Came Home and Everything is Dead!!!

THanks again. At this point I actuallly feel better because I found at least one thing living, which leads me to believe the rock could probably still be living (yes, uneducated guess, partly hope). I already did most of what you suggest. I got the dead stuff out, I have my pump going with air and will do a water change today.

Should I try buying another bag of live sand and add it to the tank with the existing? Or would you wait for that? How will I know if the rock is still alive and salvagable? Will I just have to wait and see if readings go back to normal and stay there?

 

I would wait and see. Just monitor the water closely over the next 10 days and see what happens. I would not wipe out your tank totally, especially the live rock. Think of what the rock goes through in transport...a lot of stress and you get a lot of die off. If you take your time, do some serious water changes, and monitor the process you might be okay. Best of luck!

 

I'm sure your rock is salvageable with living organisms embedded within your rock. Think about it, live rock that is shipped to your local pet shop arrives out of water for hours. living things have died in transit, however, many have arrived alive as well.
I wouldn't bother with a whole bag of live sand(expensive), if anything see if your local pet shop will give you a few hand fulls of it.

 

Would you suggest a couple new pieces of cured live rock at this point to help along with a small amount of sand?

 

It is up to you, though it isn't necessary. For the aesthetics part(eye appeal) you can buy more but as for the tank itself, live sand is sufficent-just trying to save ya some money as well. I still feel that there are living things in and on your rock. Just try to follow what I said in my previous post. It should help ya get back on your feet soon, just don't rush it. That would be detrimental for you and anything still alive in the tank.
I strongly think you should get that living bacteria sold in pet shops to assist you in removing ammonia and nitrites. They also sell nitrate remover...

 

FWIW, I've just finished going through this last Christmas.
All I did was clean out the dead and decayed matter, put a fluval with carbon on it, with a few power heads to keep circulation going well, did some large water changes for the first few weeks, and then let it sit.
The bacteria developed again feeding of ammonia produced by the remaining dead material still in the system, and ammonia and nitrite returned to 0 with nitrate at 10. It took almost 2 months to come around but it did.
I then had hair algae for a while but I increased the alkalinity to 12 but had to use the chem calculator to also boost the calcium and magnesium to keep everything balanced, and the hair algae went away.
Now if I could only kill off the bubble algae that has returned in mega proportions, I'd be a lot happier. Macro algae are growing again as well darn it.
I don't mind the halamedia types coming back nor the grape disc type, but this saw tooth looking curly macro is really invasive and non of my tangs or any other fish will eat it.
I see no need to bleach anything as there was no infestation of any kind, and the cycle will take care of itself but will do it faster by removing all the dead material you can.
Now, if I had vibrio or some bacterial plague, I could see using bleach then.

 

Karma For your Loss

 

If it smells bad, there's a lot of death. In my humble opinion, I'd start over. Your tank is pretty much nuked.

 

I agree 100%. I'd rather start over than deal with all the algae and other problems that you're bound to have if you keep that rock and sand in the tank in its current condition.

 

The smell was from the fish that were rotting in the tank over the weekend. I had a very large Puffer (yes, he was puffed up), trigger and fox face. I expected to wake up this morning with it smelling really bad but it didn't.

I did a 50% water change and pulled all the rock out, shook it off in a bucket of salt water to get any dead critters out and put it back in. I smelled the rock when I had it out and it didn't really smell. I have to say that if one of those snails could survive, I am guessing that the rock had to have something still alive in it.

I do not want to go out and spend another $500 on live rock, so I am going to take my chances with this and see what happens. I can always buy new, i might as well see what happens before I do anything. I think, and hope that I can get this to come back around. I will probably buy a few more pieces of LR when this gets back to normal to replacesome of the stuff that is gone now.