robert829
Community Member
Help! My tank is beginning to spiral down hill.... and in a hurry! I really think I'm getting ready to lose EVERYTHING!
Here's the tank info:
I have a FOWLR/S. 30 g High-Wall. Crushed coral substrate w/ sand-pockets for anemones. Dual chamber HOB 75 g filter. Aquatrance Octopus HOB skimmer. Maxi-Jet 400 powerhead.
Stock: 3 small snails, 1 very small velvet damsel, 2 small clarkiis, 2 long tip anemones (1 lrg/1 sml), 1 emerald crab, 1 small coral banded shrimp, 1 small valentini puffer, 1 small dwarf bicolor angel, 1 small scooter blenny, 1 canary blenny, 1 indigo dottyback, 2 peppermint shrimp, 1 skunk cleaner shrimp, and a couple of hermits. 1 halimeda and 1 grape caulerpa (both VERY small right now, but growing fast). None of the fish are greater than two inches long; infact, nearly all of them are an inch or less.
Long story short:
The tank is about 3 months old and was doing amazingly up until about a week ago. I stocked this thing over the period of about two months. I relentlessly searched out only very small juveniles to prevent territory-issues. There are tons of hiding spots, and everything was just going smashingly, until ***** got real just a short time ago.
About three weeks ago, I noticed a very small spot on the bottom of the Coral Beauty - towards the pectoral fin. I initially thought she had gotten nipped. However, over the next few days... it was very clear that it was no nip. It was a flesh-eating disease. I quickly ran out and got some triple sulfa at the recommendation of a VMD-friend and an infectious disease colleague. I treated the tank for 7 days with really no improvement of the angel. I finally broke down, got a QT tank, and QTd the angel. About two days later, the angel started gasping for air at the surface, and so I euthanized her w/ benzocain (PS - impressive how well that worked). All this time I was basically very hands-off with the tank. This infection looked eerily like Mycobacterium (Fish TB), which can be transmitted from the marine to the human-model. In my profession, I see patients all day and can't risk getting myself or my patients sick.
So, after putting the angel down... I all-of-a-sudden noticed that my AmmoniaAlert detector went from yellow to green(yellow is 'no ammonia', and green is 'alert mode'. This was the first time in 3-months that this tank has shown ANY type of stress. I had lost no livestock up to this point. I do frequent water-changes and keep up with chemistries regularly, if not daily. From this point, the ammonia has continued to rise steadily, and the Nitrites have diminished to negative, leaving me to worry that I am not doing any converting right now. After doing a little research, it appears that the antibiotics I treated the tank with seem to have eradicated my bio-filter. The ammonia is clearly stressing the fish out b/c the Bicolor Angel just came down with Ich yesterday!!!
I have been doing 20% water-changes once or twice a day, lowered my salinity and upped the temperature. And I have been dosing the snot out of this tank with bacteria w/o any improvements. However, I never thought of (and no one ever mentioned) that a protein-skimmer can skim most of the new, unestablished bacteria you add... I wonder if all the bacteria I have been adding up to this point has been getting skimmed off. So, I have just turned the skimmer off last night for a couple days. And the QT tank is in complete disarray as well. So moving things to that tank is not an option right now either.
Here are the chems:
pH - 7.8-8.0 (I'm very slowing adding some Sodium Bicard to keep this up)
SG - 1.018-1.020
NH3 - 1 ppm
NO2- - 0.00 ppm
NO3- - 40 ppm
PO43- - not checking right now, b/c I just can't bring myself to it.
My questions are:
- Besides more water changers, any other great way to quickly soak up some of this nitrogenous waste?
- I know that some macroalgae are able to take up very minute amounts of NH3, typically not enough to really even notice a difference. However, does anyone know of any that are able to do this better than others?
