Water Change Disaster

[tarmer]

Greetings all - I am going to just come out and say it - This is on me and I cannot blame the store, the tank - just me…. So any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated……

Tank was fully cycled (had not done a water change) but everything was doing awesome ( see pics below) - For some reason I decided that it was time to do a water change. Though all that is in the tank are mushrooms. Everthing was happy.

Fast forward about a week or so ago- as mentioned I decided to do a water change, I was not paying attention and ended up using tap water rather than RO water - no excuse was in a hurry and distracted. Did not think much about it until I started noticing a small bacterial bloom that clouded the water………

I started noticing that most of the mushrooms started to look like the were melting and dispelling their guts. So i am assuming there was chlorine and other stuff that ticked off or killed them… i did not treat the water after that as I know treating an algae bloom can just prolong the issue.

Fast forward to today - the water looks better almost 100% clear - the SG is 1.025
Temp is about 78 ( all the same as before)

Some of the mushrooms seem to do ok and are looking like they will recover some not so much.

I ran a quick water test and see the following - the yellow is ammonia ( looks good) the blue is nitrites ( looks correct) the purple is ph ( looks about 7.8) and the orang(ie) color is the nitrates which is hard to tell if yellow or orange. - so question becomes given time to let the tank self resolve do you think these mushrooms will recover -

The last photo is the before of the same green mushrooms

 

[Garf]

Greetings all - I am going to just come out and say it - This is on me and I cannot blame the store, the tank - just me…. So any thoughts on this would be greatly appreciated……

Tank was fully cycled (had not done a water change) but everything was doing awesome ( see pics below) - For some reason I decided that it was time to do a water change. Though all that is in the tank are mushrooms. Everthing was happy.

Fast forward about a week or so ago- as mentioned I decided to do a water change, I was not paying attention and ended up using tap water rather than RO water - no excuse was in a hurry and distracted. Did not think much about it until I started noticing a small bacterial bloom that clouded the water………

I started noticing that most of the mushrooms started to look like the were melting and dispelling their guts. So i am assuming there was chlorine and other stuff that ticked off or killed them… i did not treat the water after that as I know treating an algae bloom can just prolong the issue.

Fast forward to today - the water looks better almost 100% clear - the SG is 1.025
Temp is about 78 ( all the same as before)

Some of the mushrooms seem to do ok and are looking like they will recover some not so much.

I ran a quick water test and see the following - the yellow is ammonia ( looks good) the blue is nitrites ( looks correct) the purple is ph ( looks about 7.8) and the orang(ie) color is the nitrates which is hard to tell if yellow or orange. - so question becomes given time to let the tank self resolve do you think these mushrooms will recover -

The last photo is the before of the same green mushrooms

Check your alkalinity. Any Alk in the tapwater combines with the salt and it may get very high. I had mushroom gut spilling episodes when messing around with Alkalinity buffers a long time ago.

 

[vancouverredsea350]

I think those mushrooms are pretty indestructible, when we moved I had mine along with my rocks in a Brute trash can for a month with the lid on and no light and they came back within a few weeks of setting up my new tank. Then I started spot feeding them reef roids and they flourished.

 

[tarmer]

Check your alkalinity. Any Alk in the tapwater combines with the salt and it may get very high. I had mushroom gut spilling episodes when messing around with Alkalinity buffers a long time ago.

Tested - noted as 8.1 - any other thoughts - and if the numbers all look right(ish) -
I assume just time since some seem to be doing better than others

 

[Naekuh]

im gonna guess it could be the chlorine and flouride as well.
Tap water has chloramine, in LA.

Salt mixes do not contain dechlor.

Do you have any prime? or dechlor?

You could add some right now, and start doing medium water changes spread out every 3-4 days, to slowly replace that tap water.

Also it wouldn't hurt dropping in a fresh bag of premium activated carbon or even better Rox carbon in a reactor if you have one.

 

[tarmer]

im gonna guess it could be the chlorine and flouride as well.
Tap water has chloramine, in LA.

Salt mixes do not contain dechlor.

Do you have any prime? or dechlor?

You could add some right now, and start doing medium water changes spread out every 3-4 days, to slowly replace that tap water.

