Sulfuric acid (H2SO4) in reef tanks?

[SimplyVibing]

Due to corona my school was shut down and aquarium care was at a minimum. At the time I was an unpaid volunteer and just came by to feed the fish a couple times a week and refill a sump with DI water so it didn’t dry up.

Turns out the facility manager was not doing water changes for an indeterminate amount of time, but not longer than one or two months.

These tanks or large (70+ gals) and mature (2+ years old) with very little livestock. However, an alumni who is in school to receive a certificate for aquarium maintenance came by and told us to tear down all of our saltwater tanks because they have sulfuric acid in them due to poor upkeep. She said that it would kill all of the inverts/coral just like copper would.

Sulfuric acid???? Has anyone heard of or had this problem before? Is she talking out of her butt or do we actually need to destroy years of hard work because the water wasn’t changed for 4-8 weeks?

 

[GaryE]

Due to corona my school was shut down and aquarium care was at a minimum. At the time I was an unpaid volunteer and just came by to feed the fish a couple times a week and refill a sump with DI water so it didn’t dry up.

Turns out the facility manager was not doing water changes for an indeterminate amount of time, but not longer than one or two months.

These tanks or large (70+ gals) and mature (2+ years old) with very little livestock. However, an alumni who is in school to receive a certificate for aquarium maintenance came by and told us to tear down all of our saltwater tanks because they have sulfuric acid in them due to poor upkeep. She said that it would kill all of the inverts/coral just like copper would.

Sulfuric acid???? Has anyone heard of or had this problem before? Is she talking out of her butt or do we actually need to destroy years of hard work because the water wasn’t changed for 4-8 weeks?

Sounds fishy to me....

 

[brandon429]

No it wont factor here.




when I read the post, I figured someone came up with a new dosing trend to assault pH in creative ways.

1000% i want this job we can fix it.
post pics

if you have living organisms we can fix this. my threads have solid wrecked tanks, back.

you might have hydrogen sulfide lol but we can deal with that. its not the kind that kills a roomful of people; well at least not in those levels. a sandbed can crank out some poison gas, but not lethal levels its not harmful to fix up a reef.

 

[homer1475]

Sulfur dioxide maybe, with a deep sand bed given enough time.

Sulfuric acid, absolutely not.

 

[brandon429]

Im picturing what an untopped off, slowed circulation/high organics accumulation would yield

some acids for sure

but if those fish are kicking

if even a few corals exist...tank was kept within a degree of still living

can save for sure. pics, stat. I bet we already have a before and after job to match it in one of our tank move threads. Reef tank restoration is specifically about removing clogs that reduce exposure of the live rock and sand surfaces to wastewater.

those sick reef tanks are a wastewater plant, crudded up, low on surface area, with high potential when unclogged to resupply the city. hands on-we fix easy. in fact it could be made into a lesson on eutrophic to oligotrophic environmental shift for reefs in general, natural ones. what it takes to undo the farm runoff condition...reinstate grazing and remove plants and increase stony coral balance and high light penetrance and strong ORP etc..all because clogs were removed. we handle the tank like a dentist would handle a bad mouth, by flushing and with some bleeding gums as a result from target rasping (what grazers do, we do with a metal tool) and flushing out.

 

[SimplyVibing]

No

I have ten years of tank reworks in two threads I can post we do this day and night that has no bearing


when I read the post, I figured someone came up with a new dosing trend to assault pH in creative ways.

1000% i want this job we can fix it.
post pics

if you have living organisms we can fix this. my threads have solid wrecked tanks, back.

you might have hydrogen sulfide lol but we can deal with that. its not the kind that kills a roomful of people; well at least not in those levels. a sandbed can crank out some poison gas, but not lethal levels its not harmful to fix up a reef.

Wow, thank you so much for your offer to help! I’m showing my coworker the thread so she can read all of the helpful tips we’ve been given, I’m sure she’ll want to talk to you. Thank you again for your help!

 

[SimplyVibing]

Sulfur dioxide maybe, with a deep sand bed given enough time.

Sulfuric acid, absolutely not.

Thanks! We had a mix up, thanks for correcting me

 

[brandon429]

well knowing that I would have edited for elitist tone but we can roll as is

 

[SimplyVibing]

Im picturing what an untopped off, slowed circulation/high organics accumulation would yield

some acids for sure

but if those fish are kicking

if even a few corals exist...tank was kept within a degree of still living

can save for sure. pics, stat. I bet we already have a before and after job to match it in one of our tank move threads. Reef tank restoration is specifically about removing clogs that reduce exposure of the live rock and sand surfaces to wastewater.

those sick reef tanks are a wastewater plant, crudded up, low on surface area, with high potential when unclogged to resupply the city. hands on-we fix easy. in fact it could be made into a lesson on eutrophic to oligotrophic environmental shift for reefs in general, natural ones. what it takes to undo the farm runoff condition...reinstate grazing and remove plants and increase stony coral balance and high light penetrance and strong ORP etc..all because clogs were removed. we handle the tank like a dentist would handle a bad mouth, by flushing and with some bleeding as a result.

