Hi,
I bought a 30 gallon saltwater tank about a half year ago. We never had any big fish, usually clownfishs and other tropical fish that size. I have to say i was a little lazy in terms of changing the water but we never had a bog algae problem (that we could not fix). We were not familiar with saltwater tanks, since we only had and still have goldfish. But we thought that corals will look very cool. So around new year we bought some liferock and later a coral. Everything went fine. Then we thought that an anemone would look even better and we bought a small one. That was about 2 month ago. One month later our tank turned totaly green over night. I dont think it had anything to do with the anemone but I am not an expert. Right away we took a sample of our water to the fish store and they tested it and said everything is alright and that it might be the food (flakes) that would cause the problem. So we changed the food and also got extra carbon for the filter. Afterwards i made a couple water changes but it did not help at all. We put a little to much carbon in the sack and 2 weeks later our tank overfloat. We had to emty it out in order to move it for the carpet guy. Which at first turned out to be really convenient since we can put new good looking water in the tank. But we had to put all 5 fish + anemone + liferock & coral in an old 10gallon tank. It turned out that all the fish and the anemone died within 2 days (we couldnt put them in earlier because we thought there might be a crack or something in the tank so we tested it while we were at school/work). But the snails and crabs (not the peppermint shrimp
) did fine and so did the coral and the liferock. We put them back into the tank and everything went well. But when we put them in we needed something on the ground so we used the sand we had from when we first set up the tank. It said that the sand will expire march 15 and it was april 1st. We did not know how sand can expire so we just put it in. But just today it turned out to be green again. It was cycling good before and we washed the tank before we filled it. we used all new water and no food since all the fish were dead anyway.
My question now:
what is causing this green mist (or whatever it is) ?
Should I buy new fish and do it all again? If yes what would you give me as an advise in order to do better this time?
And is there anything to prevent a tank from overfloating?
Thank you
I bought a 30 gallon saltwater tank about a half year ago. We never had any big fish, usually clownfishs and other tropical fish that size. I have to say i was a little lazy in terms of changing the water but we never had a bog algae problem (that we could not fix). We were not familiar with saltwater tanks, since we only had and still have goldfish. But we thought that corals will look very cool. So around new year we bought some liferock and later a coral. Everything went fine. Then we thought that an anemone would look even better and we bought a small one. That was about 2 month ago. One month later our tank turned totaly green over night. I dont think it had anything to do with the anemone but I am not an expert. Right away we took a sample of our water to the fish store and they tested it and said everything is alright and that it might be the food (flakes) that would cause the problem. So we changed the food and also got extra carbon for the filter. Afterwards i made a couple water changes but it did not help at all. We put a little to much carbon in the sack and 2 weeks later our tank overfloat. We had to emty it out in order to move it for the carpet guy. Which at first turned out to be really convenient since we can put new good looking water in the tank. But we had to put all 5 fish + anemone + liferock & coral in an old 10gallon tank. It turned out that all the fish and the anemone died within 2 days (we couldnt put them in earlier because we thought there might be a crack or something in the tank so we tested it while we were at school/work). But the snails and crabs (not the peppermint shrimp
) did fine and so did the coral and the liferock. We put them back into the tank and everything went well. But when we put them in we needed something on the ground so we used the sand we had from when we first set up the tank. It said that the sand will expire march 15 and it was april 1st. We did not know how sand can expire so we just put it in. But just today it turned out to be green again. It was cycling good before and we washed the tank before we filled it. we used all new water and no food since all the fish were dead anyway. My question now:
what is causing this green mist (or whatever it is) ?
Should I buy new fish and do it all again? If yes what would you give me as an advise in order to do better this time?
And is there anything to prevent a tank from overfloating?
Thank you