Also it wouldn't hurt dropping in a fresh bag of premium activated carbon or even better Rox carbon in a reactor if you have

im gonna guess it could be the chlorine and flouride as well.
Tap water has chloramine, in LA.

Salt mixes do not contain dechlor.

Do you have any prime? or dechlor?

You could add some right now, and start doing medium water changes spread out every 3-4 days, to slowly replace that tap water.

Also it wouldn't hurt dropping in a fresh bag of premium activated carbon or even better Rox carbon in a reactor if you have one.

Thank you -

 

[Hans-Werner]

I guess the cloudiness was not a bacterial bloom but calcium carbonate precipitates.

Mushrooms don't look too bad. Sometimes they look just as bad when they divide.

 

[Sophie"s mom]

Mushrooms are typically very hardy. I am thinking they will recover. I would get some sort of declor though. Prime would be best.

 

[Mathew0]

Phosphate in my tap comes out at 1.1 or higher. Quickly Going from a relatively low PO4 to 1.0 or higher can have this effect as well. They’ll probably bounce back, as others have noted. If you do read high PO4, you can get it to precip out quickly with lantanum. I used Tropic Marin’s lanthanum to leach out some rock that I had curing.

 

[tarmer]

Phosphate in my tap comes out at 1.1 or higher. Quickly Going from a relatively low PO4 to 1.0 or higher can have this effect as well. They’ll probably bounce back, as others have noted. If you do read high PO4, you can get it to precip out quickly with lantanum. I used Tropic Marin’s lanthanum to leach out some rock that I had curing.

Did a Hanna ULR phosphate test - came out to .11 - i hear i should be between .03 and .2 - I look to be right in between - water still looks a little cloudy as i used to be able to see the wall on the far side very clearly - and i can see the cloudiness just wont photo well - so after all of the suggestions, dose with prime, change water etc…. I assume this will just take time to sort itself -

 

[tarmer]

Not sure this will be seen - but after all these posts - I found what i believe the issue to be and the outcome…. Posting so anyone may also evaluate this if they have something similar…..

Needless to say nothing made it and all mushrooms just melted away to nothing

I believe besides other issues the one that proved to be so bad was the creation of a heretropic bloom. I had one of these when i first setup the tank as part of the cycle process, i had never experienced this before and it could be due to the dry rock use, in either case, the water turned cloudy ( it was a bloom) and the more i tried to change the water and add any dechlor to it made it worse… The bloom is created by carbon in the water and everytime you add water you are adding carbon thus restarting the issue. I recognized this from the initial cycle and stopped doing anything.

Although the tank had cycled it was relatively new from cycle so the good bacteria probably had not developed fully enough to grow in sufficient quantity and as i have nothing but mushrooms in the tank i had nothing to feed the heretropic bacteria. Thus they started on the carbon which increased the ammonia. I have since as noted done nothing and the water is starting to clear and the chemistry is normalizing.

Since this was a issue raised by several items one of which is new water in general - once water is clear and all back to normal- I will do another small change ( using correct water) to see if this continues to be an issue with water changes

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Not sure this will be seen - but after all these posts - I found what i believe the issue to be and the outcome…. Posting so anyone may also evaluate this if they have something similar…..

Needless to say nothing made it and all mushrooms just melted away to nothing

I believe besides other issues the one that proved to be so bad was the creation of a heretropic bloom. I had one of these when i first setup the tank as part of the cycle process, i had never experienced this before and it could be due to the dry rock use, in either case, the water turned cloudy ( it was a bloom) and the more i tried to change the water and add any dechlor to it made it worse… The bloom is created by carbon in the water and everytime you add water you are adding carbon thus restarting the issue. I recognized this from the initial cycle and stopped doing anything.

Although the tank had cycled it was relatively new from cycle so the good bacteria probably had not developed fully enough to grow in sufficient quantity and as i have nothing but mushrooms in the tank i had nothing to feed the heretropic bacteria. Thus they started on the carbon which increased the ammonia. I have since as noted done nothing and the water is starting to clear and the chemistry is normalizing.

Since this was a issue raised by several items one of which is new water in general - once water is clear and all back to normal- I will do another small change ( using correct water) to see if this continues to be an issue with water changes

What makes you think that is the explanation?

It sounds very, very unlikely to me. Tap water has very little in the way of organic matter in it. RO/DI water has none.

