How to bring back a disaster?

[jimmy n]

Pictures please!!!

[Floyd R Turbo]

Sorry I just now saw the visitor message, I must have missed the alert!

What is the status of the system now that it's been a few weeks? I'm guessing it's been nuked w/RODI...

[mrkalel]

Originally Posted by Floyd R Turbo

Sorry I just now saw the visitor message, I must have missed the alert!

What is the status of the system now that it's been a few weeks? I'm guessing it's been nuked w/RODI...

Nope actually we both have been busy with work. So pretty much no change in status.

Any suggestions?

[guserto4]

I would start over. QT the fish & coral in a seperate tank, shop vac out the sand and stir up the rest so it's in the water column and drain the tank. Run the system a while with just the rock with RO and get everything to die off, clean it out as best that can be done with the cemented LR stuck in the tank. Drain it, get new sand and reseed & re-cycle then reintroduce inhabitants after the appropriate time based on monitoring all water perams. I think in the long run I'd want to know what was in the tank because, as best that can be done, I put it in there. Seems like you could be chasing unknowns forever otherwise and that could push a sweet tank setup back into the state is in now, and push another reefer out of the hobby from the frustration of not doing everything 'right' the first time. JMO.

[dkeller_nc]

Originally Posted by mrkalel

Nope actually we both have been busy with work. So pretty much no change in status.

Any suggestions?

This would still be my suggestion, if for no other reason that it's less work than emptying everything, bleaching/acid washing the rock, and starting over again:

"Here's another vote for a few water changes, glass clean-up, skimmer start-up, a bag of carbon and see what you've got. If you want to vacuum the sand to see how much detritus may (or may not) have built up, there's no problem with doing it, just do small sections at a time rather than the whole bed at once.

One other thought - I wouldn't turn the lights back on just yet (other than briefly to let you see what you're doing in the tank). I'm betting you're going to find nitrates and phosphates through the roof when you test the water, and it would be best to get these under control before illuminating the tank as you would with a normal reef."

[Floyd R Turbo]

Having read the entire thread, as I understand it there is still livestock (fish only) in the tank. No lights - no corals. But you potentially have a plethora of sponges and other life, and undoubtedly you also have a large bacterial colony.

You have to start with the understanding that anything that you do is going to likely throw the tank into a cycle at some level. Even changing the flow patterns can cause a partial die-off of the bacterial colony which has established itself according to the conditions.

That being said, knowing what the water parameters are is of less importance because these are bound to change, there's just no way around that. But it doesn't hurt to know your starting point.

So here is what I would do.

1) Test for:
Ammonia (API) - this hopefully is zero
Nitrate (API) - this might not be as bad as some would expect, depending on how much has been fed over time
Phosphate (API or Hanna Checker) - this is likely really high, I would try API first and I would bet it's over 5.0 ppm
Alkalinity (Salifert or API) - you want to check this because a wild swing from a PWC can rapidly change this and that could be really bad
pH (anything) - this is of less importance because raising Alk will affect this, but good to know where you're at. Without lighting, this will likely be really low also (maybe as low as 7.4 but hopefully not lower)
Calcium - May not be low as there has likely not been a lot of calcification going on without light, but another one that you may not want to increase too fast
Salinity - use a good refractometer to make sure you know where this is at as you will likely need to adjust it

So if my guess it right, your Alk and pH will be out of whack and Phos will be high, and salinity will probably be in the 30-34 range.

This whole next part of the process is way easier to do without fish in the tank, unless you want to stress them out. So catch them and QT them. By the way, what are the fish??

Once that is done, you can tackle the rest of the problem. Water quality can be fixed through a series of steps and you do have options, but what is difficult to fix is the rock issue. Your rock has likely become a huge nutrient sink and is probably quite full. Since it is not removable, you have to 'cook it' in place.

I would not "nuke" the rock in the tank or anything like that (RODI, vinegar, etc). But I would remove the sand if at all possible. This is likely saturated with waste and you will just be fighting a losing battle, or a very long tedious one at best.

