Help!

[JoshuaBrun]

Yesterday, I woke up and turned my aquarium lights on, only to discover very dirty water, and all of my fish dead. My corals were all deflated as well, and there were tons of dead bristleworms everywhere. I don't know whats going on! I think it was anemone death, but I have no clue.
I quickly did a water change. Pretty much all of it, other than what was in the sand. The corals seemed fine when I had them in a bucket of different water, but now, in the new water, they are deflated again and shedding mucus. What the hell do I do!?

 

[Anonymous]

Sorry I didn't see this earlier-how are things doing? What is the tank testing at now for ammonia? Are you running activated carbon? If not, that'd be the first order of business and I'd plan on massive water changes for the next few days depending on how the water is testing and how the inhabitants look.

 

[Anonymous]

BUT! If those water changes are with freshly mixed water, be careful. If you can get it, I'd use filtered seawater, because it won't shock the animals. Very sorry to read this.

 

[Anonymous]

I was hoping JoshuaBrun would post up with an update

 

[JoshuaBrun]

Haha sorry about taking forever to reply.

Everything pretty much sucks. I lost all my fish, like I said, and my starfish. I think I have one hermit left, but most of the others were small and shoved in the rocks. Everything was in my 40 gallon because my 200 gallon decided to crack one sad sad morning. I was hoping everything would be okay, but alas.

I did a big water change. I figured nothing worse could happen. Everything was already screwed up anyway. It didn't really seem to help, because the next day the water was not in good shape, and smelt bad again.

I had been running carbon in it, which seemed to help a bit, but it didn't really do the trick.

Then I remembered I still had a protein skimmer locked away somewhere from when I first started off with a 28 gallon, so I quickly whipped that out, and started running it.

The water is pretty damn clear now. It doesnt smell anymore, and things seem to be doing well.

However during the whole mess, my frogspawns have basically withered up. Some of the polyps seem to be holding strong, but I don't have much faith. My blue polyps and yellow polyps managed to survive the ordeal, but in smaller numbers. My pipeorgan MIGHT survive. I don't have much hope for my green stars, or my toadstool. My slipper coral died. So did a random SPS I had.

But I'm thankful things are getting better. I'm a first year university student, so I don't really have money to spend. The thought of breaking everything down and giving up made me want to cry. But I'm trudging on.

I'm hoping I can get some free frags from the oh... Two people I know next time I visit my hometown. I'm in St. Catharines, Ontario for school, and I know pretty much nobody! But I think there might be one or two fraggers around I might be able to get a deal from. Hopefully.

Thanks a lot for your help guys. Wish me luck!

 

[Anonymous]

Good luck, and I'm glad you remembered about the skimmer. Something went very, very bad in that tank, wow. I've experienced one fish wipe-out, but it was JUST the fish so I suspect disease. I never set up another reef of my own after that.