• Why not take a moment to introduce yourself to our members?

BlackMoor

Active Reefer
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
I've been a member of the site for a few years now and have found a lot of information in the past that has proven quite helpful. Since I started my little reef I have only lost 4 fish in 5 years. Until now?
Living in NYC this winter has proven quite difficult and harsh. I have been keeping my RODI setup in the garage for convenience. Long story short it froze and shattered (has happened before). I had enough stored water to last until the replacement arrived.In the mean time Velvet had begun to set in an I eventually lost my extremely personable Butterfly fish and my beloved Maroon Clownfish.
I began to treat the tank with a copper solution and things began to turn around until the levels began to spike from the invertebrate die off. I accept full blame for what happened next but running a business and contending with the difficulties all this snow has caused really compounded things.
I have lost all my fish, snails, serpent stars and most of my hermits. I had no idea just how many worms were in this tank until they all came to the surface before dying.
Miraculously, around 6:00 am as I began to tear things down I noticed that my Bangaii Cardinal was somehow still alive. I performed a massive water change and used the pre made water that I was going to use after the copper treatment (Nutri-Seawater).
There is massive loss in this tank. I have only been able to remove the dead fish. I will attempt to remove the lost snails and whatever else I can get to later and perform more of a water change.
My questions are, what can I do now? My remaining hermits are beginning to show signs of life. I feel as though I should buy a good amount of them to perform a scavenge operation and help with the clean up. The Bangaii, I hope pulls through, there really isn't more I can do for it I think. This is where it becomes complicated?
I'm leaving this coming friday for about a week and the caregivers will not be able to do more that possibly feed the Bangaii should it survive further.
The only other information I can provide is:
TANK:
54 gallon corner with overflow and deep sand bed, 35lbs live rock.
20 gallon refugium with deep sand bed and live rock.
No corals whatsoever.
Return pump is cleaned every week and is high volume.
Perfectly functional, very recently, completely cleaned protein skimmer (specs escape me at the moment but it was quite expensive).
I'm sure the ammonia spike did them in but it was quite quick. It smells terrible in there,better now since the water change but a ways to go?
Not looking to be blasted , just some sympathy and perhaps some help. Thank you.
 
Last edited:

evolution21

Advanced Reefer
Location
Queens, NY
Rating - 100%
87   0   0
I honestly don't believe the extra hermit crabs would help...Once copper is in the tank you will always have at least trace amounts which is enough to kill inverts and coral....you probably killed all the beneficial bacteria in the tank as well.....With only one fish remaining and an inexpensive one at that, I would donate him to a LFS and start over. If using the same tank I would do a fish only tank.
 

BlackMoor

Active Reefer
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
To be clear, I am not going to put any fish back in there for a while. I am only interested resolving the waste of the die off and getting levels back to par. I have dreaded something like this from the moment I began to get more educated about fish keeping, Truly a nightmare situation. How do I fix things? Tear down completely and cycle from the beginning???? Thanks for the response and the help.
 

fishman1069

Advanced Reefer
Location
Sound Beach,LI
Rating - 100%
40   0   0
Unfortunately, treating the tank with copper was a huge mistake. You can not remove all the copper out of your rock. It will never be safe for inverts or coral, as stated above. You should definitely take the tank down and start over when you get back
 

5thChorseman

Junior Member
Location
brooklyn
Rating - 100%
24   0   0
Look into setting up an algae scrubber. The algae are supposed to remove heavy metals. Look on reef central in the advance section for two threads on algae scrubber. Good luck.
 

masterswimmer

Old School Reefer
Vendor
Location
NY
Rating - 99.6%
450   2   0
As stated, the treatment of copper in a display with inverts was the nail in the coffin. The reason you lost your fish was not the copper. The fish died because of the huge sudden die off of snails, stars, worms, and other sessile inverts that caused a huge ammonia spike.

Large water changes (every day until levels are re-established), poly pads, and carbon.

Russ
 

Jhoehlein

Experienced Reefer
Location
LIC, Queens
Rating - 100%
6   0   0
Shove poly filters in your sump until they stop changing color. That combined with big water changes should help, but you're never going to get all the copper out of your rock. Tank should be ok as a FOWLR, but you'll probably have issues keeping inverts from here on out.
 

Dre

JUNIOR MEMBER
Location
NY/NJ
Rating - 100%
243   0   0
How did the marine velvet get started? Before moving on you should find out. Hopefully you can prevent it from happening again.
 

BlackMoor

Active Reefer
Rating - 0%
0   0   0
Thank you for the suggestions, I have no idea how the velvet set in. All fish were long term residents. Started tearing down yesterday, will finish today. May just take a break for awhile or, go back to fancy Goldfish. Losing my Maroon Clownfish took the the wind out of my sails. Cardinal will be donated to LFS, poor guy deserves a medal.
 

b-ridge

Advanced Reefer
Rating - 87.8%
79   11   0
Hope this makes you feel a little better. My wife poured copper power in my tank in december. since then I have gotten a new sump. I took out all of my live rock and live sand. Did a thorough cleaning of the tank. Replaced my powerheads. I got the tank back running. Bought a copper test kit which said there was untraceable amounts of copper in my tank. Copper tests are known for being inaccurate so I went out and bought 3 snails and 3 crabs. They are all in my tank doing fine for the last week almost. I didn't think they would survive do to my nitrates being so high. so far so good
 

Sponsor Reefs

We're a FREE website, and we exist because of hobbyists like YOU who help us run this community.

Click here to sponsor $10:


Top