HELP! Corals dying after water change

[guarda]

Did a 5 gallon wc yesterday in my 20G and my corals starting closing up. All my frogspawn is retracted, xenia looks like they are melting, and zoas are tightly closed. The few sps pieces I have are changing color rapidly. One of my hardier zoas look like they are starting to open.

Yesterday when starting my wc I noticed a plugged in tip of the ac adapter cord for a 24vdc led strip that I had taken off to make a mount had fallen in the sump.

I've been checking my levels daily for the past 2 weeks since swapping tanks to make sure I didn't get any ammonia or nitrate spikes so my ammonia, nitrates/trites, ph, phosphates, calcium, and alk are on par.

I used the same coralife salt and usually add about an hour or two after mixing. I know it's bad practice but it never was a problem before. Other than turning on the heater in the sump for the first time to warm up the water a bit before introducing the new water to the main tank there was nothing else I did differently. My two fish are doing fine, they are eating and moving about.

Any suggestions? I'm considering asking if someone could hold my corals until I find out the cause.

Thanks,
Art

 

[rkaragozler]

Art, I don't think moving the corals is a good idea, if they are in schock now I think it would schock them even more, i'm no expert maybe someone with more experience would chime in

 

[MIKE NY]

x2 ..I would move anything..only will stress everthing more. Was there any stary current from the plug? ....were all the parameters of the new water the same as the tank water, cal/alk/temp etc?..just because it's the same salt doesn't mean the parameters are the same. There are some variations even in the same bucket or bag and with a 25% WC it could be a big enough swing to stress corals...especially if it's the alk.

 

[noobzy]

Not an expert either, but if the water is in any way suspect, maybe you can go out to Petco to pick up a 5g jug of their water and do another water change?

I'm not sure how bad the corals look, but to have Xenia "melting away" immediately after a water change sounds intense... it would make me think that there was a larger problem than some diluted impurities.

Good luck!

 

[KathyC]

x2 ..I would move anything..only will stress everthing more. Was there any stary current from the plug? ....were all the parameters of the new water the same as the tank water, cal/alk/temp etc?..just because it's the same salt doesn't mean the parameters are the same. There are some variations even in the same bucket or bag and with a 25% WC it could be a big enough swing to stress corals...especially if it's the alk.

ditto
What are your current parameters?

 

[albano]

I used the same coralife salt and usually add about an hour or two after mixing. I know it's bad practice but it never was a problem before.

sorry to 'pick' on you when you have a problem, BUT those are FAMOUS LAST WORDS! especially when you know it's a bad practice!
So how long did you actually wait yesterday?

Other than turning on the heater in the sump for the first time to warm up the water a bit before introducing the new water to the main tank there was nothing else I did differently.

??????????You turned up the heat in the sump, to compensate for the 'colder' exchange water??????? If the temp was off, how do you know salinity was accurate?
IMO. these may NOT be the cause of the problem...BUT they can certainly be future problems...it's easy to forget to turn the heater back down!


I wouldn't remove/stress anything, now...keep a close eye on it...Good Luck.

 

[guarda]

I mixed the water and added it 1.5 hours later. I unplugged the heater after the new water in the sump got to 77. I have 2 thermometers, one in the sump and one in the dt. I also have a hydrometer in the sump and as soon as the Xenias started withering I tested with the refractometer.
Albano-the exchange water WAS the water in the sump. My wc with this tank goes as follows; turn off pump and sumps, wait for sump to fill up, replace 5 gallons from sump, then look at salinity and temp of that water. When all looks ok, I turn it all back on.

Tested 3 times yesterday and once again this morning before leaving the house. I will try to borrow another test kit tonight and try again.

 

[guarda]

KathyC,

salinity - 1.025
ammonia - 0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - <3
Phosphates - 0
Ph - 8.0
Calcium - 460
Alk - 7

As Mike opined, I am led to believe it was a stray current however how would I know now? I really would like to pinpoint the cause so i can prevent this from ever happening again.

From now on I will gratuitously aerate the new wc water

 

[guarda]

I wouldn't remove/stress anything, now...keep a close eye on it...Good Luck.
[/I]

My eyes are on the tank so much that my gf is close to remitting me to the asylum across the street!

