- Location
- Hudson Yards
I moved to a new apartment about a month ago. Set up the 45g reef tank with new live substrate and used Natures Ocean to fill the tank until I could get my 6 stage RO/DI unit squared away. Other than a serious slime algae outbreak things were OK.
I had trouble with RO/DI because after hooking it up to the source water, flow out of the unit was almost non-existent. It took 4 weeks of trial and error to figure it out, but turns out it was caused by a new .5 micron carbon block that I got from BRS. It was dramatically impeding flow. So, I swapped it out with a 2nd GAC cartridge and we were good to go. Or so I thought.
I mixed up about 30g of saltwater using my usual Reef Crystals on friday and changed the water. I've changed that volume regularly on this tank for a couple of years with no problems. I also put in new Polyfilter pads which I used as the primary filtration on the tank. All the hard corals were dead within 24 hours making for a soupy mess and the soft corals were all closed. So, yesterday I did another water change and added a dose of Seachem Prime dechlor for good measure. Now my mated pair of clownfish are dead and the soft corals are still closed. When I left for work there was one fish (an aiptasia eating filefish) and a cleaner shrimp still alive. I'm afraid everything will be dead when I get home.
I don't know what went wrong. Even if the source water had something funky in it that managed to get past the 6 stage RO/DI, the Polyfilter should have caught it. What the hell can/should I do???
I had trouble with RO/DI because after hooking it up to the source water, flow out of the unit was almost non-existent. It took 4 weeks of trial and error to figure it out, but turns out it was caused by a new .5 micron carbon block that I got from BRS. It was dramatically impeding flow. So, I swapped it out with a 2nd GAC cartridge and we were good to go. Or so I thought.
I mixed up about 30g of saltwater using my usual Reef Crystals on friday and changed the water. I've changed that volume regularly on this tank for a couple of years with no problems. I also put in new Polyfilter pads which I used as the primary filtration on the tank. All the hard corals were dead within 24 hours making for a soupy mess and the soft corals were all closed. So, yesterday I did another water change and added a dose of Seachem Prime dechlor for good measure. Now my mated pair of clownfish are dead and the soft corals are still closed. When I left for work there was one fish (an aiptasia eating filefish) and a cleaner shrimp still alive. I'm afraid everything will be dead when I get home.
I don't know what went wrong. Even if the source water had something funky in it that managed to get past the 6 stage RO/DI, the Polyfilter should have caught it. What the hell can/should I do???
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