Every coral in my aquarium is dying including xenia, brown jelly

Discussion in 'ASAP' started by hokiereefgirl, Apr 23, 2014.

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  1. hokiereefgirl

    hokiereefgirl Plankton

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    Apr 22, 2014
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    Hello everyone,

    I have an established reef tank that has been running since 2004.

    Initially I had some problems with hair algae and such, and I did get one occurance of brown jelly in 2005, but other than that I have not had any major problems.

    Last Friday every single coral in my aquarium closed up and have since started dying and I cannot figure out why.

    My tank specs:

    120 gallon + 40 gallon sump, I use bio balls media
    I use RO water, cartridge was just replaced less than a month ago
    I have a euro reef skimmer, but I have not been using it. A friend was supposed to take care of my tank while I was away and did not come and the pump for the skimmer ran dry. The new replacement I bought is really really loud. Despite this, my tank has fluorished, so I have just been leaving it off.

    I have a coralife pro aqualight fixture. I've left the halides off for the last year, using just the actinics.. everything has been growing fine despite this, and I was trying to save some money as my electric bill got a little ridiculous for keeping a bunch of soft coral alive. Everything has still been steadily growing.

    Tons of live rock, a good sand bed
    I only have 3 damsels in the entire tank, I had a tang for years, he died last year and I haven't been anywhere I trust to pick out new fish.
    I have a plethora of inverts such as shrimp, asterina stars, tubeworms, sponges that are established.
    Coral I have are all easy, mushrooms, xenia, a leather of some sort with long branches, two toadstool leathers, a cabbage leather, and 6-7 softball to football size pieces of frogspawn that have been in the tank for 6 years and have been growing like crazy since I got them. The frogspawn both spits off at the top, and new buds grow at the base of the skeleton.

    I am wrapping up my PhD, so I have been a bit more lax on water changes than normal, the past two I did roughly 6 weeks apart from each other, whereas I usually try to do them every 3-4 weeks.

    Everything has been absolutely fine with my tank until last Friday. I was actually packing to head out of town for the weekend and the last thing I was going to do was do a water change on the tank. I noticed that afternoon that everything was closed up, but I didn't pay much attention, as I was packing up, and my lights come on a bit later so that I can enjoy the tank at night while I'm here awake.

    Later in the evening, everything was still closed up and I was concerned as this has never happened before.

    The fish were swimming around fine, and the shrimp came out to eat, but every coral in the tank, including the xenia and mushrooms were closed up. They were fine the day before when I fed the fish.

    When I inspected the tank, one of the huge heads of frogspawn had become knocked off and was laying head down in the sand. I put it back into place and did a water change, 15 gallons (3 buckets). The frogspawn that had flipped over did not look injured in any way.

    Now I'm kicking myself for not taking a water sample to test, but I was honestly so exhausted/stressed from work and packing that I had already started adding water in before I remembered that I didn't take a water sample!


    Just afterwards, I took a water sample.
    I had my boyfriend take one the next morning.

    My water parameters:

    75', pH in the morning 7.7, in the evening 8.0-8.3, calcium 420, ammonia .25, nitrite 0, nitrate 20

    I have alkalinity test but had lost the instructions. I just found them tonight and I can test that if you think its important.

    My kits are old, with the exception of the nitrite, which I just bought.

    These have remained constant, he has been taking parameters every day since I left.

    On Saturday, the frogspawn was covered in what looked like brown jelly.

    I was gone, but I instructed my boyfriend on what to do: fill three buckets with salwater (tank water to make sure pH and temp were constant -he's a newbie and I didn't want the parameters to be off and everything die becuase of that),.. first bucket to remove as much brown jelly as possible, second bucket as a dip bucket using 4 mL of Povidine Iodine (that's all I had in the house)/Liter of water, and third bucket as another rinse bucket.
    He soaked each piece of frogspawn in the dip bucket with iodine for 15 minutes, after cleaning. The next day the brown jelly was back, so I had him increase the time to 20 minutes.. And then yesterday and today I had him increase the time to 30 minutes.

    I just got back to my home and all the xenia has died, which I don't care so much about. A few heads of the frogspawn (maybe 4 heads out of 40) have died. They still look pretty bad, polyps receded. I did not see brown jelly but he had just dipped them.

