Need Some Help:)

[NewbToFish]

Hello all, I Currently have a 14g Biocube with UV Sterilizer, Protein skimmer, extra powerhead, stock lighting, with 14lbs of live rock. I've had this tank for about 10 months but things have been tough. I started my cycle off great with a Clown fish, live rock, and live sand. The sand I started with looked horrible, it had black rocks in it so I decided to change my sand. That was an experience! I tested the water about every two weeks and it finally evened out so I bought some corals like, a star polyp, Mushrooms, Cat's Eye, you know beginner stuff. I loaded it with Astrea snails and hermits for CUC but as the weeks went on the died one by one and my tank went nuts. I did a water change and eventually it evened out again. I bought 2 Green Chromis and everything was good but Snails I bought continually died so I did a little reading and realized I needed to switch the bioballs out for LR. Red algae in the sand formed along with more dead snails. Right now I have 4 Snails, 2 Hermits, 2 Chromis, 1 Clown, and some Soft Corals but the water still has some ammonia. Gravity is fine, and PH is fine but something is making my fish act weird. I dont Put anything special in my water and I dont Test for Phosphates, Calcium, only Nitrites, Nitrates, PH, and Ammonia. What should I do? Ill post pictures so you can see If I have it set up funky or anything.

 

[three-fingers]

dont Test for Phosphates, Calcium, only Nitrites, Nitrates, PH, and Ammonia. What should I do?

It would be useful if you posted the stats for all those things .

But almost certainly, you will have high phosphates and will need to lower them.

The ammonia is a big problem. I would do as many water changes as you can and keep testing. If it's an option to rehome the livestock in the meantime - this would really help.

You seem to have started off waaay too fast with this tank and are now suffering the consequences. Fish-in cycling with clownfish and then adding corals when you weren't testing for phosphates was not great idea, I can only assume you received bad advice from an LFS .

Awaiting pics and water stats to advice further .

 

[AK77]

Agreed. This sounds like you have been a bit impatient and put too much into your tank, too soon and possibly replaced dead livestock with new critters, before the system had time to recover, further exacerbating the matter.

This is more of a problem in a smaller tank than a larger one, as pollutants build up quicker due to the decreased volume of water. Similarly, ammonia spikes from adding livestock all together are not uncommon as fish impact heavily on the bio-load. This could be what has been killing off your snails and other tank inhabitants initally, probably returning to safe levels by the time you've noticed the dead creatures and subsquently tested your water.

Having said that though, there may very well be other contributing factors. For example, I bought about 25 snails from ebay a few years back for my 180L tank. They did fine for a while, attacking the cyanobacteria and algaes from the glass and rocks. Then they started to die in large numbers. I later found out that these snails were collected from the shores of the UK, hence why they all died, due to the higher temperatures of my marine tank. I've also had all my hermit crabs die from some mystery ailment, one that wiped out all the livestock at my LFS too.

As three-fingers says, it would be helpful if you can post all your water stats to elimanate possible causes. Testing for phosphates would definitely be a good idea. High phosphates and corals don't mix. Corals also contain toxins too which will most likely have been released into the water when they died. Again, this could potentially have wiped out your livestock.

 

[seffieuk]

to the salty side of life

As the guys have already said, could you post your stats please

Also, you have a lot of live rock in that tank, what are you using for flow and how much flow do you have?

Are you running any phosphate remover?

How often do you do a water change and what %?

Can we have a photo please?

Seffie x