55Gallon death tank

Laura and Jim will be hosting the May meeting this Saturday the 12th and it will be the usual of food, drinks, raffle and fun.
 
Doors will be open at 6:00 pm for social talk and the meeting will start at 7:00.  Parking gets a little tight and the city says you can't park on 4th but there is a parking lot a block away.   Meeting is usually held in the backyard so feel free to bring your favorite lawn chair, weather permitting of course.

If you need address/directions, contact a club member.

Best if you park at Mini Mall (where the spaghetti establishment use to be)
 
You will get to see his new frag tank set up in the making.
 
Hope to see you there!

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[psa]

Warning, long message ahead, advice badly needed.  Thanks.

So, some of you may have seen my first messages to these forums, wherein I lost everything in my 55 gallon reef tank due to a disturbed DSB.  Two complete water changes following scrubbing of all surfaces and live rock and a thorough vacuming of the sand bed were unable to prevent anything new added to the tank from very quickly dieing.

I took everything down after that, scrubbed the tank thoroughly, rinsed the sand out repeatedly with fresh water, and let it dry.  The largest piece of rock in the tank (~30lbs) was also scrubbed, rinsed thoroughly, and let dry.  All of the rest of the live rock (~20lbs) was scrubbed, rinsed and rescrubbed in fresh saltwater, and then placed into a separate bucket of fresh saltwater with a strong power head and airation via the venturi inlet.

The whole thing sat this way for about a week and a half while I decided what to do with it.  Eventually, I decided to set it up again and I refilled the tank, adding about an inch of the (now quite dead) sand on the bottom and the large (also quite dead) rock.  The sump was set up with overflow (1" out, 3/4" in) and a new protein skimmer, heater, coarse filter, etc.  The live rock was added after everything else, with the whole setup process taking ~11 days.  This was completed a couple days ago.

Testing indicated no NH4,NO2,NO3, PH 8.2, spec. grav. 1.0255, 78F.  Considering there wasn't much alive in the tank anymore I wasn't surprised that there was no nitrogen in the system, and I didn't see any point in testing most other things (Alk, K, P, etc.) since the water was fairly freshly made up, using R/O water (1ppm, tested).
I added a bit of frozen scallop to the tank yesterday to provoke a cycle to get the tank ready for handling the output of live critters, and planned to continue monitoring daily, watching for a standard cycle.

On reflection, though, I went out and got a hermit crab to add to the tank today, to make sure that whatever had killed the other things in the tank really was gone.  It died.  Never even came out of its shell again after being placed in the tank.

So, now what?  This has been very discouraging for me, and the only thing worse than seeing my richly bio-diverse tank come crashing down with everything dieing, is being unable to get it going again.

[Ed]

PSA,
    You and I are going through the same thing right now.    You are probably having a big die off of things that were in your tank.    You will have to do water changes until things level out.   Stop by and see my tank.    Stop by and pick up some activated Carbon from me also.  Imagine you running a marathon.   You hurt your leg.    You are off of it for a long time...Your tank has to build up a resistance again.  It will probably take about 6-8 weeks again.   Did you have very many live corals in your tank?   My opinion, If you do things to your tank do them moderately.   Do not do everything at once.   Do not make big changes in your tank.  For example, If I clean prefilter one day,   That is all I do.  I do not disturb other things.   You want to make as little of changes as possible.   A water change one day.    The filter change days later.   You tank has to adjust to changes.   My skimmer is pulling stuff out of my tank still from my die off of coral.  
     I like the fact that you are using a scallop to break in your tank.   That is a cool method of generating your tank to cycle.   If you need something stop by my house.   I do not have soccer this week.  
I have tons of Activated Carbon.   I am hoping others will use it.
You probably have phospates going through the roof from your DSB being disturbed.   As you know phospates / nitrates  combo very toxic to animals.   I also suggest a polyfilter to pull things out.   I hope to see you at the next meeting.   You keep lurking in the shadows.   Come on out and meet the others please.

