Looking for advice on sterilizing a large tank inside my home.

[jeeper07]

Ok so I posted a thread on possibly having palytoxin from aquascaping the tank and later again from when the tank started to run when the return pumps started which caused a lot of aeration. I’ll post what exactly happened. Question is how can I sterilize this tank safely in my home? It’s approximately 900 gallons filled with 5-700 lbs of rock held together with reef mortar. Currently I drained the tank off all the saltwater and refilled with tap water while adding a bunch of carbon. I’m doing water changed every day of 50% incase something is leaching out of the tank. Please let me know. Thank you.

 

[jeeper07]

Hello all, first post here and unfortunately it has to do with palytoxin. I’ll try to keep it short but I feel like I need to explain in detail to give a full scope of what I’m experiencing. Around may-June last year I broke down a tank that had a lot of live rock, some soft coral, some zoas, palythoas and some anemones. I placed everything in a large horse trough in the basement until I could get the tank up and running again. Well fast Foward to about 2 weeks ago, and I finally stated aquascaping, life got in the way and delayed the tank by several months. During that time most of the coral/poly’s and zoas died off. About 2 weeks ago I took out the majority of the rock to rinse some of the cyno off and let sit out on a tarp in the basement to dry off enough to let the reef mortar set up. Later that night I came down with a bad cold, or so I thought. Came out of nowhere, coughing,sneezing and tons of mucus. Within a couple days I felt better but still had symptoms. The tank took about a week to fill, I just let the ro fill directly into the tank and added salt directly to the tank daily. last Thursday the tank was finally full enough to kick in the return pumps, within 5 minutes of the return pumps running BOOM the “cold” comes back again. 2nd time in two weeks that I got sick like this. The tank did have a ton of aeration from the splashing in the sump as I had the pumps running at full tilt. I was completely miserable that day. Then I came home to our little yorkie breathing heavily that night. Cleaned her up and let her sleep up stairs and she was fine the next day.That should have been a sign that something was up. My family and I left town the next day for 1 night and came back home to all 3 of our dogs soughing/hacking. Did I have a run in with palytoxin? If so what do I do to get rid of it? Tonight I made the decision to drain out half of the tank and replace it with just regular tap water and do another 50% water change tomorrow with tap water too. I also added a bunch of carbon. I plan on doing 50% water changes for the next few days unless advised differently. I’m still coughing and that was 4 days ago and anytime I’m down stairs for a bit it gets worse. Please help.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

I'm confused on whether the goal is to sterilize the tank (means killing organisms including bacteria) or remove all traces of palytoxin (has nothing to do with sterilization).

 

[jeeper07]

I'm confused on whether the goal is to sterilize the tank (means killing organisms including bacteria) or remove all traces of palytoxin (has nothing to do with sterilization).

At this point I’m confused myself as I really don’t know what caused this. Most don’t think it’s from poly toxin but more from cyno or Dino’s or some bacteria. Either way I’m just trying to get rid of it. And I don’t know the best way of going about it

 

[jeeper07]

Would just simply running tap water and carbon be enough to remove the cause?

 

[jda]

This a new tank? If so, I would look to something curing like the mortar, or something, other than a toxin or bacteria. Curing silicone gives me a headache and makes my throat hurt, for example, although this does not apply here.

Somebody posted on here once (or maybe RC) that the paly toxin compound would not likely live for more than a day or two in open water. No idea if they are right. There are many other things in tanks that can harm people that are more prevalent than palytoxin, although palytoxin is no joke.

If it was palytoxin, then I don't know it got aerosolized. I would look into something like the mortar curing.