Everything dead.

[Banjer1982]

I'm gonna check my pump tomorrow and see if it's ok. It was pumping because I turned it off. Dunno if it will still pump if it's cracked because I've never experienced that.

[nuccadoc]

I would do a complete water change just to be on the safe side. Wait for the parameters to settle back down and start restocking. Reef tank correct?

[nuccadoc]

Good luck!

[Banjer1982]

Mainly a FOWLR. I only had 1 coral. It'll probably die. I have it in a holding tank for now

[Jason S]

Any metal clamps, screws, pipes, bolts, Bobby pins, etc? The orange color could be rust.

Just a thought.

[Fishamatank]

1 dead snail didn't do it....

[MoneyGone]

Originally Posted by MoneyGone

We had a powerhead seal go bad in a tank at my work that leaked into the tank turned dark and almost everything died.

Take your powerhead out and see if it is leaking a light brown fluid. There is oil in the powerhead and it might have leaked. Left the office one night came back in the next morning and it was brown water and smelled aweful and lots of dead fish/coral.

FYI powerhead was still running when it was taken out of the tank.

[outy]

pull everything out and wash it saltwater including the sandbed.

your tank is filled with the nasty stuff right now and it all needs to be cleaned.

As fas as a snail i dought it, 34 is small but it should have made through a snail death if the rest was healthy.

34g is suseptable to temp changes on a fast basis

equipment failure

or something large died but even then in 13 hours theres not that much decay yet.

time for you to investigate, good luck on the rebuild

[b2d2t]

what about a cracked heater?

[njdevilsfan]

could be the tanic acids used to stain your stand
do you think a pump or hose came unattached and hit the bottom of the top of your stand and back into the sump?

[Raggamuffin]

sorry for your loss, and a complete redo from start sounds like the order today. Toss the sand put rock in a rubbermaid for a month... talking complete redo since you can not pin point a source. if you DO end up 100% positive you found the reason then there may be other options.

[pledosophy]

[QUOTE=Banjer1982;17340711]Well my scenario I'm using is a snail died and caused the ammonia to spike killing almost everything. /QUOTE]

Did you have any snails the size of a volley ball?

[Toddrtrex]

The color is really throwing me off, and I have a feeling that figuring that out will go a long ways toward finding the root cause.

About a year ago I have some stray voltage and my orange/red digi bleached out, while the tank didn't color, the skimmer sure did (( this was a 75, so it could have been diluted.
This is what the skimmer cup looked like,





For reference, normal skimmate for my tank,

[bnb180]

I had a similar problem b4. I came home and a majority of my corals were dying. Over 3 days, more and more coral died. My tank was full of corals and I lost over 50%. I ran carbon and did massive water changes. I had a 180 gallon tank so that was a lot of work. Never figured out what happened, until one day (months later) I rearranged my sump and found a broken heater. Sorry to hear about your lost, good luck on your new setup.

[sslak]

My money is on broken equipment. Orange coloration sounds like rust or some other chemical reaction taking place in the tank.

Check all your heaters/pumps/powerheads, even the skimmer pump etc. Just because they are working doesn't mean they aren't leaking voltage or rust or something into the tank.

[Banjer1982]

Thanks for all the replys. Checked my heater and it's fine. Going to check my powerhead tomorrow. If it's cracked I'm gonna ditch everything but if it's not I'm just going to rinse all my rocks and sand and replace all my water. Hopefully that should be good enough.

[chrismunn]

anybody been spraying any cleaning chemicals in the vacinity of the tank, or even anywhere in the room that the tanks in?

how do you top off evap, manually or ato?

what, if anything, do you dose, how much and how often?

do you test for EVERYTHING that you dose?

how much rock do you have in the tank?

do you have a sump, and whats in it?

there are so many things that could've caused this, from an over dose of a single chemical, rapid floccuation of alkalinity or temprature, to accidentally and unknowingly dropping something into the tank. if your rocks were going to leach some toxicchemical into the water it would have likely done it a long time ago. a single snail dieing and rotting away in a 34g tank certainly will not cause this. do you look into your tank very often? if it were because something unknowingly died, you would have noticed changes in the tank that would have qued you off before the crash, i.e. cloudy water or anabnormally heavy and fast spreading algal bloom.

my money is on either some foreign object falling into the tank or an accidental addition of something into the tank too rapidly (namely alkalinity)... not sure about the orange color,but ide imaging that if there was enough rust in the tank to color your skimmate orange everything would probably have slowly withered away in front of your eyes long before the crash.

sorry to hear about it by the way, hope you figure it out...!

[Banjer1982]

No one has sprayed anything in the room and I top off manually with ro water than I run. I don't dose anything cause usually my water stays in pretty good condition. I try to do a small water change once a week and a large water change once a month. I change about 5 gallons a week and 10-15 gal a month. I'm gonna pull out my powerhead here in an hour or so and check it. I have one emerald crab left. I guess he is tougher than everything else

[cmoreland]

I hate to come off the wrong way here but you were gone for 13 hours, there is no way you could know if something didn't get dumped into your tank either accidentally or on purpose unless you had a cam on it the whole time. I've never seen orange colored skimmate, and I don't think something would cause rust that quickly. I suspect some sort of foreign fluid or susbstance.

My $.02, don't take that the wrong way, I'm not calling you or your GF a liar but something is definitely very odd about the orange color. Not normal at all. What does the skimmate smell like? You can easily tell if it's some sort of cleaning agent, oil or chemical by getting a good whiff of the stuff.

[Banjer1982]

Cant really deceive the smell. About like curing live rock, just a bad smell. I had alot of amphipods and they leave behind an orange shell. I had them sticking to my glass and on my rocks and sand bed. Most of those are gone now as if they dissolved. That's the only explanation I can get out of the color. Because my skimmate and I have a white filter and both of those are now the same color as those shells or whatever they are. I'm about to pull out the powerhead right now so I'll update in a few to say if it's cracked and leaking or not

[Banjer1982]

Decieve=describe. Just pulled the powerhead and it appears to be fine

[chimmike]

Im wondering if you had a nudi or slug hitchike without know, get out and get sucked into the powerhead.

[enasco]

Yes, that is what I did, look at my pictures "after my crash" I changed my water completely, added a polyfilter, and changed my carbon. The only thing I did different was I threw my LR's and live sand away and got new ones and new live sand as you will see in my pictures. Note this also, when it comes to water quality-->snails will hold a big change in water so if they are gone its a major concern at that present time the water quality. Also, yes the same thing happened to me when I came in the house the smelly smell like if the LR's are not cured which is a sign of fowl sea water.

So I would definitly make a complete water change, rinse the LR's (live rocks), put a new carbon even go as far as a polyfilter and wait a few days or a week than check your parameters.

Eddie

[enasco]

When it comes to top-off water I have reservoir next to the tank in a closet high on the top shelves and it feeds by gravity RO/DI into the sump were I placed a float.

I dose ESV part I-II every morning, iodine x2 per week.

I do check for everything I dose:--)Cal, Alk, & PH, specific gravity of the water.

In my 46 gal bow tank I presently have: 89 lbs of LR.

I have a simple sump no Fuge, but plan later on to add one and I do run a skimmer, but only from the late afernoon until the following morning.

Eddie

[mm949]

maybe someone used your fish buckets to clean somethin else?