Epoxy killed my skimmers efficacy - effect on animals?

NielsC · Dec 2, 2019

Hey everyone

Yesterday I finally took the plunge and bought a handful of coral for my tank.
Some acan frags, a chalice, a piece of brain coral and an euphyllia.
The corals seemed happy and puffed up nicely once they were placed in my tank.
After a few hours I went ahead and started fixating them with two-part epoxy from Vertex...
Yikes. That seemed to have been a mistake. It made my water go al milky and made the skimmer go crazy...
Roughly 16 hrs later the skimmer still isn't feeling well, so I had to turn it down significantly to avoid it overboiling every 10 minutes. Right now it isn't producing any skimmate at all.

Is there anything I can do? I read this could go on for days and of course start to worry about my new purchases...

My euphyllia isn't expanded 100% right now compared to the pre-epoxy time, but all other corals don't seem to be bothered.

-how harmful could this be for my tank, the fact that my skimmer isn't performing right now?
-should I just let time take its course and wait it out? I just did my WC and maintenance to the tank so I don't want to disturb the system any more than necessary.
-do I scale back my feeding regimen for my fish right now? Then again, I'm running quite low on nutrients right now, so it might be a good way to elevate the NO3 and PO4 levels a bit? (NO3~2.5ppm, PO4 <0.03)
-any tips or advice?

I hope y'all are having a good Monday!

Best

Niels

Sabellafella · Dec 2, 2019

NielsC said:
Hey everyone

Yesterday I finally took the plunge and bought a handful of coral for my tank.
Some acan frags, a chalice, a piece of brain coral and an euphyllia.
The corals seemed happy and puffed up nicely once they were placed in my tank.
After a few hours I went ahead and started fixating them with two-part epoxy from Vertex...
Yikes. That seemed to have been a mistake. It made my water go al milky and made the skimmer go crazy...
Roughly 16 hrs later the skimmer still isn't feeling well, so I had to turn it down significantly to avoid it overboiling every 10 minutes. Right now it isn't producing any skimmate at all.

Is there anything I can do? I read this could go on for days and of course start to worry about my new purchases...

My euphyllia isn't expanded 100% right now compared to the pre-epoxy time, but all other corals don't seem to be bothered.

-how harmful could this be for my tank, the fact that my skimmer isn't performing right now?
-should I just let time take its course and wait it out? I just did my WC and maintenance to the tank so I don't want to disturb the system any more than necessary.
-do I scale back my feeding regimen for my fish right now? Then again, I'm running quite low on nutrients right now, so it might be a good way to elevate the NO3 and PO4 levels a bit? (NO3~2.5ppm, PO4 <0.03)
-any tips or advice?

I hope y'all are having a good Monday!

Best

Niels

For some reason I get very anxious if I'm not using anything other than the tunze dental epoxy. But to think of it, almost all of the coral vendors now use epoxy to take place of glue. I remember reading something a pretty long time ago, that the powdery stuff your seeing is actually talcum powder. I don't know the chemistry behind it but I'm pretty sure It's why your skimmer freaks out

The skimmer going crazy for 3 days drives me nuts, so to remedy, I would use some floss or just discard all the wet skim you get untill the issue goes away.

Terri Caton · Dec 2, 2019

Best tip I just got the other day. Take a piece of plastic like a baggie and rubber band it to the intake on your skimmer. Poke a few holes in it until the skimmate is good. Each day you can add more holes as needed. After a few days or so you should be able to remove it and your skimmer be back to normal. Works so well!

rkpetersen · Dec 2, 2019

Wait it out, the epoxy shouldn't hurt anything and will eventually clear.
Turn your skimmer back up gradually so that you're wet-skimming; this will help the resin components clear faster.