Tank is crashing and I’m so confused

lba4590

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50% of my corals have died in the last month. All that’s left are my softies. Cyano is covering every single inch of the tank in thick mats, I just blew it all off the rocks and the water is so murky and red I’m extremely worried about my fish. This started with Nopox dosing (slowly ramped up to 5ml in 120g system over the course of 4 months).

Parameters seem fine. I’m so lost and feeling really defeated.

Salinity 1.025
Temp 79.4
Alk 9.6
Phos 0.04
Nitrate 15
Cal 430
Mag 1300

I’ve been adding bio digest, phyto, microbactor 7, dr Tim’s waste away (none at the same time) trying to reintroduce some competing bacteria but the cyano is completely out of control and continues to grow. I did a 2 day blackout and all it did was make my anemones look horrible, cyano is possibly even worse.

I have Chemiclean and I’m afraid to use it due to the sheer volume of cyano, I was trying to knock it back but my attempts are futile. I’m worried about killing all of my fish with dying cyano toxins.

Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated :(
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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consider a rip clean, no other way is better. here's a 120 gallon rip clean with months of follow up after, follow exact.



after the reassembly and skip cycle clean setup, drop the light intensity down for a week and up the feed inputs directly over/into corals in the am while feeding tentacles are out.

rip clean=we clean out all the invader. we put back shiny gold quality clean surfaces.

non rip clean=you cycle some or all of the dead mass of the invader back into a system already massively cloudy in the rocks and sand, then its a GHA thread in 5 mos.


we are clearing the means for you to feed better. That helps corals. How would your system as it sits now like being fed much more? It’d cause more of an invasion. Corals suffer as we alter params into invader starvation vs + biomass selection for corals.

heck you could even draw off most of your water and re use it, over clean surfaces. Nobody says you have to acquire 100 gallons new although Jon did because he was not playing around.
 
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arking_mark

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How old is the tank?

 

coralfishreef

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I'd do a big water change and suck the Cyano out while doing so. Get as much as you can siphon out. THEN think about Chemiclean. My $.02...
From your old posts, your tank is 120 gal and around 11 months old and your copperband ate some or a bunch of your LPS when you went on vacation.

Manually remove the cyano. If you use filter floss change it out daily or often until the cyano is under control.

“This started with Nopox dosing…”
“I’ve been adding bio digest, phyto, microbactor 7, dr Tim’s waste away (none at the same time)”

I try to keep things simple. I’d stop dosing all of these except the phyto if you’re using live phyto. If it’s not live phyto, I’d stop dosing that as well. None of those additives are needed from my experience and randomly dosing bacteria or additives has caused me more problems than not.

After manually removing the cyano using a tube and siphon, replace with new saltwater. Keep this up until for a week or two until the cyano is gone or mostly gone. You’ll probably end up doing between 10 - 30 gals of water change by the time you’re done, or more depending on the amount of cyano… Use a turkey baster to clear leftover detritus and cyano from the rocks. Change the filter floss out after the water column clears up. Wait for a few weeks for your tank to stabilize while performing your normal maintenance and water changes and then reassess.

Since your copperband likes to eat LPS you may not be able to keep LPS in that tank again.
 
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Spare time

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50% of my corals have died in the last month. All that’s left are my softies. Cyano is covering every single inch of the tank in thick mats, I just blew it all off the rocks and the water is so murky and red I’m extremely worried about my fish. This started with Nopox dosing (slowly ramped up to 5ml in 120g system over the course of 4 months).

Parameters seem fine. I’m so lost and feeling really defeated.

Salinity 1.025
Temp 79.4
Alk 9.6
Phos 0.04
Nitrate 15
Cal 430
Mag 1300

I’ve been adding bio digest, phyto, microbactor 7, dr Tim’s waste away (none at the same time) trying to reintroduce some competing bacteria but the cyano is completely out of control and continues to grow. I did a 2 day blackout and all it did was make my anemones look horrible, cyano is possibly even worse.

I have Chemiclean and I’m afraid to use it due to the sheer volume of cyano, I was trying to knock it back but my attempts are futile. I’m worried about killing all of my fish with dying cyano toxins.

Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated :(


Stop nopox. You are fuelling the cyano. Just siphon then do chemiclean. It is a very straightforward problem and solution.

That is the issue with carbon dosing, you can't control what uses it.

Also, the tank is not crashing. Don't worry.
 

monkeyCmonkeyDo

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Stop dosin crap. Lol.
Do a 100% wc. Do it again in 5 days if need be. Scrub with a toothbrush. Lots of maintence needed. Kool.to blow it.all.off but u need to export it after that.
-d
 

Spare time

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Stop dosin crap. Lol.
Do a 100% wc. Do it again in 5 days if need be. Scrub with a toothbrush. Lots of maintence needed. Kool.to blow it.all.off but u need to export it after that.
-d


100% is a bad idea. Cyano thrives in 0 nitrate environments so that would actually just make his issue worse.
 