    All of the other coral look unhappy.

    I rechecked the test kits, same results.

    What on earth could it be? I only changed 15 gallons of water, so I find it difficult to believe my nitrate was in the toxic levels. I know a nitrate of 0 is optimal, but would 20 do this?

    Alternatively, could the frogspawn getting flipped onto the sand cause it to release something into the water to kill the other coral? They have such a nasty sting, whenever I brush up against them I have huge welts all over my arms.

    The last time I got brown jelly in 2005, everything I had (torches, hammers, frogspawn, trumpets) were dead in 3-4 days. So the iodine dips seem to be at least holding death at bay.

    Tomorrow I am going to go to the fish store 45 minutes away and buy lugols and try dosing the entire tank?



    Thank you so much for any advice you can offer, I am absolutely stumped and pretty upset. If it weren't for family obligations that I had to attend to I wouldn't have left.

    Sorry for the rambling post, was trying to be thorough!
     
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  3. civiccars2003

    civiccars2003 Great Blue Whale

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    Pretty long post. What I got out of it is the ammonia being the root cause. Get rid of those bio balls too.
     
  4. Corailline

    Corailline Super Moderator

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    It is a dry heat, yeah right !
    First I would check all heaters and pumps for frayed wires or stray voltage. I would also check to see if all hardware is working correctly.

    Next would take a water sample to the local fish store or buy new kits.

    The tank is 10 years old, that is a lot of time for little areas of hydrogen sulfide to build up under rocks and in cryptic areas.

    For now I would keep doing water changes, run some quality carbon and get new test kits.

    Good luck and welcome to 3reef.
     
  5. SaltyClown

    SaltyClown Sea Dragon

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    I know this isn't popular, but siphon your sand. You'll be vary surprised at all the bad, rotten stuff you'll get out. Di it every week and your tank will love you.
     
  6. jonjonwells

    jonjonwells Great Blue Whale

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    Sorry that it took an event like this to bring you to our forum. It is very frustrating chasing something like this down, but I do understand.

    Corailline has given some good advice and I can't really add much except to say welcome and hope we can help.

    When was the last time you did any maintenance to your bio balls?
    I would also suggest getting that skimmer on-line.

    If your old pump went dry, it is also possible that the magnets housing cracked. You may be getting copper poisoning. I can't remember if the is a copper test kit or not... haven't dealt with it in awhile.
     
  7. Billme

    Billme Eyelash Blennie

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    You've come to the right place hokie. People on here can help you through this. I am especially for getting the test kits (preferably salifert). That should guide you to the problem(s).
     
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  9. civiccars2003

    civiccars2003 Great Blue Whale

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    Do you have any pictures?
     
  10. oldfishkeeper

    oldfishkeeper Giant Squid

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    far from an expert but first, I'm very sorry to hear you're experiencing this. Corailline has great advice. It seems something has gone awry and precipitated this event. It has to be something serious - like something getting in the water related to the pump, stray voltage as mentioned. I agree to get the water tested but your parameters don't look that bad (if they are correct) and 20 nitrates would not cause that big of a problem so suddenly IMO. Any ammonia is bad. Has something died in the tank aside from the corals?

    welcome to the forum and I hope with all of the knowledgeable people here, we can help you figure out what went wrong or is still happening.
     
  11. Todd_Sails

    Todd_Sails Giant Squid

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    Welcome to 3Reef, and I hope things get better soon.
    I agree with the adivce, use the skimmer, resort to macroalgae in lieau of the BioBalls.

    What's kind of PhD you working on? What school?

    ** And btw, thanks, I didn't mind reading such a long first post- 'cause it had PUNCTUATION, commas, periods, good spelling, ETC.!!!!!

    I can't tell you how insane it drives me to read a one page, run on sentence! Hello? Can I get an AMEN?
     
    Last edited: Apr 23, 2014
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  12. RoloSaez

    RoloSaez Millepora

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    I remember reading once that someones ex threw pennies in the tank to do damage. I did really read this. Hope you didn't make any one mad. JK Corailline has the steps listed you would want to check.

    Welcome to 3reef.