Tank Crash Recovery Plan

[CRABDADDY]

My tank has crashed. I feel pretty terrible about the whole thing. It was a combination of many issues, most of which were in my control. These issues led to poor maintenance over few months. In the middle of this I moved to a new apartment and things went downhill. Nearly all my coral is dead and I've lost a few of my fish and a shrimp just this week. Losing my fish was a major wake up call. I was still feeding them regularly, my neglect was maintenance related and I didn't abandon feeding the fish by any means. I don't want to quit this hobby. I realize I got lazy and messed up. I want to do everything I can to get my tank back on track and I'd like some recommendations.

Where the tank is at now after a water change today:
Salinity 1.025
Alk: 1dkh
Calcium: I need to get reagents before I can test, but I'm assuming it's bottomed out like the Alk is
Nitrate: 2 ppm
Phosphate: 0.34 ppm

Current algae issues:
I have a pretty significant problem with dinos and cyano. Before my water change today the rocks were mostly coated in cyano. I vacuumed my sand bed and just a few hours later the dinos are back.

My plan:

First I set up reminders on my phone for the water changes/other maintenance. I'm hoping this helps me stay on schedule.

1. 25% water change twice a week
   1. During these water changes I'm scrubbing the rocks with a toothbrush and removing as much algae as possible
   2. I'm aggressively siphoning the sand to remove as much gunk as possible
2. Using GFO to get phosphates in control
   1. Reducing feeding pellet foods and revert back to mostly frozen food (hoping to reduce phosphates)
3. Dosing Kalk to slowly increase my alk/calc along with water changes
4. I'm considering reducing my lighting from 12 hours a day to 8 hours a day.
   1. I'm also considering a blackout for a few days.

If anyone has any other suggestions I'm very much open to any help. I love this hobby and I owe it to my remaining fish to do better.

 

[ColoredRock]

how big is the tank?

 

[CRABDADDY]

how big is the tank?

It's a 40g Innovative Marine AIO.

 

[Tamberav]

I would just siphon out the sand and rinse/replace. Do water changes and suck out visible algae and debris.

 

[Cell]

25% twice a week...sounds like you are going to burn yourself out again. I would rip clean the tank over a few hours and proceed with a regular maintenance plan, more like 10-15% water change per week. @brandon429

 

[ColoredRock]

So...one option could be:

Can you move the survivors to a different temporary container? are the corals encrusted on the rock?
If not you could move everything except for the rock and the sand. Put it into a temporary housing with heat and flow with old water.

Remove the sand and rise really well with fresh water. Scrub the heck out of the rock in what is left of the old tank water
Pull the rock out do a deep clean on tank and plumbing.

Acclimate the survivors back...Make a day out of it. Otherwise... its going to be a long road.. doable. All kinds of way to fix an issue

Good luck!

 

[brandon429]

Since it’s a 40 consider this

Algae Identification

Any opinions on what type of algae this is growing on my rocks and sand bed?

www.reef2reef.com

that’s top five rip cleans in existence try and beat them by being even more thorough, even more resolved to cause a laser clean start for your current tank

notice we never used bottle bac


when finished do not reinstall GFO or any filter designed to lower nitrate, cease testing and responding to po4 and nitrate for two months after the rip clean. Enjoy headache free reefing till the urge to test and tinker wins out


if you do a rip clean right, like they did, you get the after pics and sustain they got. A rip clean is the most resolved and thorough move a human can do to a reef tank

 

[CRABDADDY]

Ripping the tank clean is an interesting idea. I've never heard of that being done before. I'm not sure if that's too extreme for the situation I'm in. I'll attach a few pictures. These were taken a few hours after scrubbing rocks/vaccuming sand until the tank was fairly clean looking. It grew back fast.

The reasoning for my aggressive water changes was to get the alk/calcium/mag back in range. I was thinking of doing that only until they're back at acceptable levels, then going back to normal 10-15% water changes weekly. Let me know if my assessment here is incorrect, but I need to do something more drastic to get parameters back to form. I measured alk before my WC today at 1.0 dKh and measured again after a 25% WC and found it still reading 1dKh. My salt mixes at 11 dKh, so I was surprised by that.

 

[brandon429]

You can see by the examples plus gators one year update there isn’t any extreme, there’s only wanting the after pics shown or not wanting them. The above pics are still fully invaded comparatively. There is no known fix date


It’s the work to earn the clean condition that seems daunting, but regarding the outcome there isnt any guessing it’s already logged. The fix date is the date you run the cleaning pass fully

Laser clean ruby clear fixed or still invaded with cloudy sand, merely a choice of which mode wanted

 

[brandon429]

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/rip-clean-has-begun….872872/

cut and paste it, wont hyperlink

that one isnt even done yet, he’s mid rinse

 

[MnFish1]

@CRABDADDY It really surprises me that your alkalinity is 1 dKH. I would think thats nearly (if not) impossible. I would verify your test kit? What was your pH? I would definitely re-verify your tests - in any case, the water changes will help.