Ed Hahn
374-0815
esmzhahn@verizon.net

[psa]

Well, for the most part this is a new tank, as explained above.  There really isn't much left from the old one.  I will go ahead and watch for a new nitrogen cycle, I guess, since I've already got it all running, and I'll check for P tonight, just to make sure.
As far as joining the club, I'm no longer sure about my future with this hobby.  If I can't get this tank running well in the next month, I'll probably throw in the towel.  I've got too much going on already to keep throwing time and money at a problem I can't solve.

[Ed]

PSA,
    How much Live Rock do you have?  Rule of thumb is about 1.5 lbs of live rock per gallon.   Do you use RO or RODI water?   I am willing to give you RO Water from my house.  Do you have good water flow inside your tank.   Your Salinity is it about 1.026?  Your temperature do you have a thermometer that is acruate.  Those are the basics.     What type of skimmer are you running?   Salt water like fresh water takes time to have the tank cycle.  It usually takes about 8 weeks for your tank to stablilize.   I am working OT tonight and rest of the week.   I bet I or others could help you get up and running easily.   I think you are being really hard on your self.   This is a great hobby.  It sometimes takes time .    Please give us a chance?  It would cost you nothing but time.     You are going to find out that a lot of us enjoy helping as much as you enjoy it.   If you come to meeting you will be surprised at what you learn and what is given to others in club meetings, Besides sharing smiles and good food!

good luck, I hope to hear from you soon.
cell phone is 948-0815
Hang in there Buddy!
Ed Hahn

[Yellotang]

First I want to say that thank you for coming to us for advise.
At this point I see three possible problems that could cause your problems.

#1. Stray voltage. You could have a power head or a light leaking a lot of voltage into your tank.

#2. Copper. This stuff will kill crabs in a heartbeat.

#3. Reuse of DSB material. Freshwater rinses will not remove things like phosphates and disolved heavy metals.

I really hope that you don't thow in the towel yet. Give us a chance and we can help you get that tank of your dreams.

[Ed]

PSA,
  My cell phone number is 948-4013.   :oops:   My home phone number is 374-0815.   :oops:  I am sorry I gave you the wrong number earlier.  Matt and I are excited to try to help you as I am sure others are in Club.  Your ears should be ringing by now.

Too  many hours Ot this week and not being organized at home leads to me not calling you..I am sorry.   I do care.   I love this hobby too damn much.   There are some really smart people in this club.   The next meeting will be in Richland on the 23rd.   If you want some inspiration come to this meeting.   If you come to meeting you will follow I guarantee it.  I welcome the chance to meet you .   O PSA please come out of the shadows?..
Ed

[angelscrx]

This thread hasn't been active for awhile and so I thought I would ask PSA how his tank is doing?

[psa]

Tank is doing pretty good these days.  It took a long time to restabilize (3-4 months) and finish with the algae cycles.  Phosphates were finally under control last I tested it, but I'm out of testing solution so need to buy another test kit for P.

These days I have quite a bit of life in the tank, though none of the pods or shrimp that used to show up throughout.  I also have a mysterious problem with crabs above a certain size.  Large hermits and every emerald I've tried seem to do very little moving around and die within a couple days (drip acclimation 4-12 hours so I don't think that's the problem).  Smaller (not small) hermits seem to be fine.  I have zebra-leg, blue-leg, reds, etc. that have been active for a few months now, so I don't know what the problem is.

I'm not sure I could list everything in the system anymore, partly because I can't identify all of the live rock hitchhikers.  I do have mangroves and a DSB in the 'fuge with an urchin who cleans my rock for me and a number of snails.  In the main tank I have various ricordea, zoos, mushrooms, toadstools, and other softies, as well as an encrusting monti, orange cap, an unusual gorgonia, elkhorn frag, a pink torch, and frogspawn.  I also have several macroalgaes including halimeda and an unusual bright red one that I haven't identified.  Critters include all manner of hermits and snails, lettuce nudis, a large lawnmower blenny, some mollies (my children's favorite--go figure), and bristle worms. Oh, and of course feather dusters here and there and several (smallish) clumps of pink pulsing xenia.

[angelscrx]

The red macro could be gracilaria?  Sounds like the tank is doing good Paul.

[psa]

The red macro could be gracilaria?  Sounds like the tank is doing good Paul.

Um, no.  Here's a (not-so-good) picture of it.  This is about six inches across.