Tank Rescue Help!

[Just a Wrasse.]

Hello Reefers!

I’ve come back after a six week holiday and my tank has fallen into despair. The corals are all dead, but I expected that. The real problem is the massive amount of No3! And an invasion of bristle worms!

The worms can be seen above, also seem to have an abundance of another type of creatures, possibly fan worms? They seen seem to be attached to the rock

I know, the glass is dirty I’ll get to that in a few hours. The tank itself looks…

Luckily all my stock has survived! (1 Goby and some snails) Time to get on to the real problem, the parameters! Also the tank is close to a year old and is a Fluval 13.5 gallon.

The parameters I’ve tested so far are,
Ph: 8.0 (Will Raise)
Ammonia: 0
N03: 50!!!
N02: 0

I will test the rest in a moment. And so I need advice, how to lower the no3 as fast as possible and to get rid of the worms. I will be preforming a water change after breakfast.

thanks,
Stan

 

[Dreminon]

second picture is vermetid snails. I would get all the dead stuff out you can. Clean the glass and suck out all the trash you can with a large water change for a start. The bristle worms would not worry about at this time.

 

[JNalley]

Correction, your NO3 is not 50, that's just as high as your test goes. It's likely much higher. You have high NO3 because all your coral died and created a lot of ammonia which was converted to NO3 eventually. Before you do a water change, clean the glass, pick out as much of the dead things as you can, put on some rubber gloves and grab as many bristleworms as you can, then remove 90%+ of the water and siphon/clean as much of the sand as you can while doing the water change...

Edit: I missed the part where you had a surviving goby and snails, maybe not do 90% but 50% and see where you land, just make sure your waterchange water is up to temp so you don't shock everything.

 

[Just a Wrasse.]

Correction, your NO3 is not 50, that's just as high as your test goes. It's likely much higher. You have high NO3 because all your coral died and created a lot of ammonia which was converted to NO3 eventually. Before you do a water change, clean the glass, pick out as much of the dead things as you can, put on some rubber gloves and grab as many bristleworms as you can, then remove 90%+ of the water and siphon/clean as much of the sand as you can while doing the water change...

Edit: I missed the part where you had a surviving goby and snails, maybe not do 90% but 50% and see where you land, just make sure your waterchange water is up to temp so you don't shock everything.

I’ve done a water change and I cleaned out a bunch of the dead stuff and scrubbed the wavemaker I will get to the glass soon. I plan to do another water change in a few hours.

thanks,
Stan