What just happened?

Yeah i dont think there was enough detail about the sand. Salt is definately different than a fresh tank. In a Fresh tank its perfectly ok to vac the sand but in a Salt tank dont even consider it. You can cause a huge disturbance in your system and seriously affect the water in your system. It can't be stressed enough.

 

Sounds to me like your rbta died.

 

What size is the tank? I had something similar happen in a nano. It turned out that there was a deadspot and detritus accumulated behind some back rocks. After removing everything, siphoning the detritus and doing a large water change, it was better. However, IME, water changes don't help unless you remove the source. Usually when it get's like that, there is something feeding it. BP, or carbon dosing would be another possibility, especially if not running a decent amount of GAC. Other possibilities would be death of something big, or a chain reaction of dying organisms due to an ammonia spike or spike of some other toxin. Algae death, or sporilation or even possibly just release of photosynthetic carbon byproducts. Another would be death of the sand bed, could have a chain reaction of microfauna death. Definitely try to isolate the source if possible. If it was death of a large organism, it should go away, if all the organic material is filtered out.

 

from what i know when an anemone dies the water goes more of a milky color (i had one kill herself on one of my pumps a while back). +1 on not disturbing your sand bed, iv never seen anything like this almost looks like a macro algae sexing event. seeing as i dont use carbon im going to point the finger at that. my 2 cents

 

I doubt in on the carbon because I have used carbon continually from the start. If it was algae gone sexual then his water would be green IME. His fish would have been most likely been gasping not swimming around the tank.

 

Do you have any large/medium clams?


My squamosa has had 2 spawning events that clouded my 210 just like that. Couldn't see past a couple inches in. Once when I moved it in my tank and once when I had a sump / ato fail.

 

That is a great question!

 

Hows the tank Packleader? Did everyone survive? Was a cause for it found? Looking at it, it looks like the water I get when I vaccum out my sandbed after not doing it for a few weeks.

Going to have to disagree with this. I have had a reef tank for years, and I vaccum my sand bed when I do water changes and nothing bad happens from doing it. From what I understand you are not supposed to vaccum deep sand beds(dsb), but a shallow sand bed(ssb) is ok to go ahead and vaccum. And when I do stir up my ssb, all my sps open up, my feather dusters come out and everyone seems to enjoy the extra meal.

 

Yes, many of us oldies always vacuum the sandbed as part of regular maintenance. Many do it, its been documented and proven to have no ill effects, sorry so many of you have been misinformed about it

I never did find the cause. I had zero losses, and everything looks fine, like nothing ever happened. So whatever it was I think luckily I caught it pretty quick.
I didn't test the bad water, but tests after the big water change looked pretty good. PH was a tad low (8.1) and also the sg (1.024) from my normal numbers but not bad considering the big, rushed water change. Ammonia, nitrate, and nitrite were all zero, I'd think I'd have at least traces if any of those got really out of whack.
I also do not dose anything, so that's not it.

 

I'm not here to pick a fight nor am I here to hijack a thread. I was simply stating that vacuuming a sand bed can cause a huge disturbance. We all have our "Opinions" and we all realize that our setups are not the same.

With that being said, I'm going to say that this isn't always that case. I mean what works for you may only work for you. Your system is different than my as is from anybody else who has a tank. There are so many options that its impossible for you to say that what works for you will work for everybody else.

To further support my evidence that vacuuming any type of sand bed is that your first and for most disturbing all the little burrows that small creatures have created in your sand bed, you upsetting food sources that are left behind for your small inverts and cuc. Lastly, if your building a reef tank the objective is to simulate a reef environment and reefs in the ocean don't get vacuumed.