38-Gallon Reef

[Shirak]

My frustration is literally through the roof, BUT, I am trying to work through this.

My display tank is still a killer despite supporting the two pistols and the two gobies; it has currently killed two Mexican Turbo Snails within hours of introduction and I am afraid to add anything else to it at this point.

I currently have two successful quarantine tanks, one is a 5-gallon coral/invert tank that currently houses the following:

Orange Sun Coral
Black Sun Coral
NPS Purple Sea Whip
Dendrophyllia
Fat Head Dendrophyllia
Duncan
Plate Coral
JF High Voltage Platygyra (struggling)
Firework Cloves (struggling but reproducing)
Red Legged Hermit
2 x Tongan Nassarius Snails

My second quarantine tank is a 10-gallon fish QT that is currently housing:

2 x Gladiator Clownfish
6 Line Wrasse

At this point, I am absolutely refusing to do any water changes on my display unless I have tested and find elevated nutrient levels. Otherwise, I am leaving that sucker be.

I am sending out an ATI water analysis, so hopefully I will receive that test in the next few days so I can get it sent out and hopefully rest my mind about possibly pollution.

I ran some tests with a multimeter this weekend and came back negative. More on that here:

Help with Multimeter Reading

Hi all, Please forgive my slew of threads today; troubleshooting in full swing. I just tested my display using a multimeter and the readings never stabilized. The meter read 0 before I began the tests and continued to go back to 0 each time I pulled the probes out out of the ground and the...

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Other than that, I am considering adding a bottle of coralline, but that is to be determined.

Do you test the salinity of the water from the LFS? I find snails particularly sensitive and they need to be acclimated slowly if the salinity is off from my own parameters. Especially if the LFS salinity is lower than mine.. which it usually is. I also find turbo's to be kinda a hit and miss even if I select what appear to be healthy and 'stuck on the rock/glass' at the LFS, they just sometimes keep falling off stuff and never settling in. Have you checked Mg on the DT? I hear high Mg can be an issue for snails too.. mine is usually around 1425-1450ppm

 

[Apollo7235]

New game plan today:

Tearing down my 10-gallon fish QT, cleaning it, and turning it back into my coral QT. A 5-gallon is just too difficult to maintain and it’s definitely affecting my corals since a power head in that small of a tank literally blows them off the rack. Time to go back to what was working so great initially.

The 5-gallon will serve as an emergency hospital tank. Other than that, it’s going to hang out dry in the garage.

Sending out my ATI ICP test today; time has definitely not been there this week which is why I’m so late in doing this, unfortunately.

Pulling my poor dead goby and yet another dead turbo out of my display today, then probably testing nutrient levels to see if a water change is really necessary today. I would really like to do water changes every other week, but I’m not sure if my system is established enough for that just yet.

Definitely a lot of algae growth in my display lately, Its all nuisance algae that I can tell, but it’s better than nothing!

From this point forward, I will be purchasing ONLY quarantined fish from reputable suppliers such as Dr. Reef and TSM Aquatics. After this last failure, I have had enough. I don’t have the time, nor the heart, to go through this a second time. Losing 4 fish in the span of a week is just too much for me.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/white-‘cap’-on-watchman-goby’s-head.835184/

Dead Clown - Day 3 of Copper Treatment

Hi there all, This morning, I checked my tanks and noticed my two gladiator clowns hanging out on the bottom of my QT which is pretty normal for them as they are usually asleep when I wake up. I ran to the grocery store a few hours later and when I got home, the male clown was dead. I began...

www.reef2reef.com

As of this moment, I will not be purchasing any more livestock and/or products for my tank(s) until I get the ICP test results back. If I can fix whatever is making my display so toxic, I will continue in this hobby. If not, I’m selling it all and cutting my losses.

I guess we’ll see.

Anyway, happy weekend!

 

[Uncle99]

New game plan today:

Tearing down my 10-gallon fish QT, cleaning it, and turning it back into my coral QT. A 5-gallon is just too difficult to maintain and it’s definitely affecting my corals since a power head in that small of a tank literally blows them off the rack. Time to go back to what was working so great initially.

The 5-gallon will serve as an emergency hospital tank. Other than that, it’s going to hang out dry in the garage.

Sending out my ATI ICP test today; time has definitely not been there this week which is why I’m so late in doing this, unfortunately.

Pulling my poor dead goby and yet another dead turbo out of my display today, then probably testing nutrient levels to see if a water change is really necessary today. I would really like to do water changes every other week, but I’m not sure if my system is established enough for that just yet.

Definitely a lot of algae growth in my display lately, Its all nuisance algae that I can tell, but it’s better than nothing!

From this point forward, I will be purchasing ONLY quarantined fish from reputable suppliers such as Dr. Reef and TSM Aquatics. After this last failure, I have had enough. I don’t have the time, nor the heart, to go through this a second time. Losing 4 fish in the span of a week is just too much for me.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/white-‘cap’-on-watchman-goby’s-head.835184/

Dead Clown - Day 3 of Copper Treatment

Hi there all, This morning, I checked my tanks and noticed my two gladiator clowns hanging out on the bottom of my QT which is pretty normal for them as they are usually asleep when I wake up. I ran to the grocery store a few hours later and when I got home, the male clown was dead. I began...

www.reef2reef.com

As of this moment, I will not be purchasing any more livestock and/or products for my tank(s) until I get the ICP test results back. If I can fix whatever is making my display so toxic, I will continue in this hobby. If not, I’m selling it all and cutting my losses.

I guess we’ll see.

Anyway, happy weekend!

I have followed your thread for a bit now.
The ICP is a good call, will be interesting to see what, if anything it frames up, but losing stuff fast always makes me think of disease.
I would be just as frustrated as you, in this case, a full restart may be required if ICP clear.
Good luck.

 

[Apollo7235]

I have followed your thread for a bit now.
The ICP is a good call, will be interesting to see what, if anything it frames up, but losing stuff fast always makes me think of disease.
I would be just as frustrated as you, in this case, a full restart may be required if ICP clear.
Good luck.

Thanks! I will certainly keep this thread updated. Thankfully, the clowns and the wrasse were all in the same QT, so if it was disease that killed them, it was isolated. My poor goby died from what I am assuming was infection post-injury. Poor thing, the only thing I can think that caused the injury was a possible scrape to her head while diving beneath a rock, but I guess I will never be sure.

Thank you for following along! I can definitely use all of the support I can get!

 

[Apollo7235]

I think I am going to shut this thread down and restart a build thread once I have my second round of ICP results in.

I will post an update when the time comes. Thank you for following along!

 

[Apollo7235]

New build thread, officially shutting this one down

Build Thread - All Live Everything, Tank Reboot

Hello all, For those of you who don’t know, my 38-gallon-not-a-reef tank has been the object of my nightmares for the past 5 months. After 27 pages of troubleshooting, two ICP analysis, and countless hours of continuous headaches, we finally found the source of the deadly levels of copper...

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