Something's Gone Awry

glad to hear things are looking up for you Sparky!! i am going to take a few wild guesses in case these have not been mentioned, #1. maybe its your ballast? i dont know much about them but im sure they can be faulty, you switching tanks/lighting makes me wonder how old yours is on the 90. #2. i just got some frags from a fellow reefer up here who had the same die off and algae bloom as you a few months ago, and it turned out a dime was decaying in his system, he lost most of his corals but no fish, anyway someone could have thrown some change in our tank or it fell in there somehow? i think he said his roommate did it before he moved out, apparently they were not getting along.

 

I think my ballasts are fine. The lights work very well. Otty thought it might have been change too, but I told him I have no kids, and my wife and I aren't party people. There are no coins in my system.

 

so the pumps might be the culpurate? how do they leak stuff in the tank, stray voltage?

 

I've never had this type of experience, but I'm guessing if they leak, either electrical or otherwise; it's a crack in the housing, maybe? Maybe they might come that way (bad from the manufacturer).

 

With changing 80% of the water it should have gotten the majority of contaminates out unless the pumps are releasing it rapidly. I am with you on finding the culprit I would want to do the same. But if it is a liquid it would be hard and take a long time of turning one pump of then you would have to do some more water changes to try and get contaminates out while the one pump in question is shut down. Then you would have to repeat the process on all three pumps and that's just assuming its liquid contaminate. I wish I had an easy solution to checking the pumps. What do you think my friend as I am just trying to throw out suggestions.

 

anyway you can take apart each pump and get a good look inside? maybe you can see something that might catch your eye like maybe rust or maybe something got stuck in the pumps and is rotting. might be worth a try.

 

I actually did that--when I did tank maintenance a short while ago, I run the pumps in CLR for an hour or two, and take apart, clean and reassemble. I didn't notice any damage or anything out of the ordinary.

I just did another copper test, using the water straight out of the return nozzles in the tank (coming directly from the main return pump), and ran two tests side by side, one from the possible culprit, one from the 55 gallon, and both tests don't even change color. I suppose it's still possible that it's an undetectable amount of cu.


Whatever the culprit, I'm really leaning hard towards one of the pumps now. The 90 is a new tank, and has never seen copper, or any medication, supplement or treatment of any kind.

 

I moved the bubble into the 55 less than 30 minutes ago. It's been the fastest to respond to better conditions.








Here's a before pic from a week or two ago:

 

How old are your koralia's? I remember about a year or so ago, the 2's and 3's were recalled because they leaked voltage. It was something to do with how they were sealed. The 2's and 3's use the same pump, so it effected both of them.

 

Less than 3 months old, purchased after the 90 was in place. As I stated, I shut it off for 10 days some time ago to test for that. No difference.