So the basic phases are:
1) remove fish
2) get filtration operating decently, and incorporate filter socks or some other kind of mechanical filtration (as much as possible). Add a skimmer. Any skimmer.
3) somehow incorporate carbon, a lots of it for the 'clean up' stage
4) if necessary, adjust alk and cal to be in line with freshly mixed saltwater (alk slowly, and not at the same time as Cal)
5) start doing PWCs and siphoning out sand
6) Deal with rock, lights, etc
7) add new sand

Depending on the sand type, you can get a large diameter vinyl hose (like 1" Inner Diameter from hardware store - but $$) and just suck it out into a bucket. You'll go through a lot of water but you needed to do a big PWC anyways. This sand removal step may need to be done in stages and should coincide with your water change plan after certain parameters have been adjusted appropriately (more on that later). So if you have 300g and your plan is to start with a series of 10% PWCs, then suck out the amount of sand/water to equal your 30g mark and then stop. Suck the sand down to the bare bottom, don't skim a bunch off the top of a large area. Once you have all the sand out, you will probably be well on your way to getting tank parameters where they should be and can start "cleaning up" the rock.

You may run into an issue where the sand has actually formed solid chunks. Use a kitty litter scoop to get these out without breaking them up. Depending on the sand, you may have rocks, snail shells, etc in them. The bigger siphon hose the better for dealing with these. This is definitely a 2-man operation, one to suck the sand and one to control the outflow into buckets. For each gallon of sand you get out, you will get upwards of 5-10g of water.

So after you have removed all the sand, you will have probably changed the mechanical filtration at least a couple times. Your carbon is probably smoked after 3-4 days, depending on your implementation (reactor vs media bag, etc). Your skimmer is hopefully going nuts. Your water parameters might be coming back in line, but N and P might still be bad, and you could have an ammonia spike. Did you say there was a fuge? Keep that well lit and pruned and that will keep the Ammonia in check.

You will probably have a lot of detritus in the rockwork that may take time to get out. You can spend time each day with a strong power head blowing as much as you can into the water column, but then you need it to stay suspended in the water until it can get to the filtration system and be removed. So get yourself a handful of Jebao WP40s or 60s and put them on 'else' mode and get that water rocking 24/7. Use a power head by hand (or just grab one of the Jebaos) and make a pass around the entire rock structure a few times a day for the first week, then daily or every other day from then on.

Once you have water parameters reasonably in line, here is where you have options. If you have high N (like 100-200ppm), then I big PWC is probably your best bet, 200G or more, as much as you can handle making really. If N is really not that bad (like 40ppm) but P is sky high, you might just opt for pulling the phosphate down with GFO or ROWAphos. Bringing this down too fast can cause issue as well but I think you're well past worrying about that, so just use a bunch and drop it out. The issue is that you will probably still be dealing with P as the rock is cleaned up, so if you have just high P and not high N, your PWC will work to lower P but it will likely rise again, and you'll have to use GFO anyways. At least that's my opinion

At this point, just let the system do the work itself. You will be changing carbon, GFO, filter socks, emptying skimmer, etc on a regular schedule for a few weeks. 10% PWCs every 5-7 days, mainly to siphon out detritus of the now bare bottom and the sump, and to help slowly bring parameters into normal range and keep them there. Bacterial populations will be going bonkers for the next 6 months anyways.

Your goal here is to get N below say 20ppm and P below 0.04, for now.

Now you add lights. You will most likely get a really, really bad algae outbreak that will probably last months. But, it's actually doing work and there is a purpose. After you get a nice forest of algae going, add a whole bunch of Mexican Turbo Snails and sit back and watch mother nature at action. Get yourself a bulk lot of dwarf cerith snails from reefcleaners.org and dump them in there too.

Don't feed anything into the tank during this whole process. You are letting bacteria and clean up crews do the work for you. After 4-6 months of letting the tank "burn out" the stored up energy from the rock, you should be in a good position to start stocking the tank.