Did you use tap water?

Why assume it is organics (unlikely) and not copper (not unlikely)?

 

[Troylee]

What makes you think that is the explanation?

It sounds very, very unlikely to me. Tap water has very little in the way of organic matter in it. RO/DI water has none.

Did you use tap water?

Why assume it is organics (unlikely) and not copper (not unlikely)?

They did use tap water.. and did water changes with tap water… I’d agree copper and other crap in our local water supply did the damage.

 

[tarmer]

What makes you think that is the explanation?

It sounds very, very unlikely to me. Tap water has very little in the way of organic matter in it. RO/DI water has none.

Did you use tap water?

Why assume it is organics (unlikely) and not copper (not unlikely)

What makes you think that is the explanation?

It sounds very, very unlikely to me. Tap water has very little in the way of organic matter in it. RO/DI water has none.

Did you use tap water?

Why assume it is organics (unlikely) and not copper (not unlikely)?

They did use tap water.. and did water changes with tap water… I’d agree copper and other crap in our local water supply did the damage.

Did use tap water for change as noted in first post - also noted that there may be some affect by other items (copper, chlorine, etc) - but I believe the cloudiness is related to a bacterial bloom, which will increase the ammonia levels.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

In all of the hundreds of thousands of posts that I have read about reef chemistry issues in the past 25 years, I do not recall ever hearing of bacterial blooms repeatedly brought on by organics in water changes, and which led to coral deaths.

That makes me skeptical that this is the first, when other, more obvious issues have not been ruled out.

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Bacterial blooms from organic matter do not increase ammonia. if anything, they would lower it.

 

[PharmrJohn]

Don't feel bad. Everybody has done something along these lines. Here's my not paying attention story. (Thirty years ago) I wake up. Make coffee. Get distracted by one of the kids as I put in "creamer". I drank the first sip and it didn't taste right. That didn't deter me from continuing to about halfway down. Then I saw the only bottle on the counter. Bleach. Oops.

 

[tarmer]

What makes you think that is the explanation?

It sounds very, very unlikely to me. Tap water has very little in the way of organic matter in it. RO/DI water has none.

Did you use tap water?

Why assume it is organics (unlikely) and not copper (not unlik

In all of the hundreds of thousands of posts that I have read about reef chemistry issues in the past 25 years, I do not recall ever hearing of bacterial blooms repeatedly brought on by organics in water changes, and which led to coral deaths.

That makes me skeptical that this is the first, when other, more obvious issues have not been ruled out.

Randy…. I appreciate your response and this is not anything I want to dig in on - As I am trying to understand it myself, and I really do so i am better educated on this.

What led me to this is the following:

I have started a reef tank with live rock, had the typical uglies and that was really it no unusual water things…….

A few years later I moved and broke it down, I restarted again but this time with Aqua-Forest rock again no unexpected water items. I ended up breaking it down because of some nusiance issues that I could not resolve - I cleaned the tank and it sat dry and clean

About 6 months ago I decided to have one more go at it - Again in an effort to minimize nusiance items I started with Marcos Rock - I started with treated tap water and let it do it’s thing - this was the a couple months in is the first time I ever noticed in a tank the milky cloud…. I was trying to figure it out and spent a lot of time reading and the symptoms that most closely matched what I had was the bloom. What I did then was let it set and in a week or so it went away and all the chemistry was spot on….. it was doing great until i screwed it up….

So the reason I assume it was a bloom is because I honestly don’t know it was not - If it had not been for the cloudy water I would have gone immediately to other water chemistry ( beyond what I would already assumed from tap)

So if it is i fact not a bloom, I am not sure what to make of tue cloudy water- I do believe that it is not the water change so much as the water in the change. So I would not expect to change water with correct RODI water and have this happen ( as it had never happened in any other water change I ever did, using correct water)

So you are probably correct- I just cannot figure what is causing the cloudiness as opposed to just bad water chemistry

Thank You for responding- I am just trying to figure this out - but I do know that the tap water was for sure the main issue

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

A bacterial bloom can be a consequence of deaths rather than the cause of it.

 

[tarmer]

A bacterial bloom can be a consequence of deaths rather than the cause of it.

Would running carbon help ?