Upgrade disaster

[terraincognita]

to cloudy and stink within mins

sight unseen i bet that rules out literally all other causes other than the sandbed.

+1 he said it was a few years old. I feel like he meant he also hadn't even touched in in a few years.

I could easily see a 3 year old sand bed never cleaned nuking a tank.

It happens in tanks that AREN'T transferred when someone finally cleans it and tries to do it ALL at once, and nukes a tank.

 

[Webslinger]

I would hope he cleaned his sand if it was 3 years old

 

[brandon429]

I won’t be surprised, here’s why-


1. the forum doesn’t have as a reference sticky a tank move thread with live time jobs to copy, people assemble the plan based off their collective best approach guess

2. all owners of large, old reefs with untouched sandbeds have stated it’s ideal to do it that way exclusively, deep cleaning during a move is not an option in anyone’s book. But it’s the only option that works without fail. result = 30% moves go bad. The majority transfer but have real invasion issues, but those successes still make the recommends to do the job without a rinse bc it worked


https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/what’s-your-opinion-on-the-role-of-detritus-in-a-reef-tank.701884/


in that thread above, any reader will leave thinking their sandbed should not be cleaned especially when moving and to do so will kill the bacteria, cause a cycle, and cause the sandbed biology and substrate filter to crash (all untrue) its written right there above. it’s codified in reefing, rinsing kills bac and dead bac kills a reef


someone has literally made that up and it stuck as rule material for us all




there are two types of sandbed work options:

-what worked for one, custom jobs where old sand was just moved
vs
-what works for pages and pages and pages for the public

in order to get consistency we r going to need tap water, thats ironic for a reef tank.

 

[Rmckoy]

Did you fill the tank with old sand or just a cup? Also was the sand out of a tank for a couple of years when you added it to the tank?

The sand used was from my other setup .
scooped sand ( 3 scoops approximately 6 cups each )

The 230 was 1/2 full of new mixed rodi water ,
Heated and circulating .
Added fish and corals and about 2 hours later added the sand

 

[brandon429]

Please assist here as we study detritus

do you feel the sand added is what killed the fish, was there clouding from that sand and then the fish went up top to be able to breathe?

 

[Sallstrom]

Please assist here as we study detritus

do you feel the sand added is what killed the fish, was there clouding from that sand and then the fish went up top to be able to breathe?

Not the old sand on it’s own, no.

A new tank, with water just mixed to saltwater, might not be a very nice environment for fish.

But I have no clue on what happened in this case. Could have been lots of things.

 

[brandon429]

It’s tied in with loss patterns from our sand rinse thread where detritus was kicked around and killed other tanks too, this is just one example


I vote Sallstrom for you to start a new thread about how to combine tanks and move tanks never cleaning the sand, if you don’t start that thread then I must take your advice as safe zone guessing only, safe means without the thread and anything on the line where losses result from bad calls- the assessment is easy to make.

that being said, agreed any happenstance contaminant could have killed the fish. It always times when we mess with sand however

it can’t ever actually be the sand I’m aware. It just times that way, constantly.

number of instructional tank move threads we can find on the entire internet, one. not two, one. from all forums, theres one.


until we get two, I’m not sure I’d recommend veering too far away from the only known successful method.

 

[brandon429]

Please can we get an update

this post has saved about one hundred reefs from risking any work with old sand during home moves


you have literally saved headache risks for a hundred reefs with your post, we moved no sand.

*it was ironic no ammonia reading was taken as a tie-in, usually people run them at the drop of a hat and post 8 ppm and for pages everyone remarks how the test is certainly right, and that’s in posts with all fish doing fine.

the fact we dont get to pinpoint the certain causative leaves us only to clue hunting for the gaps. Nh3 is a known tank killer


and if it was another contaminant, any form of follow up will give us clues to delineate that option. Nothing fits better than nh3 so far, from half rotten proteins in the sand. Next bid if not nh3: an unlucky pocket of hyrdrogen sulfide.


no reports of rotten egg smell though, thats nearly requisite for sulfide events

by contrast nh3 events are fast, lethal on more than one organism, *not delayed from the causative event* and they self resolve in minutes due to the power of activated surface area.

 

[davidcalgary29]

Hm, I recently bought a RSM 250 (from an owner who lived 500km away, but that's another story), and used all of his live rock and most of his live sand (about 15kg). I didn't rinse it, and assumed it would go through some type of cycle, as the sand was exposed to subzero temps for a short period of time. I didn't register one (or even a NH3 spike), but decieded to wait three weeks before adding fish in any case.

 

[brandon429]

It usually works out well agreed. That’s how he read above to add the sand, from the majority it worked well.


but there’s an interesting twist: in order to find the loss % meaning those with eutrophic sand that kills, simply start and manage a thread titled like this below out to ten pages...and you’ll see a few thousand bucks or so in losses within the few months and some angry tank owners:

how to move tanks using all old sand, unrinsed.


that will kill reef tanks, if anyone starts and runs such a thread let me know, there isn’t one on the entire internet.
adding old sand usually works, and when it doesn’t, animals die.


conversely, the sand rinse thread is fifty pages with no loss, and we collect several instances like this above where total wipeouts occurred when they did move or disturb old sand but you have to start the thread asking for jobs to see those 5% ers.