There are a lot of variations that could be made to this process but this is a pretty good skeleton. You could add the lights in right away for instance and let the algae start growing, add the snails in, let the algae on the rock suck the N and P out and let the snails assimilate the nutrients into their bodies (they will still create waste though). You could create a maelstrom in the tank to kick up waste, then drain the tank completely and shop-vac out the sand then fill it back up with fresh SW and then start the in-tank cooking process. It all depends on how much time to have to do it, what your starting point is (water parameters) and what resources you have (i.e. can you mix 300g of SW for a 100% water change)

Tank pics would be great and let us know how the water tests. You might just take a sample and send it off to that Aquarium Water Testing (google that) and let them rum the full battery of tests for you for $45.

[jmdental222]

Sounds like you're on the right track. I would definitely clean everything out very thoroughly and check for leaks on all those connections before you get everything running smoothly again or spend big money into any new corals or members for your tank. Its a lot of work, but better to do it up front then spend a whole lot of time later with fish and corals in tuperware while you fix it later.

[mrkalel]

Originally Posted by Floyd R Turbo

Having read the entire thread, as I understand it there is still livestock (fish only) in the tank. No lights - no corals. But you potentially have a plethora of sponges and other life, and undoubtedly you also have a large bacterial colony.

You have to start with the understanding that anything that you do is going to likely throw the tank into a cycle at some level. Even changing the flow patterns can cause a partial die-off of the bacterial colony which has established itself according to the conditions.

That being said, knowing what the water parameters are is of less importance because these are bound to change, there's just no way around that. But it doesn't hurt to know your starting point.

So here is what I would do.

1) Test for:
Ammonia (API) - this hopefully is zero
Nitrate (API) - this might not be as bad as some would expect, depending on how much has been fed over time
Phosphate (API or Hanna Checker) - this is likely really high, I would try API first and I would bet it's over 5.0 ppm
Alkalinity (Salifert or API) - you want to check this because a wild swing from a PWC can rapidly change this and that could be really bad
pH (anything) - this is of less importance because raising Alk will affect this, but good to know where you're at. Without lighting, this will likely be really low also (maybe as low as 7.4 but hopefully not lower)
Calcium - May not be low as there has likely not been a lot of calcification going on without light, but another one that you may not want to increase too fast
Salinity - use a good refractometer to make sure you know where this is at as you will likely need to adjust it

So if my guess it right, your Alk and pH will be out of whack and Phos will be high, and salinity will probably be in the 30-34 range.

This whole next part of the process is way easier to do without fish in the tank, unless you want to stress them out. So catch them and QT them. By the way, what are the fish??

Once that is done, you can tackle the rest of the problem. Water quality can be fixed through a series of steps and you do have options, but what is difficult to fix is the rock issue. Your rock has likely become a huge nutrient sink and is probably quite full. Since it is not removable, you have to 'cook it' in place.

I would not "nuke" the rock in the tank or anything like that (RODI, vinegar, etc). But I would remove the sand if at all possible. This is likely saturated with waste and you will just be fighting a losing battle, or a very long tedious one at best.

So the basic phases are:
1) remove fish
2) get filtration operating decently, and incorporate filter socks or some other kind of mechanical filtration (as much as possible). Add a skimmer. Any skimmer.
3) somehow incorporate carbon, a lots of it for the 'clean up' stage
4) if necessary, adjust alk and cal to be in line with freshly mixed saltwater (alk slowly, and not at the same time as Cal)
5) start doing PWCs and siphoning out sand
6) Deal with rock, lights, etc
7) add new sand

Depending on the sand type, you can get a large diameter vinyl hose (like 1" Inner Diameter from hardware store - but $$) and just suck it out into a bucket. You'll go through a lot of water but you needed to do a big PWC anyways. This sand removal step may need to be done in stages and should coincide with your water change plan after certain parameters have been adjusted appropriately (more on that later). So if you have 300g and your plan is to start with a series of 10% PWCs, then suck out the amount of sand/water to equal your 30g mark and then stop. Suck the sand down to the bare bottom, don't skim a bunch off the top of a large area. Once you have all the sand out, you will probably be well on your way to getting tank parameters where they should be and can start "cleaning up" the rock.

