Nanoreef crash after DSB cleaning

Erik Bloohm

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Hello R2R.

So... I nearly wiped out one of my 14G Biocubes after an aggressive cleaning.

The system has been running and doing well-enough for about 6 years. It is home to a handful of "easy" corals, a couple of clownfish, and a few mobile inverts.

I bought an external filter (generic HD10 household filter) and decided to do a major sediment removal.
I thoroughly stirred up and blew-off the live rock and sandbed surface with a turkey baster.

The clownfish quickly became distressed but I ignored it, assuming they were just freaked out - or they were finally realizing they are not entirely in control of their domain (they're still struggling to come to terms with "the hand that feeds").

I don't recall the exact timeline but: within a few hours both brittle stars had died. A few hours later 1/2 of the corals had bleached (a few bird's nests, montis, and some caulastrea).

After a couple hours and a 50% water change later I pulled the clownfish out (bare-handed - they were finally giving in to that hand that feeds).
...
The clownfish (who were laying eggs the week before) are currently doing well in a sump from another system.

Ultimately, I lost all of the mobile inverts and about 1/2 the corals.

So what happened???

I'm well aware of the issues with hydrogen sulfide and sandbeds. There were no signs of hydrogen sulfide. No black sand. No smell. I was honestly surprised I didn't see more signs of a nutrient rich anoxic sandbed. - It's probably more agitated than I realized at only 1.5 to 2" deep and plenty of movement in the little tank.

I read on a few forums about releasing ammonia by stirring the sandbed. Honestly, that doesn't make much sense to me. In an established tank, the ammonia is quickly metabolized. It's not waiting around to be "eaten". In a well established tank, it's a quick journey from ammonia to nitrite to algae food.

Theory #3: the palythoa are still happy (smiling with an evil grin?)
Is there a chance the palys were ticked and ended up killing 1/2 of their tank-mates? I'm sure I have more than 1 cut on my hands and I didn't have any signs of distress. At least nothing that rose above my sensitivity to the careless indiscretion of the trees :eek:) .)

Does anyone have any ideas?
I never did test for ammonia or nitrite.
It seemed like things improved after carbon filtration. Even more than after the water change.
Experience tells me it's probably hydrogen sulfide. Except there were no signs of it that I noticed.
The ammonia theory doesn't make sense to me - but what do I know.
The palytoxin theory is interesting but ... idk. (I periodically remind my wife that if I'm found unconscious near a tank with a bucket nearby, tell the paramedics it's either electrocution or palytoxin - electrocution is 1000x more likely but it's fun to keep her on her toes :))

What does R2R think? Just another victim of a fine-sand dsb or an exotic toxin? Or just another idiot trying to recreate the ocean in a little glass box? :)
 

Nano sapiens

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Sorry to hear this...

If I understand correctly, you completely disturbed a somewhat deeper (for a nano) sandbed after a long time period (6 years, correct?).

Really hard to say what exactly caused your issue. Could be hydrogen sulfide poisoning, but I suspect that you'd have likely smelled it (pretty hard to miss that lovely rotten egg smell). One thought is possible O2 deficiency brought about by a large volume of established anaerobic bacteria (along with detritus and uneaten food) being disturbed and immediately being exposed to an aerobic environment. I would suspect that mass bacterial death/decomposition would then follow (obviously, this would negatively effect all life in the aquarium which you experienced).

Did the fish look like they were gasping for air (possibly at the surface)?
 

Aqua Man

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I bought an external filter (generic HD10 household filter) and decided to do a major sediment removal.
Was this filter new and never used before? Possibly contaminated if so.
 

Aclman88

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Bummer. My best guess is disturbing the sand bed kicked up a ton of detritus and that either caused an ammonia spike or as nano sapient said, released a ton of bacteria that suddenly took advantage of oxygen and sucked it out if the water column. Palytoxin is a “fun” theory, but I don’t think likely at all. The fun is in quotes because fun is subjective when talking tank crash. Glad the clownfish are doing well!
 

goggs29

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Stirring up 6 years of waste that was in the sand was the culprit, for this reason its also never a good idea to transfer sand or even seed a new sand bad with old sand when doing a tank swap.
 

fish farmer

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I'm thinking the same thing, just too much upset at once.

FWIW I pulled a 20 year old DSB out of a FOWLR and it didn't have any rotten smell, black areas, just a bit of detritus under the surface. It smelled like the ocean and not a dug clam flat.
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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We can make this not happen in the future, you need to rip clean the nano to rid it of the issue which is the clouding that was circulated (and within that cloud lies the culprit nobody has found what it is yet, agreed above its tbd)

post a pic of your reef we can fix it easily

it is not palytoxin it’s the clouding that was cast, we’d easily fix it using a different way than you did which is take down cleaning and skip cycle setting back up. With no cloud…
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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Not every reef has this presentation, we see folks disturb sand commonly without dying and then occasionally this below happens like your system


those are the ones that need rip cleaning the most. In our rip clean thread we are up to fifty pages with zero losses, when done surgically the cleaning you want is safe.



until your reef is directly cleaned the right way this potential exists due to the unique variables in the setup. After a rip clean the sand has no cloud, the rocks have no cloudy detritus the reef is perfect.
 
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