oh the agony! electrical shock? acryllic fumes??

[100_corner_pent]

so, for a month now I have had no Nitrates, No Ammonia, PH (hard to tell but between 8 to 8.3 on color chart, phosphates second lowest color on scale but not gone completely (maybe .08ppm cause I fed a lot), alk was high but calcium 450 and magnesium 1250 were pretty decent, it was going great.. my Gorgonian had grown back from when he almost died during shipping 2 months ago, and some other stuff on the live rock was finding new life. I had a seabae anemone the 2 clown fish loved, a nice powder blue tang, a watchman goby (the funniest fish to watch IMHO), and a shy yellow eye tang. a dozen hermits, snails, and a cleaner shrimp that would eat krill out of my hand.

once the tank had cycled (new live rock all been cured and all tests were great.. the fish were all doing fine.

Then for Xmas, I did a few things new, one of which is the cause for what happened below.

For the life of me, I can't figure out what went wrong, but EVERYTHING (except the hermit crabs and snails) died in 2 days after doing the following:

1. added a couple capfuls of Reef Snow?
2. added the new EV180 skimmer, but since it was new I didn't want to lose a lot of water until it broke in, so I plumbed the return foam line back into the sump?
3. added the UV sterilizer into the sump, plumbed in one end and to the other end of the sump.

no fuses blew, the temp did get to about 85 though, so maybe the heat from the halide made gasses from the acrylic tank and that got into the water? the lights are all self enclosed Current USA lights with fans built in, but I have just today also added 2 more 4 inch fans inside the canopy to help move air out.

the only other thing was to add a week ago a piece of live rock from my lFS that was totally encrusted with button polyps and flower pots... it was soooo nice looking, but that is still living..and was already in a nice tank at the LFS.

the anemone died too, shriveled up into a slimy ball, very odd, like something caustic was in the tank. all died except the hermit crabs and snails... I think it was either heated acrylic fumes, or the water temp got too high and I need a chiller.

Oh yeah, the last thing I did, but didn't think it a big deal, was to try to feed a fish that had just died in my freshwater tank to the anemone... well, you know, rather than flush it, it was 5 years old, just got all bloated up and died, so I thought, hey free anemone food!!???

Edit: the very last thing I did was to add a draw string bag of charcoal/ammo pellets into the sump.. I rinsed it well, but when I was taking my reef apart to fix everything the died.. I took the bag out of the sump.. and rinsed it more, and black water still kept coming out of it.. is it caustic if not rinsed well when you fill it up with the charcoal??

Edit#2: the other thing i liked to do was to at night leave one of the actinics lights on all night.. the blue effect is nice, but maybe, nah... that can't be a big deal...


any thoughts from you always helpful gang?? how'd a screw up..in as nice a way as you can all put it please... thanks!!

Dave

[100_corner_pent]

i found out an electrical shock killed all my livestock, due to missing o-rings in a new UV sterilizer i hooked up. this sucks big time!! the box must have been returned to the store, repackaged, and resold without me even knowing it was missing orings that led to water coming in contact with the low voltage.

but, i still have a question, is it bad to leave one blue actinic light on overnight? or do most people go completely dark with lunar lights only at night??

[LOTUS50GOD]

invest in a grounding probe to ward away stray current.

I keep a 25 w. incandecent blue bulb on at night to simluate the night.

[evilelvis]

wow that sucks sorry to hear about your loss
I have heard that lunar lights help w/ coral spawning so I turned mine back on to see if I notice any additional growth. I guess it will be subjective. It does look wild when I stumble downstairs in the middle of the night though.

[new2u]

What are your levels now?

Did you have corals that died as well?

What was the color of the water, did it have a milky white twing?

Did your house smell like low tide at the pier?

Can you think of any possible contaminates such as household cleaners, children, animals ect.?

I ask the 20 questions as I recently (couple of months ago) had a similar loss of all my fish, with a select few invetebrates living and all of my corals surviving. I was perplexed for a while untill I figured out that a ton of Lysol had found its way into the tank, caused an anerobic bactera bloom, depleted the oxygen, and killed all my prized fish. Needless to say, this probably isn't the case in your tank but it just goes to show that alot of things could possibly get in and ruin your aquarium. My condolences go to you and the rough time your facing.

