Need some advice on reef tank

[hantzum]

Hi,
I think I am in some need of direction here. I have been a salt water tank hobbyist for going on 9 years now. I had a 80 gallon for 7 of those years and about 2 years ago upgraded to a 200 gallon. What I am so tired of happening is fish and invertebrates dying all the time. I had a large maroon clown with a huge 2 foot long tentacle anenomie with a large blue hippo and two large yellow tangs and some chromis and shrimp for about 5 years in my tank. Never any problems; well I mean if I ever added new fish the new fish would be just fine for a few days but would eventually go into what I call the death swim where they just hover in one spot of the tank then bite the dust over night. I didn't add many fish during this 5 years but just last year we were on vacation and we had a power outage. Well my UPS that keeps the filtration running when this happens must have broke because when we got home all of my guys were dead and none of the equipment was running. So......I cleaned everything out of the tank and did a series of large water changes for several weeks to get all nitrates, nitrites, phosphates, and ammonia out of the tank. I added some hardy blue yellow tail damsels in and let them do there thing for about 5-6 months. No one died and I continued to do bi-monthly water changes of 25%, about 50 gallons worth. I continued to monitor water levels and then just last week placed a massive order with the saltwaterfish.com website. Well I received a few DOA's and a few of the smaller fish died within a few days but everything else look great. Well, every day as I come home I see more of the fish acting weird and now I have two more tangs going into the death swim where they will mst likely be dead by morning. I am at a total loss here. I know this website guarantees there fish for 15 days but I really feel bad making all these guarantee requests because I have dead loss every couple of days. I went ahead and posted a link of how the tank looks as of this Saturday. The anenomie is a little stressed out in this vid but he is doing great now. I will post all of my test results on water conditions below too. I do intend on bumping the salinity up to about 1.0235 over the next couple of weeks because thats where most anenomies like it and get really big. Any suggestions would be great on any additives or medications or anything you may think so I can quit having dead loss every couple of days. Thanks

The first two vids are how the tank looks now. One of the vids is before my order from saltwaterfish.com


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Uf6P8XcHdM&list=UUsTrqjf1uwGAbh6zcZegvew

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9elOfFoBFgY&list=UUsTrqjf1uwGAbh6zcZegvew


Here is the vid of how the tank looked earlier last year before the crash happened. All these fish are about 6 years old.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oug9TplMPno&list=UUsTrqjf1uwGAbh6zcZegvew

Tank size:200 gallons
Filtration: One Emperor 400 with active carbon filtration X2. Changed every two weeks.
Two power heads. CAnt remember the brand. you can probably tell in the vid link
10 gallon sump with 200 gallon coralife protein skimmer
2 pouches of Phos-Zorb: changed every 2 months
Lighting: 1 orbit 325 watt light fixture with 2 blue 420nm actinic and 2 10K dual-daylight
1 GLO T-5 with two bulbs. One 460nm actinic and 1 10K dual Daylight
1 Piece of crap light strip the tank came with. I use this mainly to keep the light from getting out into the house and directed down to tank. It serves its purpose. LOL

Current water conditions
Salinity: 1.0215
Ammonia: about.25ppm
Nitrite: 0ppm
Nitrate: between 5 and 10 ppm
PH: 8.2
Temperature: 74.4 F*
Phosphate: between 1-2 ppm
Calcium: 420ppm
*dKH- 15

Current supplements added according to the directions of the manufacturer

Kalkwiser added with fill water. Approx 1 tablesppon for 5 gallons
Strontium & Molybdenum
Magnesium
Iodide

 

[Jimbo662]

When you say a "massive order" how many fish are we talking about?

 

[Pete polyp]

Your params are crazy. .25 ammonia is what's killing your fish. You probably added too much at once. 2 ppm phosphate is really high. 15 dkh is way high also. If I were you I would water change, water change, water change and then water change more. How did dkh get that high?

 

[hantzum]

.......................

Your params are crazy. .25 ammonia is what's killing your fish. You probably added too much at once. 2 ppm phosphate is really high. 15 dkh is way high also. If I were you I would water change, water change, water change and then water change more. How did dkh get that high?

I guess I probably shouldn't have said massive order......well maybe....lol.....I added about 150 new members to the tank...
5 tangs,
2 clowns,
1 anenomie,
10 blue damsels,
10 yellow tail blue damsels,
5 spotted damsels
10 peppermint shrimp,
2 arrow crabs
4 camel back shrimp,
1 coral banded shrimp
50 hermits, "small"
50 snails "small

I have had this in there before with little dead loss...I figured a tank of this size and movement of water that I have in here would be sufficient.

ill get another water change in order today and check ammonia levels daily. When I do the test on ammonia it starts off at 0 but after 5 min or so changes color to between .25-.5 ppm. The thing is the fish arnt gasping for air. They just sit there and dont swim around. Then I come out the next day and boom. Dead. As for the biological load is concerned: even though I have had only those 5 blue damsels in there for 6 months I still had all the live rock and aggregate sand which I still filtered and moved but I guess that still makes sense.

