2 year old nitrates and nitrites very high!?

I woke up this morning and my tank was very cloudy, almost like when i first set it up. Ive never seen something like this before. So i did a 5 gallon water change and tested my levels and still sky high! I just added some nitrifying bacteria to help with the process and plan to do another water change asap in the morning. Has anyone else experienced this? I dont want to lose anything, and almost all my corals except my clams and mini maxis were closed up for most of the day. Last night before i went to sleep the tank looked incredible, now today looks like hell

 

Sounds like a bacteria/ algae bloom. Have you changed anything recently? Salt, water source, new food, loss of fish?

 

Thats the thing that gets me, i havent changed a thing! I made a mistake yesterday when i changed my filter sock in my sump i rang out the sock in the sump. Could this have some type of negative effect? And i didnt strain out too much water just enough so it wasn't dripping everywhere.

 

How long has the tank been running and what are your present parameters?

 

IF something died in the tank, it would have produced a huge amount of ammonia which actually gets processed very quickly but it takes much longer for your nitrite to nitrate bacteria to grow and your nitrate to nitrogen bacteria is even much slower. That's when I would expect a big nitrite and nitrate spike.

It sounds like you had an ammonia spike from something.

 

Well the tank is 2 years old as the title says, and i didn't lose anything and nothing had changed as i already started, my ammonia is low maybe <10, but my nitrates and nitrites are sky high, and my skimmer is working on overdrive.. I can't seem to figure out what it is that is causing this..

 

I don't know, sounds like something died or is dying or you disturbed something in the sand bed? Otherwise your nitrifying bacteria died off.

 

The fish i have are always moving my sand bed around, maybe that got stirred up too much? How would the bacteria all of a sudden die like that? As of this morning the lights are still off and i plan to do a 10 gallon waterchange again to help remove the nitrates.

 

And my ammonia is <1.0 btw. . Not 10, that would be insane!

 

With ammonia, any testable amount is a serious problem.