something just happened in my tank

this morning i was just doing some maintainance to my tank blowing off rocks with a baster and changing my filter sock in my sump. it was a brand new never used sock and usually i give them a rinse in ro/di before putting it to use, however i did not with this one. right after i put it in my skimmer began overfoaming so i turned it off for a bit. more worrying, i just noticed my leather has retracted all of its polyps and my pulsing xenia coral is not pulsing anymore and its arms look really long,sickly, and limp. i do not know what to do and what caused this. im sure the blowing off of the rocks did not bother the coral. my fish are doing fine

 

did you test your params?

 

everythings fine its a cycled tank and just did a w/c fri. ialways have zero ammonia, nitrite,low nitrate, almost no phosphate. i really think it was something to do with the new sock not being rinsed. wierd.

 

Certainly does sound like the sock – but if you got a little jiggy with it and stirred up a real mess (say from digging in deep sand) its possible you caused a spike. Did you test the parameters after you noticed all this was occurring?

In the future I suggest you do not turn off the skimmer – it’s pulling out the bad, if its working over time so be it since this is crap you do not want in your tank. Well actually, in the future I hope you are not faced with this again….

 

Next time, instead of using a baster to stir stuff up, take a long 1/2" + clear hose and start a siphon from your tank to the sock in the sump your about to change out. Then, use the siphon to vacuum out anything undesirable in your DT. That way everything nasty gets pulled right to the sock, then removed completely from your system.

I would get that skimmer back on asap, just adjust it a bit. Do you use any carbon? Is it possible to get another large water change ready just in case?

~Will.

 

Agreed - get that skimmer back up and running and put some carbon in line. Could be some left over cleaning agent of some sorts..

 

A lot of filter socks have something called sizing on them that cause protein skimmers to go nuts. It's a good idea to clean even brand new ones.