So final verdict seems to be the ammonia levels....goal for this is 0????
Everything else look just fine as for water parameters?

Phosphates have always hung in this area and I haven't really had these issues before. I live in west texas so hard water is what you get out here. I have to change water once a week to get the levels down and usually they dont ever drop below 12. How many water changes are we talking about here? One every couple of days?

 

[Reefing Madness]

I have a 240g tank and only have 8 fish in mine, thats a huge bio load your puttin in there. I woulda cycled the tank with a dozen grocery shrimp to prepare you tank for that many fish.
Ammonia is definitely a problem there.
Use SeaKlear, it will remove your phosphates immediately. Then you can either use it weekly or throw in a GFO with reactor.

 

[Jimbo662]

+1 with Reefing Madness...always just add a couple of fish at at time so the system has time to adjust to the new bioload. That would be like asking your entire family to come over and everyone using the toilet all at the same time...it's gonna get nasty. ;-)

 

[Pete polyp]

To answer your question, yes 0 ammonia is the goal. Any presence of ammonia will harm fish. As mentioned your phosphate level is elevated, but I'm not sure it could actually harm fish. It would definitely stunt the growth of corals. Your alkalinity is also high. We typically shoot for 7-11 dkh. Also in this, I have no clue if that would harm fish. Your nitrate is in an acceptable level for a reef. Most people like to have it under 10. Having ammonia present, I personally would change a bunch of water now, 25%-50%, and daily 10% until you get it back to 0

 

[hantzum]

To answer your question, yes 0 ammonia is the goal. Any presence of ammonia will harm fish.

Awesome...I knee ammonia wasn't good but I didn't think that .25 ppm would be that bad. Guess that's why it's killing fish over time. So in order to get 0 ammonia, use some prime and lots and lots of water changes? How often would you guys recommend it? Once every week till parameters get under control? About 50 gallons should work?

 

[Pete polyp]

I added to my post. Overall you probably should do as suggested and slow down, way down. Add fish one here, 2 there giving your tank a few weeks to accept the higher bioload. Yes prime will probably remove ammonia, but I'm not certain if you use it you will ever get your system to adjust with the bioload. The biosystem needs the ammonia to build up itself to metabolize the ammonia

 

[Mufasa31]

How much live rock do you have?

Not sure your Emporer alone can keep up with your bioload.

What type of powerheads do you have? You want to make sure you have a high enough turn over of water for filtration purposes.

One last item is that your skimmer may be too small. Even though it is rated at 200 gallons, you may need a bigger one for a heavy bioload.

 

[hantzum]

How much live rock do you have?

Not sure your Emporer alone can keep up with your bioload.

What type of powerheads do you have? You want to make sure you have a high enough turn over of water for filtration purposes.

One last item is that your skimmer may be too small. Even though it is rated at 200 gallons, you may need a bigger one for a heavy bioload.

I have about 150 pounds of live rock.
I have a lot of filtration and water movement. Besides the emperor, the two power heads are pointed to the top of tank both of which cause lots of water disturbance. The sump I have is 15 gallons with the huge skimmer then the return pump is a 500 gallon per hour pump so the water is being pumped back in the tank at very high rate. I tested the oxygen levels and they are spot on at 7.5ppm

 

[hantzum]

Okay, since I started this thread I have had once more fish die and the other tang that was acting weird I got out and QT'ed. The rest of thank is still lively with no dead loss. I have done three water changes and slightly bumped the salinity from the original 1.0215 to 1.02225. Very small amount. My goal is to get it to 1.024 over the next month. So, my water changes were 50 gallons first day, 30 gallons second day, and 15 gallons yesterday with another 15 gallon one due today. I have retested the water conditions and the ammonia has not changed. It is still showing .25-5ppm. My DKH has changed from the initial 15 and is around 10 and all other parameters are in check where they need to be. My question is, do I need to go buy another master test kit again? The one Im using for the ammonia, nitrate, nitrite, and PH is about 5 years old. Its a chemical test kit. Im sure most of you have used it or seen it. Fill the tube up to 5mm of water and add drops of the test fluid and shake and wait 5 min to compare colors with card. Anyone think that might be the prob since I have changed over half the water in the tank and the ammonia is still there? New test kit in order perhaps?
To answer the obvious, no I do not have anything dead in the tank.

Thanks

 

[Reefing Madness]

If your using RO/DI water, test your test kit on that, it shouldn't read any Ammonia in that water. Unless your using tap water, then it is entirely possible your just putting ammonia back into your system.

 

[hantzum]

If your using RO/DI water, test your test kit on that, it shouldn't read any Ammonia in that water. Unless your using tap water, then it is entirely possible your just putting ammonia back into your system.

No Im using RO/DI water. I learned my lesson years ago on using the tap water. Ill check the test kit level on that and if it shows ammonia numbers Ill just go buy another one

 

[Reefing Madness]