265 reef

[rusty dowell]

I need some help I have a 265 Reef that’s been up and running for 20 years
About two months ago I decide to do some aqua scape with my old rocks.
I took about a third of the rocks out broke them up glue them back together. Nothing was in the system it was done totally outside of the system.
I have never clean my sand bed in 20 years.
So I started to clean my San bed
Since then I have lost
powder blue
Clown fish
Rusty angel
Blue hippo
I’m currently feeding 3 to 4 times a day
With selcon And just started recently using metroplex
I’m doing about a 30 gallon water change every other day
Most fish in a tank look very bad.
Is there any advice out there?

 

[kadewin]

How deep is your substrate and how much did you clean?

 

[rusty dowell]

Probably 4-6 in
I’m at the point of tearing it down

 

[rusty dowell]

Probably 4-6 in
I’m at the point of tearing it down

 

[PR_nano]

Did you check ammonia levels to see if the rock work or sand cause an issue? Any pictures of the tank?

 

[rusty dowell]

Pic

 

[SeaworthyAquatics]

Check ammonia. Sand that deep usually shouldn't be cleaned and it can release ammonia pockets and other things into the water when disturbed.

 

[Lavey29]

Did you check your ammonia level?

 

[rusty dowell]

Fish

 

[rusty dowell]

All levels are good

 

[rusty dowell]

Fish

 

[JGT]

Sounds like a thread for @brandon429 as this is his speciality.

 

[Rmckoy]

Deep sand beds are a very interesting thing of the passed for sure .

little maintenance , but they also came with risks .
imo . I would setup a qt and put the fish that are still alive in it .
remove the old sand , it will be saturated with 20 year old detritus along with what ever gas was released from pockets in the sand bed .

you can either rinse the sand or start new. .but to save the remaining fish , cleaning asap is needed .

 

[kadewin]

I am a fairly new reefer and I personally have not experienced this issue, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Did you notice a rotten egg/sulfur smell when cleaning the sand? Several years ago sandbeds were recommended to be much deeper than they are today. Deep sandbeds that are not regularly cleaned should not be disturbed because they develop layers of harmful Hydrogen Sulfide. I can’t be certain, but I am leaning towards this being the case. Hydrogen sulfide is incredibly toxic to reef organisms and can potentially wipe out a tank. If you cleaned your sand, it’s quite possible it was inadvertently released into the water.

 

[Rmckoy]

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-12/rhf/index.php

 

[brandon429]

Fantastic thread

there are toxins we’ve yet to define in these sandbeds this old, they’re dangerous, and should be cleaned but they should be cleaned surgically all at once as doing it in parts is clearly dangerous for some. I used to think ammonia was the issue but it’s not as ammonia oxidizing organisms are all around and in the bed too. it’s some sort of bacterial toxin, formerly stratified and now released is my best bet.

study the last three pages of this thread to save your reef, run the surgery:

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/official-sand-rinse-and-tank-transfer-thread.230281/page-46

this job is a good detail from large tank surgery:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/h...-unbreakable-cycle.879074/page-3#post-9699102


***for the 265 reef here plan for this:

you have a twenty year investment in cardiac arrest. Don’t skim the work threads above, learn them over four straight hours read. Know the nuances

a direct roadmap to saving your reef is shown above, the most important part is tap rinsing your sand using tap water for hours. That’s the price for doing hands off sandbedding but then again that’s what everyone did based on sages advice and now is time to pay up for their relay of oceanic models into our non-ocean settings, detritus storage has an eventual price. It’s why bare bottom is so popular nowadays.

don’t under rinse your sand, it never fails after fifty pages linked and eight hundred warnings not to skimp on rinsing, someone will under rinse, those jobs collected were pure rinses or they wouldn’t be on file. Do not under rinse. Do not under rinse, don’t under rinse, don’t do it. Rinse correctly to save your reef.

take the reef apart as we did for seven years straight

cover fish so they don’t jump.

have the tank empty glass, rinse the glass out with vinegar, dry it, the tank looks like it’s new on day one and fully empty.


rinse your rocks in old tank water as shown for seven years, don’t allow sticky detritus to ride back in on them.


rinse new sand or old just the same, the whole thread is centered on sand preps that’s easy to discern as every job linked does the same thing. Don’t under rinse


put your tank and remaining fish back in new water, not old chemical soup water

assemble a skip cycle reef no bottle bac, cpr is completed and the tank will live. Problems attained two hundred new gallons of water? Ugg, that’s large tankers headaches. Pay a lfs to truck over 200 new gallons to you matching your currently salinity and temp.

 

[Rmckoy]

I am a fairly new reefer and I personally have not experienced this issue, so take what I say with a grain of salt. Did you notice a rotten egg/sulfur smell when cleaning the sand? Several years ago sandbeds were recommended to be much deeper than they are today. Deep sandbeds that are not regularly cleaned should not be disturbed because they develop layers of harmful Hydrogen Sulfide. I can’t be certain, but I am leaning towards this being the case. Hydrogen sulfide is incredibly toxic to reef organisms and can potentially wipe out a tank. If you cleaned your sand, it’s quite possible it was inadvertently released into the water.

But … the general purpose of the dsb was to naturally complete the 4th stage of the nitrogen cycle by transforming nitrates to nitrogen gas which was released as bubbles to the surface .
There were at the time livestock clean up crews that specifically maintained this sand bed without disturbing

they took a very long time to mature to be effective and partially why I believe they are no longer a popular thing .

 

[rusty dowell]

So is the consensus here saying remove all fish and put them in a quarantine tank?
I do believe the stress of this will kill them all

 

[brandon429]

That’s not in my links whatsoever


you have readable clickable links above and a stern warning not to skim read but study until lunch then take action

those links are so detailed, so repeating with outcomes on file (click any entrants name badge and click read all posts, see their updates after we saved their tank) that all details are covered. We didn’t use a quarantine tank we used holding totes for most jobs


you have to hold fish somewhere, per rule one stated above your whole reef is about to be taken down to bone empty glass. If you’re thinking there’s a better way to save this tank, post the links of works done showing those outcomes for other people before assuming that mode


you should only take the actions on a reef this big and this costly that comes from work threads already proving safety, don’t guess or customize in any way whatsoever.

 

[brandon429]

You have mixed challenges here in that sandbed partial work is tied to fish loss, but then again unstated variables such as adding new fish without quarantine or adding new clean up crews could also bring in disease and the sandbed was merely rough timing but not the cause. If you literally didn’t add anything new from a pet store as a vector, and really only recently disturbed sand, for sure that can be a risk on page one of the sand rinse thread there are similar losses posted by messing with old sand inside the tank.


if you did add new wet items from a different place into your tank then that elevates disease vectoring as most likely, and you can decide what you want to do with two decs of pent up waste after you remedy the fish issue.


if you feel imported disease is the cause and not sand, you will need to fallow the system so that means your fish are held for three months somewhere else.