Hello All,
As the title states, I had a bacteria/algea bloom take over my 6 month old system in a few hours yesterday, turning my water brown murky and killing most of my fish. I need help to decide how to move forward.
Yesterday morning, a few hours after I added a handful of frags, the tank started to get verycloudy. I wasn't initially alarmed because this has happened before. Seemingly, when I add new livestock to the tank the aquarium would get a little more cloudy for a day and then goes back to a very faint cloudiness. The system hasn't been crystal clear except for a day here and there since the initial cycle. I chalked this up to it still being a new fairly sterile system.
This time, it got worse than ever before. At a certain point I made the call to turn my lights off and adjusted my overflow box so the water was crashing to try and introduce more oxygen into the water. I also turned my skimmer up to try and oxygenate the water more that way as well.
24 hrs later I turn my lights on and the tank is back to its regular faint cloudy state that it's usually in. Only 3 of my 14 fish are accounted for. I am assuming the oxygen was depleted from the system despite my efforts. I have 100 gallons of saltwater ready to do a water change.
Looking for what I should be doing moving forward.
Do I tear my rockwork apart to remove all the dead fish?
Is a UV a must at this point?
Any other options to make sure this doesn't happen again?
System Specs:
Tank size: 365 gallons
System size: 450 gallons
40 pounds of sand
Started with Dry Macro Rock
Used Microbactor 7 according to instructions to start cycle
Filter Sock rollers for mechanical Filtration
Reef Octo Int 250 Skimmer set to 50% power
No UV
Livestock:
Male and Female Blue Throat Triggers
4x Blue Green Chromis
2x Purple Firefish
1x Royal Gramma
3x Lyertail Anthias
1x Long Nose Hawk
1x Yellow Coris Wrasse
1x Holloween Urchin
12x Hermits
12x Astrea Snails
Photo with the lights on is the point where I decided to turn the lights off.
The video is a video my wife sent me updating me on the status of the tank while I wasn't home. EDIT: not sure if video works so posted screen shot of murky tank
As the title states, I had a bacteria/algea bloom take over my 6 month old system in a few hours yesterday, turning my water brown murky and killing most of my fish. I need help to decide how to move forward.
Yesterday morning, a few hours after I added a handful of frags, the tank started to get verycloudy. I wasn't initially alarmed because this has happened before. Seemingly, when I add new livestock to the tank the aquarium would get a little more cloudy for a day and then goes back to a very faint cloudiness. The system hasn't been crystal clear except for a day here and there since the initial cycle. I chalked this up to it still being a new fairly sterile system.
This time, it got worse than ever before. At a certain point I made the call to turn my lights off and adjusted my overflow box so the water was crashing to try and introduce more oxygen into the water. I also turned my skimmer up to try and oxygenate the water more that way as well.
24 hrs later I turn my lights on and the tank is back to its regular faint cloudy state that it's usually in. Only 3 of my 14 fish are accounted for. I am assuming the oxygen was depleted from the system despite my efforts. I have 100 gallons of saltwater ready to do a water change.
Looking for what I should be doing moving forward.
Do I tear my rockwork apart to remove all the dead fish?
Is a UV a must at this point?
Any other options to make sure this doesn't happen again?
System Specs:
Tank size: 365 gallons
System size: 450 gallons
40 pounds of sand
Started with Dry Macro Rock
Used Microbactor 7 according to instructions to start cycle
Filter Sock rollers for mechanical Filtration
Reef Octo Int 250 Skimmer set to 50% power
No UV
Livestock:
Male and Female Blue Throat Triggers
4x Blue Green Chromis
2x Purple Firefish
1x Royal Gramma
3x Lyertail Anthias
1x Long Nose Hawk
1x Yellow Coris Wrasse
1x Holloween Urchin
12x Hermits
12x Astrea Snails
Photo with the lights on is the point where I decided to turn the lights off.
The video is a video my wife sent me updating me on the status of the tank while I wasn't home. EDIT: not sure if video works so posted screen shot of murky tank
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