What killed your reef?

[maroun.c]

Many times we wake up to an RTNd or STNing coral and sometimes it's spreads to few more and keeps going. Some have also woken up to a dead reef...
Part of the struggle is finding the real cause and many jump to making radical changes which only makes things worse.
Let's share our mishaps, what we did to narrow down the causes and what changes we made which worked or made things worse... So that others benefit from your experience and cab directly have a list of things to check when their tanks go south.

 

[HiddenUser]

I killed my reef. I killed it by neglecting to adhere to a water change schedule over the course of a summer and my nutrient export completely failed to keep up.

 

[KMench]

Soooo..... the owner at my LFS told me ich-x was reef safe. Not so much.... As soon as I added it the majority of my corals closed up. I did a large water change and added carbon. Still killed about 1/2 my corals. Even killed Xenia!

 

[JohnnyReef]

Not changing my membrane in my ro/di

 

[TheEngineer]

Still don't really know. Lacking some more advanced test kits, like potassium...?

 

[Rufus’ goofs]

I’m in the process of helping someone rebuild her 125 which is in a slow crash right now due to hydrogen sulfide.
11 year old sand if I remember correctly. It’s been moved twice, and never gets stirred. Also about 3-4 inches.

 

[lauderdalestunner]

A vacation with my brother watching the tank........

 

[TheEngineer]

I’m in the process of helping someone rebuild her 125 which is in a slow crash right now due to hydrogen sulfide.
11 year old sand if I remember correctly. It’s been moved twice, and never gets stirred. Also about 3-4 inches.

That's interesting... is there a way to test for hydrogen sulfide?

 

[Rufus’ goofs]

That's interesting... is there a way to test for hydrogen sulfide?

I believe so, but we found the piece. It looks to be about the size of a dinner plate.
We haven’t disturbed the sand to uncover it, but you can see it from the bottom of the glass. I don’t have any decent pictures of it, otherwise I’d share.

I could be wrong since I haven’t legitimately tested that it’s hydrogen sulfide, but they’ve never put black sand in the tank and there is an enormous black piece in the sand which appears to be solid.
So until we have the tank emptied and I can pull it out of the sand to smell it, we’re assuming it’s hydrogen sulfide.

 

[KMench]

Found the piece? Like a gas bubble in the sand bed?

 

[Rufus’ goofs]

Unless I’m severely mistaken when it forms in the sand it forms a solid piece.

 

[KMench]

H2S has a melting point of -116 Fahrenheit, so unless the tank is realllly cold it should be a gas.

 

[MTBake]

I was out of town for 6 weeks with an inexperienced tank sitter watching things. Came home to a mess of a tank. Just about every parameter was out of wack. I'll hire an aquarium service next time I'm gone for that long.

 

[brandon429]

we love dirty sandbed rescues in the sand rinse thread of many rescues. take pics we could use the before n afters, and any skip cycle reassembly techniques used.

 

[Rufus’ goofs]

H2S has a melting point of -116 Fahrenheit, so unless the tank is realllly cold it should be a gas.

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-12/rhf/index.php

If you scroll through this article it shows the black formation in the sand indicating the hydrogen sulfide production . I’ll have to run through it some more to figure out where I’m getting confused.

 

[KMench]

@Ergodyne by all means, you may be right. I just always thought H2S normally was in gas form.

 

[CNDReef]

Sea cucumber got stuck between the back wall and the rocks , died and so did everything else in the tank.

 

[KMench]

http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-12/rhf/index.php

If you scroll through this article it shows the black formation in the sand indicating the hydrogen sulfide production . I’ll have to run through it some more to figure out where I’m getting confused.

I only skimmed the article, but I found this portion that talks about the sulfur compounds being converted in the aquaria to FeS and other compounds which precipitate and form the black solids. I’m honestly not familiar enough with their interactions with water to know if these compounds could interact and drop pH, cause a reef crash or anything along those lines. My chem classes were a few years ago

 

[Rufus’ goofs]

I only skimmed the article, but I found this portion that talks about the sulfur compounds being converted in the aquaria to FeS and other compounds which precipitate and form the black solids. I’m honestly not familiar enough with their interactions with water to know if these compounds could interact and drop pH, cause a reef crash or anything along those lines. My chem classes were a few years ago

I was just looking at that bit!

Appears you’re more right.

My memory can be spotty, haha.

I do know it’s the source area for the H2S production.

 

[KMench]

No worries! I wonder if those sulfur based compounds you see a fairly large quantity of contributed to the crash still? I have no idea, maybe @Randy Holmes-Farley can provide some chemistry insight if he’s not too busy to educate us