Menace2Sobriety
Community Member
Gonna sum this up as quickly as possible.
- Last Saturday I gutted and cleaned my sump which INCLUDED a 25% water change.
- had a LOT of black oil like skim mate in the skimmer cup and didn't empty it for no good reason.
- Sunday afternoon I noticed my skimmer overflowed all the skim mate back into the tank.
- Sunday night I did a 10% water change and set skimmer to skim wet.
- Tuesday at 5 pm I noticed my tank just looked "off". Nothing seemed fully inflated. Checked temp and SG and they were fine.
- Wednesday at 5 pm I got home from work and ALL my corals were pretty much dead. Chalices and birdsnest were brown and gone. LPS all deflated and recessed. Zoas and palys COMPLETELY CLOSED (not even a hole for an opening), leathers and mushrooms deflated COMPLETELY, gorgonians and black corals (spiral whips) deflated with ZERO polyp extension.
- Heres the strange part... ALL my inverts (starfish, shrimp, hermits, snails, anemones (aptaisia and majano included) all seem happy and healthy. Fish are also fine.
Checked my parameters and my Nitrates were 10 (which is high for my tank as my nitrates are usually barely able to add colour to the test water), pH 8.2, SG 1.026 (refractometer), Alk 7.9 (low but been bringing it up slowly with weekly water changes as I switched from Kent salt to h2Ocean Pro 2 mths ago and Alk then was 6.8), ammonia and nitrites both 0.
At this point I'm leaning towards skimmer overflow stressed a certain type of coral which led to a "domino effect" of chemical warfare amongst corals. Does this seem feasible? I do have a 1.5 yr old but couldn't find ANYTHING in the tank/sump and about the only "chemical" he could get his hands on would be in the form of baby wipes and to be honest if he dumped a liquid substance into the sump the pH shoulda been off.
Regardless it was tough to watch my tank go from Glorious to Chernobyl in 48 hrs. I lost 4k cost which has grown to about 10k (full retail and PP value)
I'm not asking for an answer as to WHY this happened BUT.... Is it possible for a well stocked MIXED REEF to experience this catastrophic type of chemical warfare chain reaction if something goes wrong?
Literally ALL the zooanthellae was gone in 48 hrs. Not a speck of green or pink or Orange left in my tank and COMPLETE destruction of chalices, sps, gorgonians while my prize winning brains are currently COVERED with a thick layer of slime in my nano while they expell zooanthellae.
- Last Saturday I gutted and cleaned my sump which INCLUDED a 25% water change.
- had a LOT of black oil like skim mate in the skimmer cup and didn't empty it for no good reason.
- Sunday afternoon I noticed my skimmer overflowed all the skim mate back into the tank.
- Sunday night I did a 10% water change and set skimmer to skim wet.
- Tuesday at 5 pm I noticed my tank just looked "off". Nothing seemed fully inflated. Checked temp and SG and they were fine.
- Wednesday at 5 pm I got home from work and ALL my corals were pretty much dead. Chalices and birdsnest were brown and gone. LPS all deflated and recessed. Zoas and palys COMPLETELY CLOSED (not even a hole for an opening), leathers and mushrooms deflated COMPLETELY, gorgonians and black corals (spiral whips) deflated with ZERO polyp extension.
- Heres the strange part... ALL my inverts (starfish, shrimp, hermits, snails, anemones (aptaisia and majano included) all seem happy and healthy. Fish are also fine.
Checked my parameters and my Nitrates were 10 (which is high for my tank as my nitrates are usually barely able to add colour to the test water), pH 8.2, SG 1.026 (refractometer), Alk 7.9 (low but been bringing it up slowly with weekly water changes as I switched from Kent salt to h2Ocean Pro 2 mths ago and Alk then was 6.8), ammonia and nitrites both 0.
At this point I'm leaning towards skimmer overflow stressed a certain type of coral which led to a "domino effect" of chemical warfare amongst corals. Does this seem feasible? I do have a 1.5 yr old but couldn't find ANYTHING in the tank/sump and about the only "chemical" he could get his hands on would be in the form of baby wipes and to be honest if he dumped a liquid substance into the sump the pH shoulda been off.
Regardless it was tough to watch my tank go from Glorious to Chernobyl in 48 hrs. I lost 4k cost which has grown to about 10k (full retail and PP value)
I'm not asking for an answer as to WHY this happened BUT.... Is it possible for a well stocked MIXED REEF to experience this catastrophic type of chemical warfare chain reaction if something goes wrong?
Literally ALL the zooanthellae was gone in 48 hrs. Not a speck of green or pink or Orange left in my tank and COMPLETE destruction of chalices, sps, gorgonians while my prize winning brains are currently COVERED with a thick layer of slime in my nano while they expell zooanthellae.
