Jennduhh
Community Member
Hey all,
I woke up this morning to a sad day. Both my transparent goby and my clown, along with my camel shrimp & sea hare were all dead. That being said, all of my crabs (hermit & emerald) along with my turbo snails, my tubiflex worm & conch snail are all alive & seem to be doing fine.
I can' figure out why. Everything's been going well. We're on the tail end of a small cycle because we moved to a new tank (old one cracked & wasnt repairable so was an emergency jump). The tank was near fully cycled when everything was moved. Ammonia was ar 0ppm, Nitrites were sitting .25ppm & Nitrates were sitting at 5.0ppm, which I now realize may have been the cause. PH is at 8.0.
I've been doing 10% water changes daily, along with adding Seachem Stability & Prime. I have a Corallife BioCube 16gal tank with LED lighting. It's mechanically filtered & jas bio-balls, along with activated carbon and a dry protein skimmer.
I'm fairly new to reef tanks, as I took over my boyfriends when he no longer had the time to cate for it properly. I've been managing his established tank for several years without issue until the crack. I've never started one from the ground up, so it's definitely been a learning curve & now I'm worried everything I've been told has essentially been wrong. I was reading this morning that Nitrates should NOT be over 5-20ppm depending on the inhabitants, whereas I've always been told that up to 40 was a safe level.
My first though had been they were poisoned by a thermometer that broke in the tank a few days ago, but after reading more into that, I don't believe it was the cause. The thermometer was missing a small chunk of glass from the very top, but from reading, the liquid was just alcohol & the small amount isn't toxic to fish. I did notice, however, that some water had leached into the beads in the base, so im wondering if that may have contributed? The small chunk of glass wasn't found, either, even after sifting the sand by hand, so I'm wondering if my sea hare may have eaten it, which in turn killed him & poisoned the tank.
There are so many variables that I'm truly not sure where to begin/what to lean into as the cause or what may need fixed. Clearly my Nitrite/Nitrate levels are the first step. There was a minor ammonia spike this morning, which I'm assuming is from all of the death that occurred overnight because I'm unsure of what time everything started to die. I last checked on it around 12am & didn't wake up/check on it again until about 11am.
I've since done a water change, changed my filter media, added more stability & Prime. The ammonia is back down, Nitrites/Nitrates sitting a little under where they were, but probably still not low enough.
Thoughts would be helpful. I feel horrible that I've lost all my babies at some fault of mine and can't figure out what.
Thank you all in advance!
I woke up this morning to a sad day. Both my transparent goby and my clown, along with my camel shrimp & sea hare were all dead. That being said, all of my crabs (hermit & emerald) along with my turbo snails, my tubiflex worm & conch snail are all alive & seem to be doing fine.
I can' figure out why. Everything's been going well. We're on the tail end of a small cycle because we moved to a new tank (old one cracked & wasnt repairable so was an emergency jump). The tank was near fully cycled when everything was moved. Ammonia was ar 0ppm, Nitrites were sitting .25ppm & Nitrates were sitting at 5.0ppm, which I now realize may have been the cause. PH is at 8.0.
I've been doing 10% water changes daily, along with adding Seachem Stability & Prime. I have a Corallife BioCube 16gal tank with LED lighting. It's mechanically filtered & jas bio-balls, along with activated carbon and a dry protein skimmer.
I'm fairly new to reef tanks, as I took over my boyfriends when he no longer had the time to cate for it properly. I've been managing his established tank for several years without issue until the crack. I've never started one from the ground up, so it's definitely been a learning curve & now I'm worried everything I've been told has essentially been wrong. I was reading this morning that Nitrates should NOT be over 5-20ppm depending on the inhabitants, whereas I've always been told that up to 40 was a safe level.
My first though had been they were poisoned by a thermometer that broke in the tank a few days ago, but after reading more into that, I don't believe it was the cause. The thermometer was missing a small chunk of glass from the very top, but from reading, the liquid was just alcohol & the small amount isn't toxic to fish. I did notice, however, that some water had leached into the beads in the base, so im wondering if that may have contributed? The small chunk of glass wasn't found, either, even after sifting the sand by hand, so I'm wondering if my sea hare may have eaten it, which in turn killed him & poisoned the tank.
There are so many variables that I'm truly not sure where to begin/what to lean into as the cause or what may need fixed. Clearly my Nitrite/Nitrate levels are the first step. There was a minor ammonia spike this morning, which I'm assuming is from all of the death that occurred overnight because I'm unsure of what time everything started to die. I last checked on it around 12am & didn't wake up/check on it again until about 11am.
I've since done a water change, changed my filter media, added more stability & Prime. The ammonia is back down, Nitrites/Nitrates sitting a little under where they were, but probably still not low enough.
Thoughts would be helpful. I feel horrible that I've lost all my babies at some fault of mine and can't figure out what.
Thank you all in advance!
