fine. My Apex said the PH was 7.8, but the LFS tested it at 8.2 and I went with that measurement over the probe. I know that ph probes can often get out of calibration for no reason at all. Then my clowns stopped eating - I didn't think much of it, figured it was just stress. The two new fish weren't eating either, again figured it was stress. The candy cane withered away and died - again I figured it was shock from transferring tanks - maybe I didn't acclimate it properly.
Then fish started gasping for air - knew that I had a real problem. Got my own physical test kit and tested everything. Most everything was good, but my ph was 7.8 like apex said - so the LFS test was off. It happens, but damn.
After much research, I came to the conclusion that what I'm looking at is probably CO2 poisoning. I opened the window near my tank and noticed a sharp increase in ph over the next couple of hours. I have a CO2 diffuser coming from BRS and I'm going to hook that up to an air pump - diffusing the air near the intake of my sump. I'll set up the air pump connected to the diffuser on the apex and will trigger it to cut off when the ph is at 8.3.
I believe most of my little hermits are still ok. I need to move some rock and make sure I get the fish out.
Some of the corals are still hanging on, but don't look super great so I'm not that confident. I'm going to wait a couple of weeks once I get my CO2 scrubber installed to make sure that I can keep the ph stable with it before I add anythign e
Background - I've been out of the hobby for the last 5-6 years, but this was the 40 gal cube back when I was running it
Would love to be part of this community now that I'm back in the hobby. I've been taking advice from my LFS people but I'd love to hear a range of advice from others out here
Notes for pics of the tank - I don't have all 3 powerheads running, just the middle one right now. Waiting on replacement impellers to come in for the 3G Koralias so they'll stop driving me to insanity. I'm doing 2/3 Carbon + 1/3 GFO in the reactor 1st chamber, then 2 bags of chemi pure elite (which I now know is overkill, I'm switching over to regular chemi pure I think). And apologies for how impossible it is to see what's going on in the right side of the sump, it's a bit crowded. Behind the reactor is just the skimmer and a return pump
Then fish started gasping for air - knew that I had a real problem. Got my own physical test kit and tested everything. Most everything was good, but my ph was 7.8 like apex said - so the LFS test was off. It happens, but damn.
After much research, I came to the conclusion that what I'm looking at is probably CO2 poisoning. I opened the window near my tank and noticed a sharp increase in ph over the next couple of hours. I have a CO2 diffuser coming from BRS and I'm going to hook that up to an air pump - diffusing the air near the intake of my sump. I'll set up the air pump connected to the diffuser on the apex and will trigger it to cut off when the ph is at 8.3.
I believe most of my little hermits are still ok. I need to move some rock and make sure I get the fish out.
Some of the corals are still hanging on, but don't look super great so I'm not that confident. I'm going to wait a couple of weeks once I get my CO2 scrubber installed to make sure that I can keep the ph stable with it before I add anythign e
Background - I've been out of the hobby for the last 5-6 years, but this was the 40 gal cube back when I was running it
Would love to be part of this community now that I'm back in the hobby. I've been taking advice from my LFS people but I'd love to hear a range of advice from others out here
Notes for pics of the tank - I don't have all 3 powerheads running, just the middle one right now. Waiting on replacement impellers to come in for the 3G Koralias so they'll stop driving me to insanity. I'm doing 2/3 Carbon + 1/3 GFO in the reactor 1st chamber, then 2 bags of chemi pure elite (which I now know is overkill, I'm switching over to regular chemi pure I think). And apologies for how impossible it is to see what's going on in the right side of the sump, it's a bit crowded. Behind the reactor is just the skimmer and a return pump
