Unresolved Carpet Anemone Dying

youve done 60 gallons total waterchanges. that more than 50 percent of the water! your tank is probably cycling again and thats why nitrite and nitrate are so high. i would move everything to a separate tank if you have one.

 

How would that be possible for it to cycle again?

I do not trust the Quick Dip Tests and will test tonight when I get home from work with the liquid tests that should of arrived by now.

I don't think everything would fit into my 6g

 

you basically did a 60 gallon water change on a 40 gallon tank. there is very little if any cycled water in the tank. you practically filled the tank with newly mixed saltwater. like buying a tank and filling it with water you just mixed. it will cycle again so i would suggest putting all the stock in a separate tank

 

That's awful, hope things work out. It sounds like it made it through the worst though. It is possible to cycle again. There may not be enough bacteria to keep up with the decaying organic material. Also, a cycle isn't just a buildup of bacteria, it is a balance of bacteria, sometimes big perturbations like this can shift the populations of bacteria and cause die off and re-establishment of colonies.

The big thing, is to remove any die off quickly. So, make sure your protein skimmer is wet skimming. Run carbon. Manually remove any die-off. Water changes, which you've done, but you may want to continue with smaller water changes, like 5-15% every day or two, depending on how things look. Overdoing it can be bad sometimes too, but the detrimental effects are minimized if you make sure the parameters match. I.e. ca, alk, mg, salinity, temp, this may be tough though if your out of test kits. So, it may be better to take it slower.

However, most nitrifying and denitrifying bacteria is benthic, i.e. lives on the surfaces, not in the water. So, changing the water itself won't cause a cycle, it is the quick change in parameters and decaying organic material that can cause a cycle.

Ammonia is the most important parameter. Nitrite and Nitrate should not be a big issue short term anyway, the bigger issue would be algae blooms. Although nitrate and nitrite can have indirect negative effects on inverts. Ammonia has a direct negative effect though, so, it needs to be minimized. As mentioned, Amqel or prime can be a quick solution, although should not be relied on long-term, but in your case, that you should only need short term help. However, it's only necessary if ammonia is high, often if you keep parameters stable, the water changes, carbon etc... will be enough alone. Just keep an eye on things.

 

Hardly any bacteria is free floating in your water, as long as his parameters were similar to the tank, as in Ca/Alk/Mg/ph/temp/sg he should be fine. The problem occurs when you add all that water and you don't match the conditions of the existing tank water.

 

Hmm how would I go about wet skimming?

And great, the ONLY test kit I didn't buy was ammonia :

I'll update tonight with water parameters and pictures.

 

So finally home, here are the current parameters-

Salinity- 1.026
pH - 8.0
kH - 179
Phosphate - 0.5
Nitrate - 20

 

parameters look good except for PO4. You may want to run some GFO to bring it down, to avoid an algae bloom. Ramp up the amount of GFO slowly though. How is the livestock looking?

 

Well after losing 1 RBTA, 4 SPS colonies, lots of water changes and testing, and much time researching the tank is back to normal.

The Carpet Nem survived and is doing much better.

Just wanted to say thank you to everyone that helped out!

 

20 nitrate is still pretty high for a carpet. my friends died after 3 months of looking fine because his nitrates were above 15