And just to preempt any over-stocking lectures. Yes, I am planning to upgrade. No, my tank is not currently over stocked; will it be in the future, probably. Yes, with the amount of filtration and skimming I do, the bio-filter would be more than capable of handling this bio-load... had I not killed it w/ Abx! :deadhorse:
Thanks for any and all help! :doh::ear:
Here's the tank info:
I have a FOWLR/S. 30 g High-Wall. Crushed coral substrate w/ sand-pockets for anemones. Dual chamber HOB 75 g filter. Aquatrance Octopus HOB skimmer. Maxi-Jet 400 powerhead.
Stock: 3 small snails, 1 very small velvet damsel, 2 small clarkiis, 2 long tip anemones (1 lrg/1 sml), 1 emerald crab, 1 small coral banded shrimp, 1 small valentini puffer, 1 small dwarf bicolor angel, 1 small scooter blenny, 1 canary blenny, 1 indigo dottyback, 2 peppermint shrimp, 1 skunk cleaner shrimp, and a couple of hermits. 1 halimeda and 1 grape caulerpa (both VERY small right now, but growing fast). None of the fish are greater than two inches long; infact, nearly all of them are an inch or less.
Long story short:
The tank is about 3 months old and was doing amazingly up until about a week ago. I stocked this thing over the period of about two months. I relentlessly searched out only very small juveniles to prevent territory-issues. There are tons of hiding spots, and everything was just going smashingly, until ***** got real just a short time ago.
About three weeks ago, I noticed a very small spot on the bottom of the Coral Beauty - towards the pectoral fin. I initially thought she had gotten nipped. However, over the next few days... it was very clear that it was no nip. It was a flesh-eating disease. I quickly ran out and got some triple sulfa at the recommendation of a VMD-friend and an infectious disease colleague. I treated the tank for 7 days with really no improvement of the angel. I finally broke down, got a QT tank, and QTd the angel. About two days later, the angel started gasping for air at the surface, and so I euthanized her w/ benzocain (PS - impressive how well that worked). All this time I was basically very hands-off with the tank. This infection looked eerily like Mycobacterium (Fish TB), which can be transmitted from the marine to the human-model. In my profession, I see patients all day and can't risk getting myself or my patients sick.
So, after putting the angel down... I all-of-a-sudden noticed that my AmmoniaAlert detector went from yellow to green(yellow is 'no ammonia', and green is 'alert mode'. This was the first time in 3-months that this tank has shown ANY type of stress. I had lost no livestock up to this point. I do frequent water-changes and keep up with chemistries regularly, if not daily. From this point, the ammonia has continued to rise steadily, and the Nitrites have diminished to negative, leaving me to worry that I am not doing any converting right now. After doing a little research, it appears that the antibiotics I treated the tank with seem to have eradicated my bio-filter. The ammonia is clearly stressing the fish out b/c the Bicolor Angel just came down with Ich yesterday!!!
I have been doing 20% water-changes once or twice a day, lowered my salinity and upped the temperature. And I have been dosing the snot out of this tank with bacteria w/o any improvements. However, I never thought of (and no one ever mentioned) that a protein-skimmer can skim most of the new, unestablished bacteria you add... I wonder if all the bacteria I have been adding up to this point has been getting skimmed off. So, I have just turned the skimmer off last night for a couple days. And the QT tank is in complete disarray as well. So moving things to that tank is not an option right now either.
Here are the chems:
pH - 7.8-8.0 (I'm very slowing adding some Sodium Bicard to keep this up)
SG - 1.018-1.020
NH3 - 1 ppm
NO2- - 0.00 ppm
NO3- - 40 ppm
PO43- - not checking right now, b/c I just can't bring myself to it.
My questions are:
- Besides more water changers, any other great way to quickly soak up some of this nitrogenous waste?
- I know that some macroalgae are able to take up very minute amounts of NH3, typically not enough to really even notice a difference. However, does anyone know of any that are able to do this better than others?
And just to preempt any over-stocking lectures. Yes, I am planning to upgrade. No, my tank is not currently over stocked; will it be in the future, probably. Yes, with the amount of filtration and skimming I do, the bio-filter would be more than capable of handling this bio-load... had I not killed it w/ Abx! :deadhorse:
Thanks for any and all help! :doh::ear:
