Inverts keep dyeing

[RustyBuckets]

Ok, I'm becoming very frustrated with my reef tank. My cleanup crew just keeps dropping dead. Emerald crabs, turbo snails, peppermint shrimps, 80% of them die within 3days to 2 weeks. The ones that survive tend to keep living, but most dont.

The tank is about 5 years old, well established. Its mostly zoanthids and a few LPS and one SPS.

The tank needed little maintenance until I left it in the care of a house sitter for a week. When I got back I started to get a hair algea outbreak. I figured they over fed the inverts and the chato would eventually clean up the excess nutrients. This did not happen and the entire tank is overrun with hair alge.

I tested phosphate and it was way high (2.0ppm). My calcium low (350ppm), and Mg and kH low. So i added Ca, Mg, and adjusted kg and installed a GFO and carbon reactor in the sump.

Now the phosphate seems to be under control, test kit registers down to .25ppm, so it could still be above the .03 a reef would like. Ca consumption is still more thank I expect so maybe phosphate is causing some precipitation.

What I just cant figure out is why the snails and crabs keep dying? Could it be the phosphate? Or some kind of protozoa or other toxic algae? Any thoughts or suggestions would be helpful!

Thanks!

 

[blaxsun]

Temperature, salinity, nitrates, pH, alkalinity...? What do the inhabitants consist of (including fish)?

 

[RustyBuckets]

Temperature, salinity, nitrates, pH, alkalinity...? What do the inhabitants consist of (including fish)?

Ok, I just ran all the tests i can. Results in (8 days ago) for delta referance.

Temp = 78F
Sal = 1.026
Phos = .25 or less
Ca = 400 (450)
kH = 8 (10)
Mg = 1200 (1275)
NH3 = .25 ppm [usually undetectable, maybe up due to recent losses]
NO2- = undetectable
NO3- = 1ppm

(I can't measure strontium, but I added 6ppm 8 days ago)

Inhabitants: 2 peppermint shrimp [down from 4, 2 months ago], 5 hermit crabs [no recent losses], 1 tailspot blenny [thriving], assorted snails [frequent losses, a dozen or so over 2 months]. 2 emerald crabs, down from 5, 2 mounts ago.

Here's a photo of my tank. 38gal with 12 gal in the sump. 3 five gal buckets, 1st chaeto, 2ed protien skimmer, 3ed return. No mechanical filter to maximize pod/plankton circulation.

Running GFO & carbon 50/50 in sump reactor.

 

[blaxsun]

First and foremost, running zero or close to zero nitrates will lead to your algae issues. Second, I don't think a single fish and whatever you're feeding can support your cleaning crew. Barring something I can't see, I think they're starving.

I've probably got over 200 inverts in my system, and I lose the odd snail or small hermit crab every month or so - but some level of attrition is to be expected.

 

[RustyBuckets]

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First and foremost, running zero or close to zero nitrates will lead to your algae issues. Second, I don't think a single fish and whatever you're feeding can support your cleaning crew. Barring something I can't see, I think they're starving.

I've probably got over 200 inverts in my system, and I lose the odd snail or small hermit crab every month or so - but some level of attrition is to be expected.

How could they be starving with all that algea? When I get them from the LFS they clean a patch of live rock and move on. Several days later.... dead.

 

[blaxsun]

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How could they be starving with all that algea? When I get them from the LFS they clean a patch of live rock and move on. Several days later.... dead.

Emerald crabs prefer bubble algae. If you want to know if they truly hungry, wrap some TLF SeaVeggies onto a small flat rock with a rubberband and drop it into the tank. If they're not hungry they'll ignore it.

 

[RustyBuckets]

Emerald crabs prefer bubble algae. If you want to know if they truly hungry, wrap some TLF SeaVeggies onto a small flat rock with a rubberband and drop it into the tank. If they're not hungry they'll ignore it.

Before the tank started to crash that is what I would feed, on a clip. For the sake of the crabs I'll put some in again. But, what about the snails? Surely they are not starving?

 

[blaxsun]

Before the tank started to crash that is what I would feed, on a clip. For the sake of the crabs I'll put some in again. But, what about the snails? Surely they are not starving?

A drastic swing in water parameters is another possibility. That or there's something else going on that's not showing up in the usual tests.

 

[RustyBuckets]

A drastic swing in water parameters is another possibility. That or there's something else going on that's not showing up in the usual tests.I think you were

A drastic swing in water parameters is another possibility. That or there's something else going on that's not showing up in the usual tests.

I think you were right about the crabs starving. They jumped on the seaveg and are still eating it.

Interesting idea about swinging parameters... I manually add RO to make up for evaporation losses. Its usually about 1.5 gal every other day or so. Considering the overall volume of the system this would swing all parameters by about 3%, every time I add water. I dont know if this is a drastic swing?

 

[RustyBuckets]

First and foremost, running zero or close to zero nitrates will lead to your algae issues.

Thank you for the replies, I appreciate your help. This statement is confusing me. How does near zero nitrates contribute to algae? I thought nitrates would be food for algae and make it grow more.

 

[Cory]

What was in those buckets before you used them? If your dosing strontium and not testing for it, that could lead to a toxic amount of it. Anything metal in kr near your tank?

 

[RustyBuckets]

What was in those buckets before you used them? If your dosing strontium and not testing for it, that could lead to a toxic amount of it. Anything metal in kr near your tank?

The buckets were new and I've used them for years down there. Nothing metallic, no copper source for sure. I think the problem was ammonia. It's always been undetectable so I quit checking it. Ran a test 2 days ago and it was somewhere between .50 and .25ppm, not good! Nitrates were undetectable so I blamed the phos and hair algea.

My gess is a had a big turbo snail die in the back of the tank a few mounths ago and it started a chain reaction. Once all the live rock was covered with algea I lost bio filter capacity as well.

Anyway, just added a couple bags of bio balls to the middle bucket and some nite-out II & microBacter7 to boost the bio filter.

Phos is now undetectable with titration so I'm stopping the GFO. Calcium just dropped 60 over night... uggg, probably because the phos was coming out of the substrate, so in a way that's good....

So far no losses since I dose the bacteria. Hopefully I finally got to the root cause!

 

[Lavey29]

Did you dose any meds recently for your fish? Certain meds in DT can be harmful to inverts. As Blaxsun said though bottoming out nitrates and phosphates will lead to bad tank problems to.