Something's Gone Awry

Dude...this has gone on way toooooo long...Whats up?
K+ to ya...I dont know what to say ...what a thread...your mind must be spinning.
I must say once again....just 1 MORE pizza!!...chase with a cold stout.....then punt.??
Is it rebuild time? ...hate to go there.
LG

 

I might be on to something. I'll know in the morning.

 

Good to hear bro...good to hear. : )

 

K+ for that, hope it doesn't go there but it is always an option... karma for Sparky too maybe it will push you over this hump!!

 

As for transferring your sand, what worked for you might not work for somebody as Ive stated before on 3reef. I have personally transferred 1-2" sand bed thinking it wouldnt be a problem, I knew better, but I did it anyways thinking nothing would happen. Well I killed everything in that tank. As I said before on this thread, Ive killed more corals then most people will ever have. Ive learned by trial and error. Ive had a lot of errors in my years of reefing, and learned from every one of them.

I also think its one of 3 things, either the sand, something simple either being over looked or misjudged, or something foreign polluting the tank like air freshner/perfume or any kind spray product.

If Im not mistaken, the new tank(90g) is in a different location then the old 55g. So that is what makes me think it could be something foriegn polluting it. Like Luna said, send it off to have it professionally analized.

 

Well I'm onto something indeed. Some might have read my other thread about re-curing my LR which involved using my 55 gallon tank set up with just a wet/dry, and placing a couple of pieces of LR in the dark sump for a few weeks to clean them off, etc.

Since I had the 55 up and running anyway, and have my Aquactinics TX5 5-bulb T5 fixture doing nothing, I decided to put my frogspawn and yellow polyp in that tank. It's now 11:30am Sun morning. I moved these two corals last night. Here are pics immediately after moving them into the 55 gallon:










And here are the pics this morning:














Perhaps the pics aren't as telling as in real life, but I see a dramatic difference. This discovery lets me rule out a few things. I now know it's not my RO/DI unit, or my water supply, because I used this to fill both tanks. Neither is it my old salt mix that I replaced, because I used that old salt to make SW for the 55 LR re-curing project, and that's the water the two corals are in now. Nor could it be any contaminant from water or salt, other than might be introduced by my 90 system as a whole.

I almost forgot what those yellow polyps looked like!! They're very hardy critters. I think I'm going to move the mushrooms and bubble coral over too.

So this is good news! Although it answers some questions, it leaves many unanswered. I believe it might be one of my pumps. In my tank is my hydor koralia #2, and the vortech, whose motor is outside the glass. I shut off the koralia for a period of 10 days about a month ago as a test, and it had no bearing on the issue. That leaves the main return pump, the protein skimmer's pump, and the phosreactor pump.

I'm not quite sure about how to proceed. Whatever the culprit, it's very very slow to affect the corals, so putting any of those pumps onto the 55 (to see if the problem migrates over with the pump) would probably take a week to diagnose.

Perhaps I'll just kill the reactor for a few days and put the corals back into the 90? Then try killing the skimmer for a few days, and if still no answer, swapping the main return pump for a different one?

I still haven't changed my sand out, and at this point I might not until the pumps are removed from the equasion.

Progress, folks!!

 

No perfume in this family. The only spray product I use is 409, in the kitchen, and not in amounts great enough to make it 30 feet away to the tank. We also use only air freshener in the bathroom (actually only my wife, I don't have such issues.)

The 90 is right where the 55 stood.

 

Wow!

That is a dramatic change. Well, I'm glad you are least closer to the culprit.

 

Would it just be to much just to change all the pumps so you know you get the culprit or do you think this is still just a long shot. Also would the contaminate still be in the system in the 90 even if you just shut the pump off and move the other corals back? Is it oils from the pump that you think might be the problem or electrical?

 

Nice thinking. That's exactly the question I was asking myself. If it's a solid or liquid contaminate, then it would be present in the water after the pumps were removed.

I'm thinking more along the lines of copper or voltage, as if it were solid or liquid, the problem would have abated somewhat after each water change, and I've changed nearly 80% of the tank's water.

Also, I'd rather not remove all pumps at once, because I'd like to know which pump is the culprit.

Does that sound reasonable? Anything I'm missing?