Moving and my tank crashed.

[AnnaKAF]

Friends, it’s a long story. I will try to be short! Any advice is welcome!
I have two major problems to solve.
1. We are moving to a different state after Christmas. Long trip. From Texas to North Carolina. Any advice/recommendations are extremely appreciated!!!
2. While thinking over the best way to save my tank and all of the animals, it decided to fail.
So the problem number 1 is now moved to the lower priority, because I’m not even sure if I can save anything before we move. So please HELP!

The 130 tank is 2 years old. Corals +fish. Everything was wonderfully growing and thriving. Chaeto in the sump. Water changes every three weeks. Feeding with dry food and frozen mysis. The green hair algae started growing in the sump. Grew into the chaeto, I kept trimming it, then it grew into the black sponge filter (the last filter before pump), so I threw it out and put a brand new filter to prevent the GHA from entering the display tank. And ever since my corals started to die off. First. Within literally a few days a huge rock all covered with montipora turned white. I thought maybe the new filter was off gassing something bad. So I threw carbon filter into the sump. Did a water change. Everything else seemed normal. A week later my favias started to look pale. Acropora died within a day or too. Another week, the hammer head covered in brown slime, which I cleaned, and pored coral restore on it, but it died anyway.. I decided that GHA and chaeto are so big, they were eating out all nutrients, so I cleaned the sump. Completely removed both, threw out chaeto, cleaned every corner from GHA, changed the bags for the bio media rings, as they were covered with GHA. Turned off the light. Feed everything heavily.
Temperature is 78
Salinity is 1.026
Alkalinity is 8.0,
Phosphates are 0.06
And my nitrates are dropping!!!! Every day!!! It’s 0.5 now! Why!??? I started dosing NeoNitro. We’ll see. My glass is even clean. I used to clean it every other day, now it’s just clean. What caused it? What exactly made it all behave like that? Any thoughts? The fact that I threw away that sponge filter? (That’s the only thing changed).
What do I do now??? Dose bacteria? Or will it make things worse? Although what can be worse….
Since I was trying to save everything and was planning to move everything safely to a new place, now I’m trying to save everything before I move to give them all another big stress….
(pictures include sump before and after cleaning.)

 

[Tahoe61]

Rock and a hard spot scenario.
Since GHA is possibly the instigator to the initial issue have you tried any inverts like urchin, abalone, snails, sea hare? What about algae eating fish, a smaller variety could go in the sump.
I would hazard to guess there was an anoxic area in the sump and replacing the pump stirred up those anoxic areas.
It actually happened to me. My return pump was barely working, I failed to notice early enough. Changed out the pump and boom huge issues.

Good luck with your pending move. That's quite the journey.

 

[AnnaKAF]

Rock and a hard spot scenario.
Since GHA is possibly the instigator to the initial issue have you tried any inverts like urchin, abalone, snails, sea hare? What about algae eating fish, a smaller variety could go in the sump.
I would hazard to guess there was an anoxic area in the sump and replacing the pump stirred up those anoxic areas.
It actually happened to me. My return pump was barely working, I failed to notice early enough. Changed out the pump and boom huge issues.

Good luck with your pending move. That's quite the journey.

Thank you!!!!
All my CUC including three urchins, lots of snails, hermits, and a lemon Tang, one spotted foxface ate in the display tank. Nothing was in the sump. But now the sump is clean… very clean

 

[AnnaKAF]

Rock and a hard spot scenario.
Since GHA is possibly the instigator to the initial issue have you tried any inverts like urchin, abalone, snails, sea hare? What about algae eating fish, a smaller variety could go in the sump.
I would hazard to guess there was an anoxic area in the sump and replacing the pump stirred up those anoxic areas.
It actually happened to me. My return pump was barely working, I failed to notice early enough. Changed out the pump and boom huge issues.

Good luck with your pending move. That's quite the journey.

Also, I did not replace the PUMP, I replaced that black sponge filter.

 

[BryanM]

Not sure what caused the problem, but its always good to run carbon, especially when cleaning or changing something out that might potentially release something bad.