All my marine stuff died

Crouchy · Apr 19, 2012

We had a fully working marine tank set up,everything was perfect then one weekend we had our flooring done and had to move the tank after about half an hour after putting tank back things started to die! We lost literally everything within a couple of days our fish,corals,crabs shrimp and are just left with our rock. We asked a marine specialist about this and they said we could have had a dead spot in the sand and disturbed it when we moved it which caused everything to die has anyone ever experienced anything like this? We test our tank for nitrate,ammonia, nitrite and ph levels, our ph is always quite low without anything being added to balance it out. We have since emptied out tank out and got new sand and had a complete water change to start from scratch, we placed a couple of crabs in to test and they died within a few hours any ideas what is happening with our tank as we have no idea what has gone wrong???

k2parkstar · Apr 19, 2012

I would agree, that when you moved it you may have caused a spike that killed everything. After putting new sand and new water in I would give the tank a chance to cycle again at least for a week or two before starting over.

Crouchy · Apr 19, 2012

Do you think everything will be ok then ? I'm just worried that my rock maybe infected ? Would you still keep an eye on all our levels ? Thank you for replying

Cuong L · Apr 19, 2012

Was there any chemicals used installing the flooring? Did anyone installing the flooring touch the fish tank? Could it be temperature?

cdness · Apr 19, 2012

What flooring work did you do? If they used any caustic chemicals, stains, paints, glues, etc it could have become airborne and entered through the skimmer...

I would recommend getting it all set up. Add some carbon in a reactor or sock. Let the tank cycle again, if needed use a piece of table shrimp to kick it off again. If you see the spike and then all is corrected, try adding something easy. Make sure to give the carbon some time to work though. If you have access to PolyFilters use one of them too. They change colors when removing contaminants.

Crouchy · Apr 19, 2012

I have used a poly filter and left it in for 24 hours , it never changed colour . The flooring was laminate flooring , there was no chemicals used . The person that did my flooring is my neighbour and he owns a marine tank too . I'm using a eheim pro 3 filter but they don't come with a carbon filter , could this be a problem ?

Crouchy · Apr 19, 2012

My temp is 26 , I've been told the temp should be between 26 and 30 ?

MadR33fer · Apr 19, 2012

Sorry to hear that happened. I would be devastated.
What did you drain your water into? Any chance contamination could have come from where you stored the water while moving the tank?
If not it looks like a nitrate spike from stirring everything up.

Russellaqua · Apr 19, 2012

Crouchy said:
My temp is 26 , I've been told the temp should be between 26 and 30 ?

I would stick with 26*C. 30* is very warm for even most tropical marine life. I agree with the others here. Set the tank up and let is cycle again, testing the water the whole time for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. Once the ammonia and nitrite are 0, and nitrate is around say 10, slowly start adding animals to the tank.

Crouchy · Apr 20, 2012

What's the recommended time to cycle ? I've got my water at 26 , all my levels are fine well my ph will not go about 7.8 but other than that all is ok , someone I no suggested getting a air pump for my tank to help with oxygen level, should I do this? Thank you all for taking the time to help me , I am very gutted I lost everything .

justreefin · Apr 20, 2012

The time it takes to cycle will be different for every tank. The more die off you have the longer the tank cycles. The best thing to do is test for ammonia and nitrite. When you get 0 for those two test than you should be good to slowly add livestock. Nitrate can be a little elevated but ammonia and nitrite has to be 0.

Crouchy · Apr 22, 2012

I've done that I've been told and I've checked all my levels which are 0 , so I brought a crab today and it walked around for 2 minutes it then fell of my rock and it hasn't moved since , I'm really confused to why this is happening ?