P. S. Probably not best to add freshwater fish/things into a reef/saltwater setup.

[drstupid]

my money's on the anemone. they aren't easy to keep, especially in a young tank. especially with no skimmer and no carbon. i bet it died, and that polluted the tank so badly everything else died.

i've had pumps go flaky before and leak voltage in the tank, and never lost any livestock. just gave myself a big surprise. i'd sort of doubt that was it. the temp spike is more likely to have contributed, or more likely a rapid drop in temperature following a knee jerk reaction when you noticed the temp was 85. i've done that before.

just mark it off as a bad way to start the new year, do a water change, and get back behind the mule.

[100_corner_pent]

Thanks for caring.

I'm back in business now. No more UV light, and bought a new powder ble tang and he's fine.

Levels now:
Calcium 500 (high but will get depleted)
Ph 8.4
Temp 82
Salinity 1.027
Nitrate & Nitrite not registering
Magnesium 1450
DkH 16 (higher than I want, will check along with calcium again in 2 days)
Dosed some reef dna and snow, and fed the plate coral a shrimp.
Added a capfl of ammo lock even though ammonia is like .03 and a little bit of reef safe buffer.

Also, since the deaths and even with water change, I like to se some phosban, carbon, and nitzorb bags in the sump, but since the water doesn't really flow through those bags at the bottom of the sump, I decided to hook up a fluval 205 canister filter next to the sump. This way I can put all my goody bags and some fine filter sponge in it, and this will force water through it and back into the sump. Anyone else use canisters to complement a fuge sump?

My skimmer is still only 5 days old (aquac ev180) so its still on overdrive so I am contining to run the drain from the collection cup back into the sump versus a garbage bucket for disposal.

I also added a modified prefilter sponge to the sump return line, and my microbubbles are finally gone.

In 2 weeks I'm paying a fish store owner to come to my house and help me redo every test, set up a dosing/top off regimen for me to follow, and use his equipment to help me determine where and what levels to place the surviving corals based on my light output, and help me determine the best lighting schedule.

Sometimes I 'think' I know what to do, but then again when getting back into this hobby after a long time off, baby steps are good.

Speaking of, if anyone lives in Ohio near King's Island, let's meet and see each others setups.

Dave

[new2u]

Wait, you still have ammonia? Best to hold off on any further purchases. Also, a PBT might have a stressful time in the tank, so keep an eye out

[100_corner_pent]

All livestock (except live rock and any hitch hikers are now being held in a separate tank at my LFS which will give me time now to completely redo my tank and plumbing. I bought a genx 40pc return pump and am converting all return plumbing to slipfit solvent 3/4" pvc with unions, check valves and ball gates, all pvc from sump bulkhead through pump up to internal tank retrn bulkhead and then up to 3/4" loc-line spray bars. Converting 1" overflow to pvc as well with 40 micron sock at end and dropped into top of open sump. Adding more prefilter on overflow internal standpipe too. Then adding a sheet of filter pad between the inlet side of the sump baffles in the fuge area so the cheato and culerpa won't get sucked into the skimmer/return side of the sump. Adding micron sock sleeve to outlet gate valvle on internal sump aquacev180 skimmer to stop micro bubbles, and hanging 2 9w power compact fixtures over the fuge area of the sump they are light and can be hung with velcro from top of inside stand. Will also refill tank slowly with RO/DI water, only adding small amounts of ph buffer and calc buffer, with a little reef dna and magnesium. Purchased a aquac large skimmate collection container rigged with an outlet valve that when full will break the skimmate flow and divert it back to the sump until I empty the container. Will keep testing until water parameters are perfect.

Basocally I spent a month cring live rock, but didn't wait long enough before stocking.

I added a Rena 250 canister filter to the sump but it is only for water polishing and flowthrough carbon.

Now, maybe some things will still need tweaking, but I should be quiet here now for another month.

As always reply with any more helpful tips.