DaJMasta
Valuable Member
I've got a system that is three ten gallon tanks plumbed together on a rack. The bottom is a refugium and return, and it pumps water into both tanks above. Everything is lit, the middle level very little, the top level like a mixed reef, the bottom anti-sync with the top to grow macroalgae (which currently almost fills the tank.) It started as a system to grow out fish and inverts I've been raising, but some of them have stayed in it as adults, some corals have been added, and of course you've got to get something small you couldn't have in your display for the top level. This system is about 3 years old and has its pests, some cyano, some clusters of bubble algae, and some reddish photosynthetic flatworms - but these have been sort of persistent background things and have never really seemed to do anything suddenly or be direct causes of issues that I can tell.
So what's the problem? Yesterday morning, I woke up to the top level looking a little grayish in the water, all of the corals ticked off, and the one fish in the top level visibly distressed. I reacted pretty quickly, did a water change of the top level with what was on hand (maybe a third), put a carbon reactor on the top level, got the fish out and put it in a mesh basket in my main tank. The corals were looking better within an hour but it took most of the day to really look normal, the fish was distressed all day, was still breathing heavily in the evening so I transferred it into a methylene blue bath and then I lost it overnight. I saw the pom pom crabs, peppermint shrimps, grass shrimps, conch, rock flower anemones, and hector's gobies in the bottom level of the rack, so I think from yesterday's crash I only lost the fish, a small candy hogfish. The smell was off
Not so bad for a crash, right? That's because it hasn't been the first. I've learned to have a reactor full of carbon on hand and to act quickly because a few months ago I woke up to a similar thing (probably started a couple hours earlier, but early morning, overnight) - grey water, closed corals, distressed fish, and while I put the carbon on quickly, changed several gallons of water, I lost nearly everything that could move around in the top tank - sexy shrimp, anemones, fish, conch, emerald crab, and even a torch coral, while the hector's goby in the sump and the glass shrimp and peppermint shrimp and pom pom crabs on the other two levels seemed almost entirely unaffected. I also made the mistake of turning the carbon off after things started improving only to have it get worse again some hours later, so yesterday's little crash got a full day of carbon. In the case of this crash, I even saw some dead amphipods, but at night there would be still more that came out to scavenge, and overall this tank has a very robust copepod and amphipod population.
The flow between the levels is not that slow - it's sufficient to maintain temperature without separate heaters and it makes plenty of noise since it's a single overflow dropping several feet - but it seems clear from the lesser impacts on other levels that the origin of the problem is probably the top level. Looking back about a year, I vaguely remember loosing some creatures in a similarly difficult to explain situation, and the event which prompted getting the carbon reactor as an emergency measure, but again, I've had a fish, some corals, and a bunch of inverts live through all three events and not really seem fazed by it.
So what's going wrong? The smell when it happens appears to be mostly ticked off coral, but not like stony coral slime (only have two smaller montis in there), and it persists at a low level for hours. The tank has the appearance of being slightly gray in the water, but maybe this is just reduction of cyano from when I do a water change that includes vacuuming the back wall. In the cases of lost fish, it seems like there is a progression of symptoms - basically nothing and acting normal, then something definitely wrong because they're acting erratic (hiding when they'd be out, swimming constantly when they'd be sitting, trying to jump when they had been chill and knew their surroundings), and then eventually dieing. In the last two events I pulled fish out and put them in a mesh basket in my display tank which, while small for them, had fine water quality and had some PVC fittings to offer cover in the new environment. The fish I moved to the other tank like that have, in every case, appeared fairly normal but distressed, mostly hiding with a fast breathing rate, then hid and mostly ignored food to be found dead 12-24 hours later.
I would guess most of the losses, fish included, would be from an ammonia spike damaging their gills, but with this last one I had a faster reaction and even had it in methylene blue when it died, after most of a day of being in good quality normal water and not showing extreme distress. I have zoas in the tank but have had my hands in there and have done some basic fragging of these varieties and have never noticed any symptoms of palytoxin poisoning in their handling. I once had a cucumber in the bottom level (gulf sand sifting variety), but I haven't seen it in years and it's never lived in the top, where the origin of the problem seems to be. I've got lots of magnets in the tank but I don't see a crack and why would that effect fish? There's a small amount of deep sand (~4 inches) in the sump, but the top level is an inch or less. The flatworm count has been lower, if anything, for the last two crashes and using FWE more than a year ago had no negative effects on other livestock. The one thing that changed before this latest crash was adding a 5 Watt (yes 5) heater to the middle rack, but it had less than 1 degree C temperature change over the rack for the whole night. There is a powerhead in both of the top two levels but with the overflow plumbing and anti sync lighting over tons of macroalgae I can't imagine oxygenation is the issue.
