Has anyone had any trouble with Instant Reef plug N Play in their FOWLR tank?
Background: I started a 200G FOWLR because I miss my large angels, butterflies and triggers. The tank has been running for about 1 year now. After researching option, I decided to add a pretty large piece of Instant Reef plug N play to supplement the live rock. Despite following instructions on rinsing/soaking prior to addition, I did encounter what I thought at the time were small issues. My skimmer went berserk for about a week (annoying, but not necessarily an issue I thought) and I had a rebound in brown algae in the sand bed concentrated the highest around the Instant Reef piece. The 4 fish in the tank did not seem to be adversely affected. In fact, they seem happy as can be. Fat, eating well, etc... However, the last 2 fish added (saddle back butterfly that went through my Q-tank for 4 weeks ) and a flagfin angel (which did not go through my Q-tank) died within about 5 days of going into the tank. My water chemistry is good and the 4 fish I have a not at all aggressive and the fish did not show any signs of being targeted with aggression. My working theory is that (maybe?) something leached out of the Instant Reef piece and over time the existing fish have built up a tolerance to whatever that might be while new fish have not? Seems a bit out there, but nothing else makes sense at the moment. I do change 10% of the water every week and I have placed some poly-filter in the sump to attempt to absorb something that I am unable to test for. Has anyone had any negative results like this with Instant Reef? Or any other synthetic reef material?
Water chemistry:
ammonia- 0
Nitrate-0
Nitrate <0.5ppm
Phosphate <.02 ppm
pH (8.1-8.3 with every check)
Temp 77
I would appreciate any thoughts or relatable experiences.
Background: I started a 200G FOWLR because I miss my large angels, butterflies and triggers. The tank has been running for about 1 year now. After researching option, I decided to add a pretty large piece of Instant Reef plug N play to supplement the live rock. Despite following instructions on rinsing/soaking prior to addition, I did encounter what I thought at the time were small issues. My skimmer went berserk for about a week (annoying, but not necessarily an issue I thought) and I had a rebound in brown algae in the sand bed concentrated the highest around the Instant Reef piece. The 4 fish in the tank did not seem to be adversely affected. In fact, they seem happy as can be. Fat, eating well, etc... However, the last 2 fish added (saddle back butterfly that went through my Q-tank for 4 weeks ) and a flagfin angel (which did not go through my Q-tank) died within about 5 days of going into the tank. My water chemistry is good and the 4 fish I have a not at all aggressive and the fish did not show any signs of being targeted with aggression. My working theory is that (maybe?) something leached out of the Instant Reef piece and over time the existing fish have built up a tolerance to whatever that might be while new fish have not? Seems a bit out there, but nothing else makes sense at the moment. I do change 10% of the water every week and I have placed some poly-filter in the sump to attempt to absorb something that I am unable to test for. Has anyone had any negative results like this with Instant Reef? Or any other synthetic reef material?
Water chemistry:
ammonia- 0
Nitrate-0
Nitrate <0.5ppm
Phosphate <.02 ppm
pH (8.1-8.3 with every check)
Temp 77
I would appreciate any thoughts or relatable experiences.
They do sell this product on Amazon and there are some reviews there including someone claiming that it killed everything in their DT but that wasn't exactly the same as my experience. I do think that there are many people that do use it without issues, so perhaps there is just a small rate of failure, which of course would not be worth the gamble.
