NJtoDC
New Member
I’d like to preface this by saying that I’m new to the hobby. With that being said, I’ve run into a little problem.
I’ve had my tank running for a while now, got live cycled rock from LFS and added a few fish, I’ve got a 38 gallon display with 15g sump. Since I got some bioload and cleanup crew established in the tank, and with Black Friday going on I’ve decided to try my hand at some corals since that’s ultimately why I wanted to get into this hobby.
Fast forward to yesterday, I got a shipment of zoas from barrier reef. They all seem to be doing well with the exception of one. All is well, so I decided to add more rock to my system to make room for more future frags. That was my mistake. I went to the fish store and picked up some dry Caribsea LIFE ROCK. The one that’s purple and spored with bacteria. I put the 10# in, without rinsing it or cycling it, I figured it would be fine considering I already had 30# live rock in there, and there’d be no cycle. I was wrong. For the 8 hours I was awake after I put it in yesterday, it looked fine. BUT, when I woke up this morning my tank was so cloudy I couldn’t even see halfway through it. All of my corals aside from my metallic frogspawn were closed up. After about 2 hours of the lights being on it cleared up maybe 25% but then stayed like that, so I quickly ran to petsmart(closest to me) and got all they had of premixed saltwater which was 10 gallons. I did a 10 gallon water change in what I assume to be approx 45 gallon total water volume, so around 20%. I also threw in a carbon bag on top of my filter floss. After the WC, all of the corals opened up and are looking okayish, definitely still stressed, but every polyp on my shamrock hammer are completely deflated, and looks like the mouth is open. What else should I do to try to save my corals??? I am making more RO water right now to mix my saltwater tonight for another bigger water change tomorrow. I will take tests of the water and post but before my WC I tested the water to see if maybe the salinity was off and it wasn’t, it was .026 as normal. Will update with phos/nitrate levels and see if there is an ammonia spike in the next 30 mins I’ll reply to this thread.
I’ve had my tank running for a while now, got live cycled rock from LFS and added a few fish, I’ve got a 38 gallon display with 15g sump. Since I got some bioload and cleanup crew established in the tank, and with Black Friday going on I’ve decided to try my hand at some corals since that’s ultimately why I wanted to get into this hobby.
Fast forward to yesterday, I got a shipment of zoas from barrier reef. They all seem to be doing well with the exception of one. All is well, so I decided to add more rock to my system to make room for more future frags. That was my mistake. I went to the fish store and picked up some dry Caribsea LIFE ROCK. The one that’s purple and spored with bacteria. I put the 10# in, without rinsing it or cycling it, I figured it would be fine considering I already had 30# live rock in there, and there’d be no cycle. I was wrong. For the 8 hours I was awake after I put it in yesterday, it looked fine. BUT, when I woke up this morning my tank was so cloudy I couldn’t even see halfway through it. All of my corals aside from my metallic frogspawn were closed up. After about 2 hours of the lights being on it cleared up maybe 25% but then stayed like that, so I quickly ran to petsmart(closest to me) and got all they had of premixed saltwater which was 10 gallons. I did a 10 gallon water change in what I assume to be approx 45 gallon total water volume, so around 20%. I also threw in a carbon bag on top of my filter floss. After the WC, all of the corals opened up and are looking okayish, definitely still stressed, but every polyp on my shamrock hammer are completely deflated, and looks like the mouth is open. What else should I do to try to save my corals??? I am making more RO water right now to mix my saltwater tonight for another bigger water change tomorrow. I will take tests of the water and post but before my WC I tested the water to see if maybe the salinity was off and it wasn’t, it was .026 as normal. Will update with phos/nitrate levels and see if there is an ammonia spike in the next 30 mins I’ll reply to this thread.
