well i'm realy realy unsure what happened but my saltwater tank is dead. checked all the chemicals like i normaly do on wednesdays and everything was fine. temp, salinity, ph, nitrates, nitrites, ammonia. perfectly fine. fed my fish and about half an hour later went to bed. woke up thursday morning to find my tank so cloudy i could not see the back and my fish were at the top of the tank swiming on their sides almost jumping out of the tank. I quickly filled a 5 gallon bucket with water and added salt and put the fish in. they sank to the bottom motionless but breathing. ran tests and the ammonia and nitrates spiked over night and the ph dropped. have no idea what happened. but did a 75% water change and everything looked good on my tests and by that time my fish looked fine so i put my damsel in. about 40 min later it was on it's side on the bottom of the tank hardly breathing. i put it back in the bucket and half an hour later swimming around like nothing happened. tested again 5 hours later and everything looked good. put the damsel back into the tank and about 20 min later it was dead. kept my clowns in the 5 gallon bucket and called my lfs and they have absolutly no idea as to what happened. later that night i was looking at the tank and tested again and everything looked good. but i did notice alot of critters in the tank. brisltle worms and copopods and amphopods all over in the tank. I've never seen them out in force when the lights have been on all day and alot of the brislte worms i noticed were very pale and alot of them were dead. so instead of doing another water change or condeming my clown fish to death i drained the tank and filled it with 130 degree water. effectivly killing anything inside the tank. today i scrubbed off all the rocks. cleaned the tank and refilled with fresh water and put some cichlids in it. that is the end of this chapter of salt water for me. maybe later on i will try again when i have the money to buy an accual saltwater tank. till then i'm sticking to fresh water.
dead tank
- Thread starter exhumed07
- Start date
The Pros here will be able to help you out with this more than I can. The only thing I can think to ask is, Do you dose Alk. and Cal. into your tank, what color was the cloudy water, milkey looking? I had a doser for Alk. & Calicum mess up, well the doser didn't mess up the timer did, my tank looked like a glass of milk. I lost a couple of fish and a few corals, the damage could have been worse, I think, but I caught it pretty quick, or the wife did 
I had water made up for a water change at that time plus I had several of those containers real saltwater that my LFS sells. I was able to do a pretty good sized water change really quick and that might have saved the tank. I wouldn't give up, bet this turns out to be something simple. Sorry to hear about your loss though.
I had water made up for a water change at that time plus I had several of those containers real saltwater that my LFS sells. I was able to do a pretty good sized water change really quick and that might have saved the tank. I wouldn't give up, bet this turns out to be something simple. Sorry to hear about your loss though.
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I am sorry to hear about your tank. I bet your Alk crashed! I assume that since you didnt mention it you dont test for it? I have been down this road, its awful sir, I am very sorry. Some people do not know that they need to dose chemicals for Alkalinity, Magnesium, Strontium, and Calcium. Alk and Ca are the biggest factors. What happened is when you started your scrubber you stopped water changes which used the salt mix that had this stuff in it. So while you were water changing these levels of additives where being maintained. No that you are virtually water change free you need to dose the additives about daily when you top off you water.
The cloudy came from all the organisms in the rock dying off at a fast rate which would have cause a HUGE ammonia spike that started to kill the rest of the tank. It would not have taken long for your scrubber to have sucked this ammonia up so that why all the test you did where ok.
I can only assume this is what happened as it happened to me but I only lost a couple things. I had a blessing of a power outage that had me scrambling to save my tank and this is when I noticed and learned about the Alk dosing.
Here is a link about dosing from the scrubber site, its kinda long but there is great info there about dosing and getting stuff cheap to do it with. Keeping up Ca, Mg and str. .
Please let me know if you have any questions, I am very versed in the dosing deal now and DIY all my own additives for pennies on the dollar.
Once again I am truly sorry sir, dont worry about cleaning off rock and what not, your scrubber will handle all the bad stuff in there if it has not already.
The cloudy came from all the organisms in the rock dying off at a fast rate which would have cause a HUGE ammonia spike that started to kill the rest of the tank. It would not have taken long for your scrubber to have sucked this ammonia up so that why all the test you did where ok.
I can only assume this is what happened as it happened to me but I only lost a couple things. I had a blessing of a power outage that had me scrambling to save my tank and this is when I noticed and learned about the Alk dosing.
Here is a link about dosing from the scrubber site, its kinda long but there is great info there about dosing and getting stuff cheap to do it with. Keeping up Ca, Mg and str. .
Please let me know if you have any questions, I am very versed in the dosing deal now and DIY all my own additives for pennies on the dollar.
Once again I am truly sorry sir, dont worry about cleaning off rock and what not, your scrubber will handle all the bad stuff in there if it has not already.
i dosed with trace chemicals from sealife. but everything was doing fine till i had a starfish die in the tank. after that everything went to hell within a couple months. this last crash was the breaking point. i only lost one fish and the 2 clowns are at the lfs. just fed up with the saltwater for now. had corals and they were doing beautiful. then had an algea problem and they all died then things were getting back on track and then another crash. and then again things were getting better and then another crash. tired of dealing with it. and i don't have any money to buy things to do the salt water anymore anyway. just stick to my cichlids for now
Sorry to hear that, cichlids are kewl, I love my african and oscar/dempsey tanks. SW is a little harder for sure. Dosing the trace is fine with every other week or weekly water changes works but, when you do a scrubber and dont water change you will have issues if not using Kalkwasser and calcium supplement. Well keep us updated on the cichlids, I would love to see pics of the blue red peacocks.