eyann666
New Member
My tank is a 12.5 EVO, I got it set up last January, so almost a year ago. Everything was pretty fine until last week. There's no lid, it's all open, and it's in the living room. Last saturday, some kid found it funny to pour an entire glass of apple cider vinegar (which was used for kid science experiments in the dining room during a birthday party). I was not there at this time but I got a text from my wife telling me that the aquarium looks funny, and one of the clown fish jumped out and died under the cabinet. I guess the Ph crashed down as well as the Kh because of the vinegar, killing off the BB as well, that's my guess?
When I came back home, the tank was super cloudy, the shrimp was acting crazy trying to jump out the tank, the other clown fish was dying and all of the corals looked dead. The RF anemone looked strangely fine. I immediately did a 50% WC. I eventually knew what happened so I did another WC, got some Stability to re-introduce some kind of BB and used a buffer to slowly raise the ph back to normal (it was at 7ish even after the WC, I guess because of the vinegar residue) but unfortunately, damage was done, the shrimp died, the left clown fish survived as well as the emerald crab and some hermit crabs but pretty much all of the corals look miserable now. I guess they will come back eventually (I can see some of their tissues still) but here's the problem that I have now: I'm using RO water with Coralife salt, never got any Kh issue with it so far, but for a couple of days, the Kh is ridiculously high at 15, while the calcium is stable at 440 and Ph at 8ish. (I'm using API tests so it's hard to be precise). I thought the Kh would drop over the course of a few days but no luck, it stayed at 15 and I have no clue why, since I almost did a 100% WC a week ago after the incident. It's the first time it happened, Kh used to be 8 and was very stable before, so stable that I didn't even bother testing for it every week.
My question is: will the Kh drop over time? Should I do another WC again knowing that I'm basically re-cycling my tank right now? Will the corals survive with such a high Kh?
Other than that, parameters are fine, there's no spike of ammonia, just a little nitrate so I guess the cycling might be ok. Phosphate is 0, which doesn't surprise me. I have no Mag test so I can't tell.
When I came back home, the tank was super cloudy, the shrimp was acting crazy trying to jump out the tank, the other clown fish was dying and all of the corals looked dead. The RF anemone looked strangely fine. I immediately did a 50% WC. I eventually knew what happened so I did another WC, got some Stability to re-introduce some kind of BB and used a buffer to slowly raise the ph back to normal (it was at 7ish even after the WC, I guess because of the vinegar residue) but unfortunately, damage was done, the shrimp died, the left clown fish survived as well as the emerald crab and some hermit crabs but pretty much all of the corals look miserable now. I guess they will come back eventually (I can see some of their tissues still) but here's the problem that I have now: I'm using RO water with Coralife salt, never got any Kh issue with it so far, but for a couple of days, the Kh is ridiculously high at 15, while the calcium is stable at 440 and Ph at 8ish. (I'm using API tests so it's hard to be precise). I thought the Kh would drop over the course of a few days but no luck, it stayed at 15 and I have no clue why, since I almost did a 100% WC a week ago after the incident. It's the first time it happened, Kh used to be 8 and was very stable before, so stable that I didn't even bother testing for it every week.
My question is: will the Kh drop over time? Should I do another WC again knowing that I'm basically re-cycling my tank right now? Will the corals survive with such a high Kh?
Other than that, parameters are fine, there's no spike of ammonia, just a little nitrate so I guess the cycling might be ok. Phosphate is 0, which doesn't surprise me. I have no Mag test so I can't tell.
