Help! All inverts dying quickly

[madrhino]

All my snails, crabs, a black knobby sea cuke, brittle stars, and even all the bristle worms in the sand seem to be suffocationg. My fish and corals are fine (actually, corrals look a little stressed).
125 tank
ph:8.3
alk: a little high
calcium: a little low
salinity:1.023
temp:79
I use R/O water
No ammonia, nitrate, or nitrite tested.
I am running a red sea skimmer and have 135 pds live rock.

All the inverts just lay there. When i take them out of the tank i see that they are still alive so i put them back in the tank, where they just lay there again. I am fighting what seems to be cyno bac. It's a red slime algae that is producing lots of litte clear bubbles throughout the tank. i don't know if this can be part of the problem. Any help or advice would be a huge help! Thanks in advance!

 

[Anonymous]

if you got cyano. it could be that it is causing an anaerobic condition in your rock/sand. the same could be true of dinoflagellate outbreak that describes the common little bubbles thing.

i would think that you would have some sort of evidence of this though in your ammonia/nitro tests.

there are no foul smells are there?

how high is alk. and how low is calc.?

 

[monkeyboy]

Run a copper test, could be heavy metals. Also wouldn't hurt to fix the Ca and alk levels. I'd say a good size w/c is in order regardless, which will also help fix the ca/dkh levels.

 

[Anonymous]

I'd run carbon a slap a poly filter in there too in case Monkeyboy is right about the copped (or other containement).

Have you recently done a WC? If so, what type of water did you use?

You may also need to increase your flow as low flow can contribute to cyno out break.

HTH

Louey

 

[Anonymous]

i think that the first thing anyone should do when they think they have a problem, as evidenced by the appearance of their inverts,when they can't identify an immediately apparent cause, is a nice major water change-50% or better-with rodi sw that's been aged at least 24 hrs-then add carbon/poly filter to help if it's a poisoning possibility from a metal, or the like.

good luck!

 

[wildbill]

Run carbon, and change it frequently. What's your dkh? What kind of water movement do you have. My tank likes the dkh up 10-12. Cyno is caused by organic build up. H2o changes(with perfect water) and carbon with lower your organic's. You said some animals seem to be suffocating? Normally the lagest fish will be affected first if there is a o2 problem. Cyno builds up also due to adding animals too fast. This is a huge problem for most people. I would add an animal at no more than once per month.

Bill