You may run into an issue where the sand has actually formed solid chunks. Use a kitty litter scoop to get these out without breaking them up. Depending on the sand, you may have rocks, snail shells, etc in them. The bigger siphon hose the better for dealing with these. This is definitely a 2-man operation, one to suck the sand and one to control the outflow into buckets. For each gallon of sand you get out, you will get upwards of 5-10g of water.

So after you have removed all the sand, you will have probably changed the mechanical filtration at least a couple times. Your carbon is probably smoked after 3-4 days, depending on your implementation (reactor vs media bag, etc). Your skimmer is hopefully going nuts. Your water parameters might be coming back in line, but N and P might still be bad, and you could have an ammonia spike. Did you say there was a fuge? Keep that well lit and pruned and that will keep the Ammonia in check.

You will probably have a lot of detritus in the rockwork that may take time to get out. You can spend time each day with a strong power head blowing as much as you can into the water column, but then you need it to stay suspended in the water until it can get to the filtration system and be removed. So get yourself a handful of Jebao WP40s or 60s and put them on 'else' mode and get that water rocking 24/7. Use a power head by hand (or just grab one of the Jebaos) and make a pass around the entire rock structure a few times a day for the first week, then daily or every other day from then on.

Once you have water parameters reasonably in line, here is where you have options. If you have high N (like 100-200ppm), then I big PWC is probably your best bet, 200G or more, as much as you can handle making really. If N is really not that bad (like 40ppm) but P is sky high, you might just opt for pulling the phosphate down with GFO or ROWAphos. Bringing this down too fast can cause issue as well but I think you're well past worrying about that, so just use a bunch and drop it out. The issue is that you will probably still be dealing with P as the rock is cleaned up, so if you have just high P and not high N, your PWC will work to lower P but it will likely rise again, and you'll have to use GFO anyways. At least that's my opinion

At this point, just let the system do the work itself. You will be changing carbon, GFO, filter socks, emptying skimmer, etc on a regular schedule for a few weeks. 10% PWCs every 5-7 days, mainly to siphon out detritus of the now bare bottom and the sump, and to help slowly bring parameters into normal range and keep them there. Bacterial populations will be going bonkers for the next 6 months anyways.

Your goal here is to get N below say 20ppm and P below 0.04, for now.

Now you add lights. You will most likely get a really, really bad algae outbreak that will probably last months. But, it's actually doing work and there is a purpose. After you get a nice forest of algae going, add a whole bunch of Mexican Turbo Snails and sit back and watch mother nature at action. Get yourself a bulk lot of dwarf cerith snails from reefcleaners.org and dump them in there too.

Don't feed anything into the tank during this whole process. You are letting bacteria and clean up crews do the work for you. After 4-6 months of letting the tank "burn out" the stored up energy from the rock, you should be in a good position to start stocking the tank.

There are a lot of variations that could be made to this process but this is a pretty good skeleton. You could add the lights in right away for instance and let the algae start growing, add the snails in, let the algae on the rock suck the N and P out and let the snails assimilate the nutrients into their bodies (they will still create waste though). You could create a maelstrom in the tank to kick up waste, then drain the tank completely and shop-vac out the sand then fill it back up with fresh SW and then start the in-tank cooking process. It all depends on how much time to have to do it, what your starting point is (water parameters) and what resources you have (i.e. can you mix 300g of SW for a 100% water change)

Tank pics would be great and let us know how the water tests. You might just take a sample and send it off to that Aquarium Water Testing (google that) and let them rum the full battery of tests for you for $45.

Wow...Thank you SOOO much for this...I am so sorry I haven't been around for awhile....but what a great write up!

I will def pass this along and also help him implement all this as soon as we have a break in out schedules.

As for the fish... They are 2 False black percula a couple of gobies and couple of smaller fish I haven't been able to identify....