Wow, that’s so interesting! These tanks are at the University of West Florida, and everyone working on them (including me) are all students who might go into that one day. Awesome lessons to be learned here!

 

[SimplyVibing]

well knowing that I would have edited for elitist tone but we can roll as is

Lol you’re fine! We appreciate all of the advice and help you can give us— you’re really helping us out!

 

[homer1475]

While @brandon429 does know what he's talking about, he's a little hard to understand sometimes.

 

[brandon429]

well thats really fun seriously it is.

right where farm and industrial runoff occurs on the reef, charged up nutrients...


selects for plants over time, substrate zone increases as things get choked up... waste gasses vs the high energy reef zone which doesn't allow buildup/a shift



by lowering nutrients with water changes but primarily making sand cloud-free, and the rocks, by cleaning the correct way we can put it all back using ways that skip the new cycle and allow instant use of the whole tank. we remove only the waste clogs. put back all the rest.

to remove accumulation and organic inclusion will fix up the reef, sight unseen. it works across all reefs, unless they're slow deep bed turtlegrass reefs those dont want to be deep cleaned... they're accumulation zones by design.

 

[homer1475]

And while I said Sulfur dioxide, @brandon429 hit the nail on the head with hydrogen sulfide.

Thats actually what I was referring to with the DSB. Got my chem mixed up.

 

[ca1ore]

Even hydrogen sulfide (rotten egg smell) is pretty uncommon .... typically it’s detectable by smell long before it becomes a problem for the tank. I get it from my sulfur reactor on occasion .... just means I have to increase the effluent rate.

 

[SepiaErostrata713]

Hey there! I'm the other manager at the facility, and I apologize for the state of our tanks. Corona has slowed a lot of progress, and we normally have to use filtered saltwater from the EPA because it's free, but our 1200gal reservoir is also full of Hydrogen sulfide as well... So we have to flush that out before we can get more salt water. I have 3 tanks currently affected, and one freshwater with an ammonia level of about .5 and a nitrate level of 10-15.
My question is, how do we properly clean the rock, and is there a way clean to clean old dried out rock? What about the rock that our Brown Button Palys are attached to?
The entire tank is covered in coraline algae so we plan to move it over one tank (we have 7, 150gal tall tanks in a row). The tank with clownfish and hair algae is about 55 gallons and the freshwater one mentioned is 75gal. This way I can actually clean the acrylic. This would be so much easier to explain in person, I apologize, I traveled to Belize for spring break so the school banned me from campus till the beginning of May. It's never been this bad
Also, our issue may be a mix of HS and Cyano blooms. Any and all help is appreciated, I am self taught and need all the help I can get!

 

[brandon429]

Pictures are perfect, I have a match. That is the eutrophication shift described above and it’s reversible and all your filter bacteria are in place on biofilm, under the accumulation which a human storm can certainly remedy.

see how the color palette of the tanks above have shifted from reefy purples, electrics, blacks, reds to the yellow + gray hue only- that’s a visual cue for eutrophication shift and lowering of throughput water in/ out. Surface area exposure is compromised, we can uncompromise it and all the filtration bac are simply awaiting freedom lol on the basal rock surface

this thread is 30 pages of work to scan for patterns. It’s not to offput effort to summarize, it’s that scanning the logs can reveal small details left out of this basic summary below:

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

The best way to prepare your sand for use in a transferred reef tank, an upgraded reef tank, a reef tank under invasion etc is to put the sand in sections in a bucket and TAP WATER rinse it outside over and over with the garden hose until all the silt / waste is ejected, expect hours of work per...

www.reef2reef.com

use all new water if you can in rebuilds. It’s fresh, doesn’t have to be filtered for waste compounds etc. if impractical or can‘t, then draw off the cleanest top water here for use, after heavy carbon filtration in a separate container, and prepare for reuse after substrates are cleaned. Seek or make the best water for reassembly is step one.

step two is disassembly surgery. Remove living animals or corals for holding in clean waters. Set your paly rocks in a clean container of saltwater so you can detail them outside the tank, 0% of this job is in-tank work.
it’s all complete disassembly surgical cleaning and no other method can beat this one in reliability.