 

[CRABDADDY]

You're right. It was a test kit error. Bad hanna alk reagent. Alk was actually around 11 dkh and has remained there since this post. My tank is fairly stable. Also it turns out what I thought were dinos was really cyano. My tank was not as in as bad of shape as I suspected. I think what may have killed my fish was stirring up my sandbed when trying to aggressively remove the cyano. I've since used chemiclean which did eliminate much of the cyano, although some remains. I've added a few corals and they seem to be doing well.

 

[ApoIsland]

My tank has crashed. I feel pretty terrible about the whole thing. It was a combination of many issues, most of which were in my control. These issues led to poor maintenance over few months. In the middle of this I moved to a new apartment and things went downhill. Nearly all my coral is dead and I've lost a few of my fish and a shrimp just this week. Losing my fish was a major wake up call. I was still feeding them regularly, my neglect was maintenance related and I didn't abandon feeding the fish by any means. I don't want to quit this hobby. I realize I got lazy and messed up. I want to do everything I can to get my tank back on track and I'd like some recommendations.

Where the tank is at now after a water change today:
Salinity 1.025
Alk: 1dkh
Calcium: I need to get reagents before I can test, but I'm assuming it's bottomed out like the Alk is
Nitrate: 2 ppm
Phosphate: 0.34 ppm

Current algae issues:
I have a pretty significant problem with dinos and cyano. Before my water change today the rocks were mostly coated in cyano. I vacuumed my sand bed and just a few hours later the dinos are back.

My plan:

First I set up reminders on my phone for the water changes/other maintenance. I'm hoping this helps me stay on schedule.

1. 25% water change twice a week
   1. During these water changes I'm scrubbing the rocks with a toothbrush and removing as much algae as possible
   2. I'm aggressively siphoning the sand to remove as much gunk as possible
2. Using GFO to get phosphates in control
   1. Reducing feeding pellet foods and revert back to mostly frozen food (hoping to reduce phosphates)
3. Dosing Kalk to slowly increase my alk/calc along with water changes
4. I'm considering reducing my lighting from 12 hours a day to 8 hours a day.
   1. I'm also considering a blackout for a few days.

If anyone has any other suggestions I'm very much open to any help. I love this hobby and I owe it to my remaining fish to do better.

I agree that semi weekly water changes would probably burn you out very quick. I tried a couple tiny little reef jars and got burned out on only once weekly water changes of just one gallon.

I'm also not a fan at all of small frequent water changes. I say skip that headache and do it all at once. One 50% water change every 3 weeks on your tank would be more than enough.

For the last 10 years I have been doing one 50% water change every 3-6 weeks in a 120 gallon loaded lps/sps tank. I have easy to keep corals though and I'm sure you would be starting at the same point. My approach would not work with the more difficult sps.

 

[CRABDADDY]

I should probably report back on what I've been doing to clean the tank up. I ran the chemiclean regiment twice. There was a noticeable improvement, but it didn't eliminate the issue. The cyano that remains is different in appearance. It's still reddish brown, but it's stringy. It no longer looks like slime. I'm assuming it's cyano, although I suppose it could be something else. I'll attach a tank photo.

I've been doing 25% weekly water changes. I've been trying to do a good amount of manual removal of cyano, which doesn't seem to help all that much. It regrows fairly quickly, but I get in the tank with a turkey baster once every day or two to make sure it's not getting too overgrown onto the rocks. I've been adding a capful of microbacter7 every day as well. I started dosing neo nitro because my nitrates were bottomed out and I've been able to keep them stable at around 5ppm. My phosphates are still at 0, which I'm going to try to remedy by using neophos.

I also added a nero 5 to improve flow. This doesn't seem to have a big effect on the cyano, but it probably helps a bit. I also think my previous powerhead wasn't providing enough flow for my corals.

Aside from that, the corals I've added are looking great for the most part. Alk is sitting dead on at 11 dkh for the past month. I had some GSP that just died when I added it to the tank and a hammer that struggled, but the other corals I have are doing well. Had a torch in there for about 3 weeks and it's looking very happy. I even got some cheaper/easier SPS frags because I figured the tank was in much better shape than I had initially thought and they're doing great too.