Yarr's 100G Reef Project

[mempho reefer]

Hang in there Yarr. DON'T GIVE UP!!!!!!!!!

If you think about it, most of us don't have tanks like the ones you see on the net. Mine was mainly a pile of rocks submerged in water for a long time. Then it turned green. Now it seems to be coming along but no where near the beauty of some others. However, I think mine...and probably yours too....is average. It will never be showcased in a book or tank of the month but it's mine and I'm proud of it. Yeah it sucks when stuff dies or some parameter spikes or dips. Its no fun and it usually cost money or time that I don't have. But, it's my hobby. It's challenging, frustrating, and sometimes sad, But, more than all of that combined it's given me joy, an occasional feeling of great satisfaction....and something to do with my spare time. It's also made my friends ooooo and aaaahhh....but that's because they haven't seen the "showcase" tanks on the web.

Don't throw in the towel. Just step back. Take a deep breath and when you're ready jump back in. Because one day you new kid will love it.

Good luck and congrats to you and the wife on the soon to be new addition.

 

[boozeman]

Congratulations on baby...we are expecting also (Jan.)

have you checked for stray voltage?

 

[Yarr]

Booze. Kylie is due on October 15

i have not checked for stray current.. i dont have the ability to do so. but i should look into it.

 

[lcstorc]

Good idea booze. Instead of bothering to check we were able to get an in-tank ground thingy pretty cheap at our lfs. Apparently that was causing a lot of our original fish loss.
Don't give up!!!! This hobby requires patience and persistance. Someday you will have the tank you dream of.
I have had lots of ups and downs with my system and while it is certainly no showcase, at this point it looks better than I ever dreamed. Of course as I am saying that, this weekend we had a leak, the return pump died, and my skimmer is freaking out for no apparent reason so I think I am gonna need a new one. This is of course all just after I finally ordered MH lights. LOL Thought I had enough for the lights, but with all this other stuff I am thinking I should have waited.
It will get better.
I wish I had some ideas about why you are losing all your fish at once, but fortunately you have some of the real experts chiming in. Hopefully they can get to the bottom of it for you.
Good luck and please stay with us.

 

[Gina]

Yarr,
Not all of us like mentioned above have the show case tanks.
I have felt the same as you do now many times.
We had a major disaster several months after we set up our first tank.
An Anenome died and I didn't get it out in time. Of course being that our tank was only about a month old we shouldn't have had one anyway!

With our new tank, we have been batteling cyano which was all over everything last Dec. We broke the tank down and disenfected it.
Since then we have still been batteling it even though it becomes less and less.
Then, a few weeks ago everything turned an ugly lime green color.
It seems to be calming down at this point but, we still have it.

We bought all the right stuff and thought we were doing everything the way we are supposed to and still we are having problems also!

We have flatworms now! Something else to deal with.

I say all this just to let you know, your not alone when it comes to problems.
You just need to try and figure out what is causing them and turn things around.

We'll help you try to figure this thing out as best we can!

 

[Craig Manoukian]

Gina, you've got nitrates and phosphates coming from somewhere. In addition, low flow or old lights are a possible contributor to the cyano. Siphon the cyano as it is the best exporter of N and P. Over time it will self eliminate bwhen the food supply is exhausted. Cyano is your friend!

 

[Yarr]

perc clown dead.
damsel dead

only thing left is wrasse.

i found a snail the other day. and my urchin is fine.

all the corillamorphs are fine and going strong as is the uum.. other thing i have. which i dont know what it is called.

very odd. i thought these would be affected first..

 

[Woodstock]

Must be a disease or illness....

 

[Craig Manoukian]

Yarr, what are your test readings? Are your test kits new and what brand are they. Very perpexing indeed!

 

[Frankie]

Getting a ground rod is a must. Good advice booze. I'll tell you Yarr, the 90 I had when I got into this hobby was the toughest. Since i went bare bottom instead of DSB, this tank im doing now cycled faster and all my tests are right on the money. Also, dose anyone ever clean near your tank when your not home? Cleaning stuff, like windex or even air fresheners sprayed into the air near the tank can polute the water. Killing fish. I once came home way back to my wife cleaning the glass with windex trying to be nice. :/
You still need to test and post your results so we can all see them. If you dont have a particular test kit bring water down to the lfs and write down the results.

