nitewindes Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 My husband has a 29 gal Nano Cube. He is the less is more kind of attitude. Not big into water changes or changing anything really... But his tank has been absolutely the same for over a year. He had a tomato clown pair and a damsel, the usual cleanup crews and the only corals were xenia and anthilias<sp>? He had a bit of green plants growing but not much (culerpa I think). Anyway, I have been bugging him to pull out lots of the overgrown stuff and generally clean the tank up so we could add some newly purchased zoas. He cleaned up good, I guess because he called me and said he yanked out lots of the anthilias and moved around his rocks to get at it. Stirred up a mess of sand I guess. He took a nap and waited for the water to clear. When he woke up the tank was brownish and everything was dead. He is so broken hearted. The mommy tomato clown would eat out of my hands. He did a ton of water changes and now nitrate and nitrite are zero. He added some carbon to the filter (Thanks, Pham for the idea). Now we are just waiting to see how things shake out... Question is where to go from here? 1. We have been wanting to redo our tanks with that cool looking shelf rock. But it is not live and I don't know how to cure it so it wouldn't freak out our tanks. Or does it matter with his now? 2. Any idea what may have caused it? I thought a nitrate surge from moving the rocks too much... ?? 3. What should our recovery plan be?? Thanks everyone! I know you all understand how heartbroken he was to find the little clowns laying next to each other in the rocks... Makes me cry to think about it. Debbie Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jestep Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 My guess would be the sand. If it isn't messed with and doesn't have something the moves it around constantly, it can trap a whole bunch of detritus in it which then turns into Hydrogen Sulfide and other toxic stuff. Whet it gets stirred up, the stuff gets released. If there isn't a ton of carbon, or a near 100% water change it can crash everything. If there was any sulfur smell this was definitely the case, but based on your description, this would be my guess. 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+etannert Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 +1, stirring up the sand did it. Very sorry for your loss! If you're wanting to make changes now is the time... you essentially have a cycled tank ready for livestock. If you want to add uncured rock do it now, ride the mini-cycle (dosing Stability or similar will help), and wait to add livestock. You've already executed the recovery plan... water change and wait for everything to stabilize. Treat the tank like it's newly set up... add fish and coral slowly and monitor. Test, dose, and water change. Unfortunately the lesson is that small amounts of maintenance on a regular basis are far better than lots of change in a short time. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JamesL Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 The above nailed it. I did the same thing to my aqua cube years back by re-arranging rocks and tearing out hair algae. It is a heart breaking thing to happen. But you would be surprised how resilient some of the things are. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nitewindes Posted June 21, 2012 Author Share Posted June 21, 2012 Thanks everyone SO much! We will move toward recovery. Still has the smell of the removed dead corals so we are adding more carbon and waiting... Thanks for your support! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jestep Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 This one's probably up for debate, but you may want to completely vacuum out the sand and replace it. At this point it's likely to cause future problems if it gets disturbed again. It's not a big tank so it's not a huge investment. I would definitely do it, if it were my tank and I was resetting it after a crash like this. Your other option would be to carefully start siphoning the sand each time you do a water change. You run the risk of disturbing it too much in this case though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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