Two clownfish and one cardinalfish. I retested my RODI water and got between 0 and 1 ppm. Yes I have a pressure gauge, I run the membranes around 60 psi, it's a 5 stage. Relatively new, with it reading 0-1 I think the RODI unit is ok
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I've had the tank for over 2 months, cycled for about a month before adding fish. Watched my ammonia, nitrite, nitrate rise during the cycle so I was pretty confident it was complete enough to add fish. The fish have been in there about a month with no signs of problems. Feeding frozen mysis shrimp (1/2 cube per day, targeted at the fish with a baster) and occasionally flakes. With no problems before the changes, I think it was something I did
Employees at the local municipal water facility.Who are "local water guys?"
That makes sense to me, my highest bio load tanks have always been the most resistant too now that you mention it. I was definitely more delicate and conservative with this marine tank since it's my first one.
Where would you recommend I go from here? Start feeding the empty tank (except for my emerald crab) to re-cycle?
If the tank is already cycled, the best course of action is just to feed the tank to maintain maybe 10ppm nitrates and keep some snails to chew on stuff and produce waste. Watch your rocks for coralline algae. Let everything go through its phases and when your rock has a fair amount of purple on it, then’ I’d start adding fish again. Give it a month or so. It’ll happen when it’s ready and honestly, I wouldn’t care about appearances until I started seeing purple spots.That makes sense to me, my highest bio load tanks have always been the most resistant too now that you mention it. I was definitely more delicate and conservative with this marine tank since it's my first one.
Where would you recommend I go from here? Start feeding the empty tank (except for my emerald crab) to re-cycle?
Not enough people realize about CHLORAMINE. Chloramine is not removed effectively by ordinary carbon blocks the way chlorine is. It will tear your membrane up and exhaust your DI very quickly. If it makes it to your top off / water change water it does not gas off. That's why water treatment plants have started using it more and more. I don't think it's directly harmful to fish (anymore than it is to us - we drink tons of it and are fine) but it will kill your biological filter and cause an ammonia spike.Scrubbing cyano or diatoms will not kill fish like that. My money is on chlorine in your tap water getting past your RODI somehow. I did that to a freshwater tank a couple years ago after a water change and wiped out an entire tank in less than a half an hour. When I spoke to the local water guys they did tell me that sometimes municipal water agencies will occasionally spike the water supply with a higher level of chlorine on a seasonal basis.
If you suspect bad water then absolutely do not do another one using the same water!Should I do more water changes in case something got into the tank, or would I be doing more harm than good?
Yes, but, your tank is so young and relatively clean that I really doubt there's enough in the sand to cause any issues.Seems an ammonia spike is the leading theory. How does stirring up the sand bed and scrubbing the rocks drive an ammonia spike? Asking so I can avoid that in the future.
Employees at the local municipal water facility.
I think this is what they were getting at. For the longest time, I thought they didn't put chlorine in our water at all and it was all just pumped from some well. I was half right on that. They did tell me that by the time it gets to my particular place of residence, there is almost no chlorine left and that generally, they only put the DEP minimum amount. We live in an unusual area where we are far enough out that we are on septics, but still manage to have a small municipal water system.I don't think it is that unusual for a water treatment plant to occasionally shock the distribution system with high levels of chlorine or chloroamine.