Spare time

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No. Make the tank super.dirty and do the wc. I dont belive in tank crashes. It is avoidable. Theres.enough.muck.to.handle.the.100% imo from the sounds of.it.
-d


Nitrate at 15ppm and phosphate at 0.04 are not numbers that cause massive algae or bacteria outbreaks.
 

Spare time

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This isn't a complicated issue. Just stop nopox and do chemiclean. I solve cyano issues for customers at work weekly and everytime it goes away and doesn't come back. There is no need to overcomplicate this. No need to make a tank tear down.
 
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lba4590

lba4590

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Thanks all. A lot I need to do/stop doing lol. So I can’t do more than a 40ish gallon water change at once, but that’s generally what I do when I do a WC. My nitrates were stuck around 50 for a while and now they’re finally down with the nopox so I don’t know how else to keep them down. I have a lot of fish and have to feed heavily. I do have a refugium but no UV. I will definitely quit with the additives!

I tried syphoning during several WCs when it first started popping up in the sand only and that just seemed to make it spread like wildfire. It is so thick that I have a hard time even getting my syphon to suck it up, but I just blew out the whole tank and let my filter sock catch it and replaced it, will keep doing that - is that actually getting rid of it? It’s also covering the cheato in my refugium and I’ve been rinsing that daily, but it just comes right back.

Oh and yes my copperband does love to eat fleshy LPS but he definitely wasn’t responsible for all my euphyllia and elegance dying :( but yeah I can’t keep most LPS anyway.. very sad about all my torches, hammers and frogspawns.. I had a lot..
 

monkeyCmonkeyDo

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Chemi clean not a fix. Cyano and dino thrive off high light and silicate. Nothing really more. I dont believe the new dino vibrant method or ideology. If the op want to continue putting chemicals in the tank thats fine but i am still.gonna suggest a good cleaning and a good wc
-d
 

Azedenkae

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50% of my corals have died in the last month. All that’s left are my softies. Cyano is covering every single inch of the tank in thick mats, I just blew it all off the rocks and the water is so murky and red I’m extremely worried about my fish. This started with Nopox dosing (slowly ramped up to 5ml in 120g system over the course of 4 months).

Parameters seem fine. I’m so lost and feeling really defeated.

Salinity 1.025
Temp 79.4
Alk 9.6
Phos 0.04
Nitrate 15
Cal 430
Mag 1300

I’ve been adding bio digest, phyto, microbactor 7, dr Tim’s waste away (none at the same time) trying to reintroduce some competing bacteria but the cyano is completely out of control and continues to grow. I did a 2 day blackout and all it did was make my anemones look horrible, cyano is possibly even worse.

I have Chemiclean and I’m afraid to use it due to the sheer volume of cyano, I was trying to knock it back but my attempts are futile. I’m worried about killing all of my fish with dying cyano toxins.

Any advice or suggestions would be much appreciated :(
If it started with nopox, I wonder if that depleted nutrients and resulted in your corals starving, resulting in a vicious cycle where they don't do well while cyano or whatever algae took advantage of nutrients released by the dying corals and basically just outgrew everything to outcompete everything even further, and then of course everything you did after just made your corals and anemone and stuff even worse, which then made the cyano even happier.

That imo would be the most likely hypothesis. Especially if your parameters seem fine, which they are.

I would dare to say that despite your corals and anemone dying, your fish are perfectly fine? Since they would not be affected by any of this.
 

TuxUrchin07

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You should be set if you remove the core problem (different conflicting bacteria) and do chemiclean. If u do the chemiclean first your cyano is going to come back
 

brandon429

why did you put a reef in that
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howd that cyano job turn out
 

arking_mark

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From your old posts, your tank is 120 gal and around 11 months old and your copperband ate some or a bunch of your LPS when you went on vacation.

Manually remove the cyano. If you use filter floss change it out daily or often until the cyano is under control.

“This started with Nopox dosing…”
“I’ve been adding bio digest, phyto, microbactor 7, dr Tim’s waste away (none at the same time)”

I try to keep things simple. I’d stop dosing all of these except the phyto if you’re using live phyto. If it’s not live phyto, I’d stop dosing that as well. None of those additives are needed from my experience and randomly dosing bacteria or additives has caused me more problems than not.

After manually removing the cyano using a tube and siphon, replace with new saltwater. Keep this up until for a week or two until the cyano is gone or mostly gone. You’ll probably end up doing between 10 - 30 gals of water change by the time you’re done, or more depending on the amount of cyano… Use a turkey baster to clear leftover detritus and cyano from the rocks. Change the filter floss out after the water column clears up. Wait for a few weeks for your tank to stabilize while performing your normal maintenance and water changes and then reassess.

Since your copperband likes to eat LPS you may not be able to keep LPS in that tank again.

This is a good plan to follow.
 

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