I feel like I can recognize when it's happening, but I have no concept of what's causing it, so do you have any guesses? Any things to look into? I really just want the tank to be stable and for me to be able to keep a few fun fish in it, but I can't justify just adding more fish when seemingly so frequently something will just happen and kill them despite any effort I make to save them.
So what's the problem? Yesterday morning, I woke up to the top level looking a little grayish in the water, all of the corals ticked off, and the one fish in the top level visibly distressed. I reacted pretty quickly, did a water change of the top level with what was on hand (maybe a third), put a carbon reactor on the top level, got the fish out and put it in a mesh basket in my main tank. The corals were looking better within an hour but it took most of the day to really look normal, the fish was distressed all day, was still breathing heavily in the evening so I transferred it into a methylene blue bath and then I lost it overnight. I saw the pom pom crabs, peppermint shrimps, grass shrimps, conch, rock flower anemones, and hector's gobies in the bottom level of the rack, so I think from yesterday's crash I only lost the fish, a small candy hogfish. The smell was off
Not so bad for a crash, right? That's because it hasn't been the first. I've learned to have a reactor full of carbon on hand and to act quickly because a few months ago I woke up to a similar thing (probably started a couple hours earlier, but early morning, overnight) - grey water, closed corals, distressed fish, and while I put the carbon on quickly, changed several gallons of water, I lost nearly everything that could move around in the top tank - sexy shrimp, anemones, fish, conch, emerald crab, and even a torch coral, while the hector's goby in the sump and the glass shrimp and peppermint shrimp and pom pom crabs on the other two levels seemed almost entirely unaffected. I also made the mistake of turning the carbon off after things started improving only to have it get worse again some hours later, so yesterday's little crash got a full day of carbon. In the case of this crash, I even saw some dead amphipods, but at night there would be still more that came out to scavenge, and overall this tank has a very robust copepod and amphipod population.
The flow between the levels is not that slow - it's sufficient to maintain temperature without separate heaters and it makes plenty of noise since it's a single overflow dropping several feet - but it seems clear from the lesser impacts on other levels that the origin of the problem is probably the top level. Looking back about a year, I vaguely remember loosing some creatures in a similarly difficult to explain situation, and the event which prompted getting the carbon reactor as an emergency measure, but again, I've had a fish, some corals, and a bunch of inverts live through all three events and not really seem fazed by it.
So what's going wrong? The smell when it happens appears to be mostly ticked off coral, but not like stony coral slime (only have two smaller montis in there), and it persists at a low level for hours. The tank has the appearance of being slightly gray in the water, but maybe this is just reduction of cyano from when I do a water change that includes vacuuming the back wall. In the cases of lost fish, it seems like there is a progression of symptoms - basically nothing and acting normal, then something definitely wrong because they're acting erratic (hiding when they'd be out, swimming constantly when they'd be sitting, trying to jump when they had been chill and knew their surroundings), and then eventually dieing. In the last two events I pulled fish out and put them in a mesh basket in my display tank which, while small for them, had fine water quality and had some PVC fittings to offer cover in the new environment. The fish I moved to the other tank like that have, in every case, appeared fairly normal but distressed, mostly hiding with a fast breathing rate, then hid and mostly ignored food to be found dead 12-24 hours later.
I would guess most of the losses, fish included, would be from an ammonia spike damaging their gills, but with this last one I had a faster reaction and even had it in methylene blue when it died, after most of a day of being in good quality normal water and not showing extreme distress. I have zoas in the tank but have had my hands in there and have done some basic fragging of these varieties and have never noticed any symptoms of palytoxin poisoning in their handling. I once had a cucumber in the bottom level (gulf sand sifting variety), but I haven't seen it in years and it's never lived in the top, where the origin of the problem seems to be. I've got lots of magnets in the tank but I don't see a crack and why would that effect fish? There's a small amount of deep sand (~4 inches) in the sump, but the top level is an inch or less. The flatworm count has been lower, if anything, for the last two crashes and using FWE more than a year ago had no negative effects on other livestock. The one thing that changed before this latest crash was adding a 5 Watt (yes 5) heater to the middle rack, but it had less than 1 degree C temperature change over the rack for the whole night. There is a powerhead in both of the top two levels but with the overflow plumbing and anti sync lighting over tons of macroalgae I can't imagine oxygenation is the issue.
I feel like I can recognize when it's happening, but I have no concept of what's causing it, so do you have any guesses? Any things to look into? I really just want the tank to be stable and for me to be able to keep a few fun fish in it, but I can't justify just adding more fish when seemingly so frequently something will just happen and kill them despite any effort I make to save them.