 

[Jetsam]

Is it a new bag of salt? Since it's the same mfr could it be a bad batch?
When I first started I was using Tropic Marin. I have a nice dendrophylia. I switched to Instant Ocean Reef Crystals and noticed that the dendro would shrivel up and it's skin would peel like it had sun burn. Almost killed it since it took me a couple of WCs to figure out it was the salt. (duh). Switched back to Tropic Marin and then had the brilliant idea of trying the regular Instant Ocean. Almost killed it again. Going to use the Instant Ocean to melt ice during the winter. For some reason the dendro doesn't like the makeup of Instant Ocean. Maybe something similar is happening in your system, just more wide spread.
Also, if using tap water, do you filter your water through RO at least? DI? Have you checked your water for contaminants such as lead? Normal carbon doesn't get rid of fluoride or lead and I don't think RO gets rid of lead either. Needs a special filter. Also, if your water system is using chloramine or switched from chlorine to chloramine it's tougher to get out of the water.
Who knows, stabs in the dark.

 

[guarda]

No, same batch from the same ziploc style bag of coralife salt. I feel terrible about doing this to my xenias. They have melted almost to the point of non-recognition by now. Lucky I gave enough of it away to hopefully introduce the same strain back into my tank one day.

Everything was doing great until yesterday. Dendro and frogspawn were huge and I noticed lots of new nuns on most of my zoa rocks.

One thing maybe worth mentioning. When i set this tank up not too long ago, I used a steel hose clamp to hold the filter sock onto the end of the pipe coming out of the skimmer. Could the rust coming in contact with the water when the sumps are off have caused this?

 

[guarda]

Nuns no, nubs.

 

[noobzy]

I feel terrible about doing this to my xenias. They have melted almost to the point of non-recognition by now. Lucky I gave enough of it away to hopefully introduce the same strain back into my tank one day.

I hope that it doesn't come to that, but I can definitely help repopulate the Xenia, and introduce a new strain of Anthelia, if it does

 

[mellotang]

Two things ive seen melt Xenia in hours are copper and salinity too high. Look into the copper!!!

 

[guarda]

Yeah mellotang, i suspected salinity as well so i had my friend bring his hydrometer after doing 3 readings on my refractometer. 1.024 on the refractometer, 1.026-1.028 on his, and 1.025 on mine. I know that Xenia despise low alk levels and mine were fairly low BEFORE the wc at 7 but everything closed up.

I will try to get a copper kit today however I'm not convinced that to be the root as my fish are doing well. I won't rule it out though...

 

[guarda]

For posterity and so that others can learn from my error, I will post what happened.

NEVER TRUST A HYDROMETER! Or two for that matter. Both of the ones I used were off by almost 5 points! My refractometer was uncalibrated and I didn't think to recalibrate it, less that it could/should be recalibrated in my 4 months of devouring reefing info on the web. Rkaragozler came by to troubleshoot and calibrating the refractometer was the first thing we did. I can't thank him enough. I had always kept my tank at 1.024 but decided to raise it to 1.025 but in reality it went to 1.030 so that was the tipping point for my corals.

Anyhow, everything seems to have normalized once again EXCEPT for my Xenias. They have been reduced to miniscule replicas of their original selves, sans the pulsing. Don't think they will make it. Polyp extension is at 75% what they used to be the day of the salinity spike and all my zoas look good. Palys and dendro accepting food. Fish were never affected.

Changes after this? Ditched the hydrometer and will exclusively use the refractometer.
Instead of one weekly 5 gal wc, I will do two biweekly 3 gal changes.

Thank you for all the helpful comments, even the criticisms, as they were expected. And I especially thank Rich (Rkaragozler) for everything, including helping me keep my sanity that day haha.

Arthur

 

[THEDLO]

glad the issue is sorted out

 

[adamt]

best practice: make up your water and run an airstone in the bucket for at least 6 hours before dumping the water in. If your keeping corals avoid changing more than ten percent at a time, especially in a <90 gallon tank.

25% of a 20 gallon tank is ALOT of water to change, especially considering that a stocked 20 gallon tank prolyl only has 14-16 gallons of water in it. If the salt is not fully disolved it can land on corals and act as an irritant.

As long as the levels were ok and there wasnt any cl in the water your corals should bounce back... but its important to keep a reef tank stable and 25% water change is not stable.