Bacterial Explosion

[BradB]

My tank is far from the cleanest or best maintained, but it is extremely stable. 270 gallons, Nitrates around 10ppm, phosphates near 0ppm (via GFO) and I don't Carbon dose. 2 part additions via doser on a steady schedule, and autotopoff to replace evaporation. Relatively light bioload, no fish or major changes in the past 2 years, and light feeding.

Last Saturday was a Frag swap, I sold 4 frags and bought 4 frags, all tiny. No other changes to the tank, except I removed a lot of chaeto that is taking over my frag tank, and I may have stirred things up.

Sunday night, I noticed the tank looked a little cloudy, but decided the water was fine and I just needed to scrape the acrylic.

Monday when I got home from work, the water was obviously cloudy and my skimmer was overflowing. I've been paying attention to maximize the skimmer, and adding lots of saltwater to replace skimmate. You'd think a water change makes sense, but I am barely able to keep up adding to make up for what is coming out. It is like I overdid vodka dosing, but 100 times worse. The last 3 days, the tank looks more like milk, my basement floor looks like the slime monster from Stranger Things from skimmer overflow (with the skimmer cleaned 3 times a day and 5lbs barbell plates holding the lid down), and the tank is still cloudy. What I can see, the animals are fine, and the fish are swimming around as if nothing happened, and there is no smell to the tank (old overflowed skimmate smells bad).

After almost 20 years in the hobby, I have never seen anything like this, and have no idea how this is possible. Just the slime I cleaned from my basement floor seems like 10 times the organic material I thought was in the tank, and at least 10 times more went down the drain.

Any ideas how this happened or how to recover?

 

[Randy Holmes-Farley Verified Community Expert]

A UV can help if it is bacteria and if it persists, but just waiting may be one answer.

You certain the alk part of the two part did not overdose?

No chance someone added something tot eh tank? Party attendee dumped a drink into it? Little kid ice cream cone? Angry spouse adding bleach? Such things have been reported.

 

[BradB]

I live alone and lock my doors. I wouldn't be surprised if my ex wife wanted to do this, but she lives a hundred miles away, doesn't have a key, and I have a camera on the tank.

It is doubtful I overdosed alk, but am curious how this could fuel bacteria.

The problem eventually has to be self limiting. I am removing a large volume of organics and not adding any, so I am surprised it continued this long, but it has to stop eventually.

 

[rkpetersen]

Is any of your remaining chaeto dying off?

 

[BradB]

I don't know yet. I removed as much cheato as I could when I could see, so now I don't see any.

 

[blasterman]

It sounds like the common waterborn bacteria bloom than affects new tanks. If it's milky white the only real hazard is lowering of O2 leves which can affect fish. Typically it doesn't bother corals.
You pulled come cheato (nutrient exporter) and added some foreign frag plugs which likely had a bacterial flora that hadn't cycled through your tank in a long time and bloomed due to no competition. Not much different than a sudden nuisance algae bloom in well kept tanks after adding a frag plug. It happens.

Skimming and water changes won't dent the bacteria bloom. Only a UV sterilizer or letting it ride through.

 

[BradB]

How long to "ride through"? It has been over a week since I could see inside my tank. The real hazard is my corals have to be dead or bleaching from lack of light.

Skimming has to be doing something. I replaced 15 gallons this morning to make up for what my skimmer took out while I was asleep. This isn't thin skimate either - it is thick enough it clogged my drain tube and was shooting out the holes on the top.

I am reminded of the Bible story about a jar of oil that never ran dry. It defies physics that I can pull this much gunk out of a fish tank while only adding clean salt and water.

 

[BradB]

It is now more than 2 weeks, and visibility is returning, even though I can't see more than 6 inches in. I am fearing the worst. Until today, I saw every fish at least once except my clown fish - today I finally saw the clownfish, and they are swimming all over the tank instead of stay where their anemone was. All of the hard coral I've seen is dead, although typically only broken frags that I can't trade or give away end up close enough to the acrylic to see now and they rarely survive. The skimmate has also changed, and has a bad odor. One way or another, I will be able to see everything soon, and I fear this is nearly a total loss.

 

[BradB]

I wanted to post an update, as whatever the problem was seems mostly gone. I did lose almost everything, and am shocked by what survived. Clove polyps look better each day but not 100% yet, a whole psammocora colony I was certain was dead, mushroom, zooanthids and acans seemed to have survived. None of these are incredibly delicate, but I am still shocked they did better than the montipora, birdsnest, pocillopora, toadstool leathers, hollywood stunner and aiptasia that I considered absolutely unkillable. I still haven't started removing colonies, maybe I will get another positive surprise.

Today was my first water change since this happened. That sounds worse than it is - today was the first day I intentionally removed water - I've replaced hundreds of gallons from skimmate.

I plan to retest the water tomorrow. Last week was as expected - high Ca, Alk and Nitrate (30ppm). I am not testing or trying to lower phosphate until Nitrate is back under control. Ca and Alk will fall on their own, I just need to keep an eye on when to start dosing 2 part again, and how much.