Chemical warfare in tank

mrkm29 · Feb 5, 2020

I am looking for some opinions on what to do about my current reef situation. My tank has been running for 8 years with no issues, until 3 weeks ago. I bought a Walt Disney, pikachu, and a tri color valida and within 24 hours my tank crashed. Cloudy water mass coral bleaching and death. Lots of carbon and several good, large water changes and brought it back to life. 2 days ago, picked up a bubblegum digi and a small green indo frag and back to chaos.

Salinity is 1.027 checked with 2 different refractometers and 2 different calibration solutions and also verified frag source water.

Dkh 8.4 with hannah, calcium 256 with hannah checker, ph 8.2.

I've lost all my lps, and a lot of sps removed all dead, almost dead corals and still seems to be possibly chemical warfare going on.

Any suggestions?! Picture of how bad everything got is below.

mrkm29 · Feb 5, 2020

Also wanted to mention that I am pretty sure this is making me sick.

Tahoe61 · Feb 5, 2020

Have you looked at the chemistry of the sources. Maybe they are running their tanks at 1.024, and a higher ca value.
Acclimation may have stressed out the corals, leading to death, which may start a viscous cycle.
Sorry for the loss, has to be very disheartening.

mrkm29 · Feb 5, 2020

Tahoe61 said:
Have you looked at the chemistry of the sources. Maybe they are running their tanks at 1.024, and a higher ca value.
Acclimation may have stressed out the corals, leading to death, which may start a viscous cycle.
Sorry for the loss, has to be very disheartening.

The funny thing is all but one of the new corals look good.

steallife904 · Feb 5, 2020

your calc seems really low, shouldn't it be closer to 400. Did anything swing relatively fast like the salinity, alk or calc? if so they could be it.

SeaDweller · Feb 5, 2020

well first off, what is your NO3 and PO4, are these very high? I've had SPS peel almost the next day when they're super high. it seems like your water is contaminated with something if all just die within a 24 hr period of putting them in. It's probably NOT chemical warfare from the corals.

IF you could, since everything is on the down, I'd do a 100% WC and see if things stabilize.

mrkm29 · Feb 5, 2020

SeaDweller said:
well first off, what is your NO3 and PO4, are these very high? I've had SPS peel almost the next day when they're super high. it seems like your water is contaminated with something if all just die within a 24 hr period of putting them in. It's probably NOT chemical warfare from the corals.

IF you could, since everything is on the down, I'd do a 100% WC and see if things stabilize.

0 nitrate and phosphate. When your sps corals peeled did you get sick at all?