32 Gallon Nano

angygil1 · Oct 28, 2021

Hello. Im Angie. Im new here. I have a 32 gallon nano reef tank. I’ve had it for about six months. I have a clown fish, I have one Blue damsel, one domino damsel, I have four blue leg hermit crabs, I have one Asteria snail, two Zoanthids, and some candy canes. And pieces left from my mushroom coral that survived.
My tank was doing great then all of a sudden I had a spike in ammonia and I lost most everything else I had. My tank looks very sick right now. I’ve been testing my water and I cannot get my alkalinity up. I just did a 40% water change and it shows no alkalinity in the water at all. My pH is 8.2 my salt is 1.024 my calcium is 460 my magnesium is 1380. My ammonia is it 0, nitrate 0. nitrite 0.
I was told to put baking soda in the water and this would help raise the alkalinity. I don’t want to do anything until I talk to a few people. Any suggestions?

Peace River · Oct 28, 2021

Welcome to Reef2Reef!!!

Schraufabagel · Oct 28, 2021

Do you have any pictures of the tank? Did everything die off in one day? Or over the course of several days?

PeterC99 · Oct 28, 2021

Hi Angie - Welcome to R2R!

What is your Alk level?

More importantly, what do you think caused the ammonia spike?

angygil1 · Oct 28, 2021

Hi thank you for responding. No everything died over a period of a couple of weeks. I only have pictures of what it did look like. I can take pictures of my tank now and send later.

angygil1 · Oct 28, 2021

PeterC99 said:
Hi Angie - Welcome to R2R!

What is your Alk level?

More importantly, what do you think caused the ammonia spike?

As you can see in the picture I had a Mandarin Dragonet. He somehow scraped the side of his face on a rock and I noticed he had a round circle from it. I took him out of the tank and called the fish store here in my town and they told me it would be OK put it back in there to come in the next day and they would give me something for him. So I did and woke up the next morning and he was dead. And that’s when all my problems started.

Schraufabagel · Oct 28, 2021

angygil1 said:
As you can see in the picture I had a Mandarin Dragonet. He somehow scraped the side of his face on a rock and I noticed he had a round circle from it. I took him out of the tank and called the fish store here in my town and they told me it would be OK put it back in there to come in the next day and they would give me something for him. So I did and woke up the next morning and he was dead. And that’s when all my problems started.

Do you make your own RODI water? Or were you getting it from a local fish store that premixes saltwater?

BroccoliFarmer · Oct 28, 2021

Welcome to the R2R community!!!

angygil1 · Oct 28, 2021

Schraufabagel said:
Do you make your own RODI water? Or were you getting it from a local fish store that premixes saltwater?

I make my own

Ippyroy · Oct 28, 2021

Welcome to R2R!

Schraufabagel · Oct 28, 2021

angygil1 said:
I make my own

Was anything new introduced to the tank in the few weeks prior to all of that happening?

Fred2482 · Oct 28, 2021

Welcome! Spike in ammonia is not uncommon when a fish dies. If the tank hasn't had time to establish enough beneficial bacteria, the ammonia will prevail. As far as the AlK, which test kit are you utilizing?