Black rock

Ok, so last month my calcium crashed, lost most of my corals, I just returned from 3 weeks divi g in the red sea to find my live rock is all black ? Almost looks like black coraline ?

Fish are all fine, prams are great slightly high on ammonia .25 and calcium slightly high at 500

Will my rock come back ? I am doing 50% water change today, otherwise everything is fine.
Should I dose with purple up ? Not sure I want to, I have noticed that my live rock in the refugium is still nice and purple ?

 

Can you take a picture of them?Sometimes Cyano can appear black.Is it hard or slimey?I never recommend using Purple up.Dosing majic potions without knowing exactly what is in them and how much is not advised.

 

did your carbon get sucked up into the return pump and obliterated into dust and now covering your tank? Thats what happened to me..... all sand is black 2 tho... hahaha

 

Hi Vinny this is the same nightmare from a month ago where I lost all my snails with a zero calcium count after adding a 6 stage ro/di auto top off, which I left for 3 weeks whilst on business, unfortunately the 6 stage filter also stripped out all the good stuff too so with no dosing and no water testing I had the cleanest water in the world ever ! ! ! And hundreds of dead snails :-(

I have the calcium back up to 460, but . . . . . . . . .i also tried to give my corals some extra love and increased the metal halide to 10 hours per day . . . . . . (I know, but I forgot this)

So after just returning from anther 3 weeks away, all the rocks look the same, except they are now black I stead of purple.................. And the snails are still dead My condy is fine just small as is my bubble tip.
All params were good last night, except .25 on ammonia and slightly high on calcium.

I can't do a photo yet as the stars at aircanada lost my luggage again for the 4th time this year.
I think the zero calcium, followed by the metal halide over dose has scorched the coraline ? The live rock in my refugium is fine and very pretty, I am going to add some of these rocks to the display tank ? Will that help ?

I know u don't like purple up. I just wanted t help the tank recover, I am ALS running 2x 750 gph power heads, a 1040lph return pump from the refugium, and a mechanical filter with a UV coral life filter in line.
It's a 93 marine cube.
I have 240 watts led lights, which I don't really like so took them off and returned to 8 T5s and a 240 watt metal halide.

 

Wow I really think your light setup is way too much.Having too much light is not a good thing and is almost as bad as not having enough.To put that in perpective I ran my 90 (granted not a cube) with 4 t5's for years and grew LPS and clams on the SB.I would definitely suggest slowly shortening the light cycle to 8 hours and get rid of the MH.8 T5'S is more then enough light for your system to grow anything(depending on the wattage of t5's).Adding rocks that have corailine growing on them will help reseed it but corailine does not like strong lighting and usually grows beter in dimmer parts of the aquarium.Also I see you mention hundreds of snails.If you had some dieoff that is probably where the ammonia came from.I do not believe in huge CUC's.They are counterproductive IMO and a waste of money.Let me try to explain my reasoning.
You have a tank with algae and uneaten food.You add a huge CUC within a few weeks the consumable algae and detritus dissapear and your CUC slowly starves to death adding nutrients back into the water causing another algae bloom and you purchasing another CUC. I see many people on here doing this and it always makes me scratch my head. I have been running my current 90 gallon system for over 2 years with 4 nassarius snails,One turbo snail,and 10 Ceriths (I also have a Skunk Cleaner which helps clean uneaten food and added 4 Emerald crabs for A bubble algae outbreak)).
Keeping your CUC small helps you figure out the balance between available food/algae and just how many members of the CUC are needed to keep these things in check.You would be very surprised at how efficient one turbo snail can be.This will also help keep large dieoffs from occuring and killing others in the system.
It is not necessarily Purple Up I don't like but the idea of adding something to the tank without knowing exactly what it contains and how much it contains making it impossible to know what you are doing to the water parameters.Also you can achieve Corailine growth just as easily by keeping your parameters were they should be especially Magnesium,Calcium,and Alkalinity. After all Coraline basically has the same requirements as SPS except lighting.Sorry for the novel.

 

The T5s are 6 and 2 they are on a timer, starts off with 2 then the 4 (2 off) the the 4 off and the 2 on simulate dusk, I know it sounds like a load of hard work, but to be honest it looks lovely, the tubes are only 22inches and 24 watts.

I still have 2 or 3 snails left, and a few hermits, they will be fine on their own now
Vinny, I love your responses, always to the point and quite often humorous and witty.

 

Aww shucks thanks Ken.;D Wish everyone took constructive criticism so well.Its was surely surprising at how many people can take it as a personal attack.
It is hard for people responding to questions (for the most part) to know just how much experience the people we are trying to help have which can cause some to think you are treating them like a moron.;D

 

No vinny's a jerk!

See he called you a moron!

lol, JK, of course, Vinny's helped me out a TON. Hence why I steal alot of his info

Good read above Vin! jerk!

 

A wise man once said "I can show you the way, if you care to listen and follow my directions, you won't 5hit yourself looking for it"

Amen.

 

A snail has appeared, a very small snail, but it is a snail.