 

[reiple]

@Woodstock - isnt Jauberts method using stagnant/deadzone plenum? I think Yarr was moving for a UGF like setup where the water keeps flowing underneath.

Becareful of terrestrial rocks. Might leech something in the short, medium or long run. Better stick to safe sea rocks or base live rock.

 

[Woodstock]

My thinking is that most inverts are much more sensitive than fish. Because he has living inverts but all of his fish are dying, I am lead to beleive that the cause is a fish illness or pathogen... or possible a fish eating critter in the tank (but no obvious signs/lesions).... tough to figure out indeed.

However, any toxins in the water would certainly have affected the inverts as well by now...

 

[Yarr]

I have always had phosphate issues. Nitrates are 10ppm and been steady at that for many months now. I dont test for amonia or nitrIte. Cal is 420ppm.

The biggest indicator of bad params used to be the blue linkia star getting spongy on his arms nad sutff. he is still fine. i forgot to mention him before as a living occupant

I had toyed withthe idea of running a plenum type waterzone but i dont think there has been enough experience with them over the long term. and in all honesty. i think i need ot get a grasp on wtf is happening here before i start thinkign about advanced reef keeping theories.


I wonder if it all coem from the butterfly that died.. a week or os after i got him. he died.. got whitespot VERY quickly. within 14 hours roughly of me first noticing that he looked like he might have whitespot he was dead. If that is the case i wonder how much the LFS will fork up as he already offered me credit on the butterfly.

I have decided to pull down the 100 Gal and start anew with the 180. The 100 wont be tied into the system i had planned. I will only run the 180. As much as i dont wanna get rid of the corillamorphs and weird looking cool thing.. I think i want to start bran new fresh. to the point of curing the rock adn stuff. letting it cycle for uber amounts of time in the dark or at most a few hours of fluro lighting a day. and get it ready for work onc ei get back from afghanistan. I might place a few chromis in there to help the cycle along a bit.

At this stage i plan to run a 3 inch sandbed collected locally here and kickstart the water with some sea water collected from the sea here ( uber clean ). Once i get back i will go into hallides and the chiller setup. with that the auto top-off and calc reactor. I will plumb the sump i built into the 180 with the aqua medic skimmer and let it do its work. I will find some cheto or some decent macro for the fuge shich i have built into the sump to help deal with the phosphate.

I will see where i stand from there.

 

[Frankie]

Hmm... good point woody. You might want to cut open one of the dead fish and see whats inside. i'd look for spots on the internal organs, worms, anything that dose not look healthy or lke it belongs there. If you could do that and take pictures, my lfs owner can ID most diseases. He has a web site. If you like i can send the link to you.

 

[Woodstock]

Yep, sounds like the butterfly introduced a disease. Try to let your system go fallow (fish free) for atleast 6-8 weeks. All new fish should be QT for 6 weeks... I recommend a hyposalinty QT period.

 

[Yarr]

All the dead fish have been disposed off. It would have been interesting to see.

Woody. yeh well the whole tank will be emptied. IF the inverts get moved over to the new tank they will be thoroughly cleaned first.. the rock they are on that is.

 

[Frankie]

I would highly recomend iodine dipping any corals as you move them.

 

[Yarr]

iodine ? the purple stuff ? dilluted or concentrated ? what exactly will it do to them ?

 

[Frankie]

Iodine is a cleaner. It kills bacteria. heres some info i googled for you:
I believe Steve Tyree came up with the whole Iodine Dip, or at least made it popular. You want to use water from your tank and you want to add enough iodine to be able to use at as an antibacterial agent. From what I've read from different sources, 2 ppm seems to be enough, so without doing the math, if you took a teaspoon of lugol's solution and put it in a gallon of water, you'd probably have a nice dip. Maybe half a teaspoon. Everyone recommends different amounts. For what it's worth, you might have to use half the bottle of a commercial preparation to do this.

 

[Yarr]

interesting.. i thnk all of the iodine we have available here is purple.. hard ot get off your hands.. i dont think i wanna be doing tha tto my corals