I agree these claims sound strange to those who moved old sand and it worked, but they’ll never start the thread. Nobody will take responsibility for the approach when a few hundred reefs ask for proof it won’t kill their tank. theres only one thread on the internet for the job loss free and it’s this one

Official Sand Rinse and Tank Transfer thread

If you are reading this thread to cure a tank invasion from a link I sent you, we do not need to identify your type of invasion here we do not need you to test anything at anytime regarding nitrate, phosphate etc Above all, we do not need to see a microscope slide picture of your invasion at...

www.reef2reef.com

it’s easy to be skeptical without having hands in that many sandbeds. If someone builds such a thread and pulls it off ten pages, then it wasnt the sand it was a contaminant here that only happened when he added sand. just not before or after

there are going to be doubts here about causatives, that’s what makes it all such a fun mystery. But nobody is going to start an unrinsed work thread to find out either, so the mystery remains and that thread above remains. All we need to do to see the big picture is take our successful old sand move, prescribe that to 200 upcoming moves and ask them to log results in one thread.

 

[brandon429]

Since no updates are coming here, the mystery double remains

still a great thread. We will save probably two hundred more reefs from any risk at all in 2021 using this thread, nobody wants to join the mini cycle club after we warn them with this link.

adding old sand didn’t bring any benefit anyway, they can now see. All the stuff we wanted in the sandbed was housed up in the rocks during the move, and comes back down to seed new sand just the same, without the destructive risk portion.

we can accurately say ahead of time in 2021 all tank transfer jobs involving sandbeds are going to skip cycle just fine since we carry over only clean sand. For those moving over old sand not having seen the clean move option, they’ll slowly report the losses and I’ll link them back here for patterning.

 

[Rhoads238]

Im sorry for your losses thats terrible news. I would give the bacteria a try it cant hurt.

 

[arking_mark]

Slightly old thread, but there isn't enough information here. I'm guessing that the new tank may not have been fully cycled and couldn't handle the existing bioload. The key piece of info was the ammonia presence. In any fully cycled tank, adding sand from an older tank is not an issue. The other probable cause could be the sand was sitting in a bucket for days without circulation and had a lot of die-off...maybe too much for a fully cycled tank, but again, I think the tank wasn't fully cycled or ready for a heavy bioload.

 

[IslandLifeReef]

Yeah, I agree, a lack of information and a process that leads me to believe that there is more to the story. I doubt that it was the sand that killed the fish. The OP may think that is what happened, but a statement doesn't make it true.

 

[Rmckoy]

Update :
The tank has been running
Parameters are stable , only thing I had trouble with was nitrates and phosphates out of balance ( 0 nitrates and phosphates increasing daily )

slowly added fish , corals , and cuc over time

 

[arking_mark]

Update :
The tank has been running
Parameters are stable , only thing I had trouble with was nitrates and phosphates out of balance ( 0 nitrates and phosphates increasing daily )

slowly added fish , corals , and cuc over time

Assuming parameters were good, the tank has adequate flow, mechanical filtration, and you were performing adequate maintenance, the info needed for a better diagnosis:
1. When was the new tank started?
2. How was it cycled?
3. When did it finish cycling?
4. When were fish added?
5. When was sand added?
6. When and how many fish died?

 

[Rmckoy]

Assuming parameters were good, the tank has adequate flow, mechanical filtration, and you were performing adequate maintenance, the info needed for a better diagnosis:
1. When was the new tank started?
2. How was it cycled?
3. When did it finish cycling?
4. When were fish added?
5. When was sand added?
6. When and how many fish died?

This is a very old post !!!!!
The old tank was roughly 10 years old
It was cycled originally from raw seafood fish less ...

Cycle was as long as needed to have 0 ammonia , and high nitrates .

10 years later .........
upgraded from the leaking 90 gal to a 230
Not being completely full and not able to run filtration , skimmer , and adding the old sand contributed to a bacterial bloom

all fish died ,
Some corals survived

Moving forward the only issue I’m having now is extremely high phosphates and 0 nitrates.

over the last few months I did get nitrates up to 5ppm which I’m ok with .
sps , lps , soft corals and all fish are doing amazing !

 

[Rmckoy]

This is a very old post !!!!!
The old tank was roughly 10 years old
It was cycled originally from raw seafood fish less ...

Cycle was as long as needed to have 0 ammonia , and high nitrates .

10 years later .........
upgraded from the leaking 90 gal to a 230
Not being completely full and not able to run filtration , skimmer , and adding the old sand contributed to a bacterial bloom

all fish died ,
Some corals survived

Moving forward the only issue I’m having now is extremely high phosphates and 0 nitrates.

over the last few months I did get nitrates up to 5ppm which I’m ok with .
sps , lps , soft corals and all fish are doing amazing !

This is a hobby about learning from mistakes . There is no instant reward

 

[arking_mark]

This is a very old post !!!!!
The old tank was roughly 10 years old
It was cycled originally from raw seafood fish less ...

Cycle was as long as needed to have 0 ammonia , and high nitrates .

10 years later .........
upgraded from the leaking 90 gal to a 230
Not being completely full and not able to run filtration , skimmer , and adding the old sand contributed to a bacterial bloom

all fish died ,
Some corals survived

Moving forward the only issue I’m having now is extremely high phosphates and 0 nitrates.

over the last few months I did get nitrates up to 5ppm which I’m ok with .
sps , lps , soft corals and all fish are doing amazing !

Yeah. Question were for the new tank upgrade. Sounds like it was not fully cycled prior to incident. I don't think it had much to do with sand.

 

[brandon429]

one question

the live rock

that was moved over right/that means it was skip cycled, we do that for pages using existing live rock

surely you didn't change out for dry rock, nobody with a load of corals does that I bet not.

the #1 thing that the sand rinse does for six years is move tanks using existing rock and skip cycle every one of them by never adding a handful of sand. I know that sounds like conjecture, but conjecture is not starting the really good option thread above we think~

there's evaluations that come from moving a reef ourself

and then there's evals that come from moving 500 reefs only from others, as live time work thread feedback... those two evaluation perspectives run polar opposite on the matter.