Rinse all substrate in tap water until clear, that gives you unlimited rinse time. Clear substrate, then rinse in RO water to evacuate tap, now the sand can be reused or just get new sand and pre rinse that, be clear and clean on sand don’t input a clouding source into the new tank(s)

take rocks and brush off accumulations. Use pressurized seawater in some creative way to shoot jet out the pores


re express waste out of this rock. It’s living inhabitants if any can’t expel detritus, its locked in by blanketing and low flow. Express all that out, surgically detail the rocks with knife point rasps (urchin mimic) and forceful washing with saltwater


clean the rocks off
On the empty tanks awaiting rebuild, razor blade + peroxide spray or vinegar...get off all glass accumulations.

start these new reefs laser clean, you don’t need to buy new rocks and sand! We can restore biologically what you have, it’s the only fun way, new rocks is cheating.


reassemble it all, cloudless, and verify your rocks are cloudless clean by putting a test set of rocks into a clean glass five gallon nano of saltwater swirling and heated for a day, to see if they cloud due to sped-up emission of detritus they’ve needed to pump out but couldn’t.

*your new cleaned setups spews detritus for weeks into the clean tank, catching up on breathing/waste casting and respiration literally. Be siphoning that our of the edges, be changing water and mini siphoning pop up invasion spots, you have a busy post surgical 3 mos of guiding work to literally exercise the reef back into fringing reef zone, high energy throughput, ORP strong not acid-tentative, currents high and accumulations low. We effect all that environmental shift back to stony corals and sharp contrasting visual hues by just old fashioned elbow grease and separating sensitive animals from waste clouds

cloudless reassembly is our mechanism. We don’t have to test for free ammonia in these jobs, we already know they’ll skip the cycle and can be reused, if no waste clouding is present. Even the tap rinsed sand, that’s what we do above.

the same job that moves an existing reef tank to a new home, deep cleaning during takedown phase, is exactly the way to reverse the aging process for the reefs there at the University. So happy to see what you all kick into compliance!

By removing the yellow and gray hued coverings, the stark reef colors come back as we plant new life in place of accumulation, on top of rocks that now can actively exchange with the surroundings as they should be. We have taken to your reefs like a dentist set on turnaround if we’ve done things right.

B

 

[brandon429]

Sulfide remediation considerations


this hobby doesn’t factor h sulf issues due to the scaling we work on, they’re small compared to your tanks. Sulfide events from filthy beds risks our tank life not ours


but you may have something different to consider if giant reefs with sand, and organics, have sat in place

* box fans, air vents through an open door is literally your safe prep for working in any place h s is assumed a risk. It’s highly toxic to humans, so vent the room and you’ll be fine. This hobby has health concerns over vibrio exposure and from palytoxin exposure, not once has a h s exposure risk been documented, don’t be the first

only the sandbed is the risk for that, and it’d have to be one huge, sinked up bed to lend such a risk. Clean carefully. Assess carefully for safety’s sake.

eyes- wear eye protection in big restore jobs so paly won’t juice the cornea


hands- poky rocks and vermitid snails puncture skin and vector vibrio, be mindful.


breathing: ventilation ventilation ventilation to the literal outside, not by mixing air in the room you’re cleaning. Clean junked substrate next to an open door or window, vent. fan + vent though this hobby has never, ever, posted a h s event these are preps to keep it that way.



no bottle bacteria is needed here, only a manual flushing event. Revealing your current bacteria + vital space they reside back to the wastewater will reinstate your reefing action in the way you want to see it. Our sole job is removing the organics veneer covering the good stuff

Only the breakdown of organics - oxygen lends the HS danger, once flushed out we‘re now back to calcium carbonate surfaces and no waste gasses.
we want to show that basic protections remained in place for the main biofiltration even though the salinity shifted, the o2 got sapped, the co2 went up, some H S might be present


it’s not that we have to add good microbes back to earn nitrification, we just remove these coverings/sloughs and accumulations and they’ll rebound from this insult, revealing the true abilities of any reef and the insulation help afforded by biofilm covering.

 

[SepiaErostrata713]

Wow guys thank you so much! I will begin prepping for the tank's 'surgery' tomorrow and will post picture updates of the process. I really appreciate your detailed responses. I will do my best to follow this advice and make adjustments where needed.

 

[brandon429]

How’s this big job looking

 

[SepiaErostrata713]

Sorry for the late update, we've been monitoring the tank to make sure nothing else major happened. We were able to remove some of the rock and create a more open concept to start. All parameters have been good, but we have to find a good free floating filter media to add to the sump, because until now it hasn't had any (recommendations would be nice, the sump is 29 gallons with no flow-throughs). A backpack protein skimmer was attached, but was shorting out the electrical, so we are still researching affordable alternatives. The three clowns, watchmen goby, snails and crabs are doing great, no losses (yet). I am so proud of this tank rebuild and it's all thanks to you guys.
We followed previously mentioned instructions for cleaning the rock and corals, and replaced the gross shellhash bottom for an inch or so of sand, creating a hill in the middle back where the goby prefers to stay.
If you guys have any other questions feel free to let me know. I will be adding the post-clean photos below.
Note:
The sunny-D polyp started as just 1, and now look at it in just 6 months.
The brown button palys are our most successful coral (obviously)
Smaller corals on frag plates: species unknown, rescued from clearance at LFS
Clowns: almost