Peter's Petite Pair Of Picos

[bae1994]

Well the shrimps look like tiger pistol shrimp

 

[castiel]

llj, I'll make sure to ask next time I can. It was an LFS that was a bit of a drive away, but I might give them a call this weekend.

bae, thanks for the first ID! I figured they were pistol shrimp but couldn't find a matching pic. They click. And click, and click =0)

 

[castiel]

DISASTER =0(

Came home today and the house STANK of rotten sea. Rushed over to the tanks and my tank is really cloudy, and doesn't take long to notice all of the dead worms on teh sand or the crab that isn't moving. EVERYTHING in the tank seems to be dead. Crabs, worms, shrimps, probably the brittle star. Maybe a worm or three survived, but I am so sad right now.

I did a water change, but it still smelled bad so I decided to empty everything out, drain fully and fill with entirely new water.

The irony is that my heater arrived today, but in the rush to try and save things ended up using fairly cold water straight from teh container. I figured there wasn't much more I could harm.

My wife's tank also didn't look great, and had nowhere near as many dead bodies, but then it didn't have the volume of stuff mine did anyway. So she just did a water change and hopefully it is not as badly affected.


I need to try and work out what happened so I can avoid it happening again. Was it just an ammonia spike? Too much bioload all at once in an uncycled tank?


=0(

 

[lljdma06]

That stinks, well literally. OK couple of questions...

1. How long was your light on?
2. Did you do top-offs?
3. Just how big are these tanks?
4. Was your rock cured or uncured?
5. Did you rinse your rock in prepared SW and remove anything icky or dead
6. Was the rock out of the water for any period of time

I dug this up for you. I've been reading it front and back an awful lot since I started planning my tank(s) (hehehehe, the problem when you have empty things lying around, so look for another thread)

The information's a bit older for some tastes (he recommends 10x turnover rather than 20x), but I know for a fact, that SH's tank is still running after almost 6 years. He told me.

http/www.fishforums.net/index.php?/topic/135909-faq-section-for-nano-tanks/

Right now, get your test kits. We don't know anything until we can see test kit results. My guess is something died and triggered a spike. Probably the scallop.

 

[castiel]

Actually the scallop was in the other tank, which seems to be okay. Saw the feather duster in there again this morning, so a panicked water change in that tank was probably unnecessary.

I am 90% sure that my tank's crash was due to the amount of livestock in there and as you say, a death or two could cause a chain reaction. Yesterday morning I could literally see worms crawling across every piece of rock, some very large ones. Plus four crabs, three shrimp, and whatever else I didn't even get to see! All in a 13 litre (3.4 US Gallons) tank.

To answer your other questions:
1) About 10-11 hours per day on full, with an hour blue in the morning and a couple of hours blue in the evening.
2) The tanks have lids so there was very little evaporation, only topped off a small amount once.
3) 3.4G
4) Pretty sure it was uncured given how much was in it, but not certain (newbie mistake not asking I guess)
5) Not really, just shook it in the tank when I removed it. So I will probably need to do that this weekend, and start again I guess.
6) An hour from the LFS store to our house when we got it, wrapped in soggy newspaper, then straight into the tanks and no water changes until the crash.


Thanks for the resource link, I will be sure to do some serious reading!

 

[lljdma06]

Actually the scallop was in the other tank, which seems to be okay. Saw the feather duster in there again this morning, so a panicked water change in that tank was probably unnecessary.

Sigh of relief, I like that scallop.

I am 90% sure that my tank's crash was due to the amount of livestock in there and as you say, a death or two could cause a chain reaction. Yesterday morning I could literally see worms crawling across every piece of rock, some very large ones. Plus four crabs, three shrimp, and whatever else I didn't even get to see! All in a 13 litre (3.4 US Gallons) tank.

Probably, but see my notes to your answers, you forgot a detail.

My notes on your answers:
1) About 10-11 hours per day on full, with an hour blue in the morning and a couple of hours blue in the evening. - usually it is recommended that you start the cycle with like limited lighting and then gradually increase.
2) The tanks have lids so there was very little evaporation, only topped off a small amount once. - I see
3) 3.4G - really small tank, and you had quite a bioload.
4) Pretty sure it was uncured given how much was in it, but not certain (newbie mistake not asking I guess) - you'd need to know.
5) Not really, just shook it in the tank when I removed it. So I will probably need to do that this weekend, and start again I guess. - again literature says to give it a clean in SW and removed anything dead or bad. It's like a once over. Some organisms if exposed to air at all will die, and will die messy. May not have been the actual bioload, but that you didn't remove anything in poor health. Macro algae, sponges, those need to be removed usually.
6) An hour from the LFS store to our house when we got it, wrapped in soggy newspaper, then straight into the tanks and no water changes until the crash. - again, usually you clean it up a bit.

Thanks for the resource link, I will be sure to do some serious reading!

No problem, it's one of the best I've read.

 

[castiel]

I'll see if I can find out more about the LR this weekend.

We did clean the rock a fair bit, took off any obviously dead sponges etc. I guess we just missed the rinsing stage. I think I will take the rock out again this weekend and do that, along with rinsing the sand to get rid of the dead bodies.

As for the light, sounds like we're overdoing it for sure. Assuming the rock was uncured (my guess - the signs are that it was), we should just have the light on for a couple of hours per day, increasing slowly. I'll start doing that from today onwards.

Thanks for the advice =0)

 

[GrayScale]

Dang, sorry to hear about the bad luck. I suppose this sort of thng can happen even in an established tank. Dont get too down on it and hopefully everything wil get sorted out.

 

[castiel]

Thanks, Gray. Well my tank today was rancid - stank to high heaven and had a thick gloopy film on the water. So I decided to take everything out, rinse the rocks, and wash the tank, heater, pump etc.

The rocks smelled absolutely disgusting, even after I had rinsed like crazy. So I took the decision to go back to the base rock. I left one or two small pieces of the old LR in the media chamber, and have 'borrowed' a small piece from my wife's tank, and finally added a very small amount of the old sand back in (after a rinse).

So life in the tank has gone from way too much, to probably none at all. But hopefully the 'seed' material will still help the cycle.

I'll do a test tomorrow to see how it's looking.



My wife's tank had crazily high ammonia today (even without the right API chart, I could tell as it was a dark blue colour!), so we did another 60% water change on her tank. But there are still good signs of life, a worm or two and the snail are alive at least.

 

[castiel]

Well Ang's tank still has crazy stats, ammonia 8.0+, Nitrite 5.0, Nitrate 5.0 ... so daily water changes are in order for the time being.

My largely base rock tank is starting to cycle I think, amm .25, nitrite .5 and nitrate 5.0. So hopefully the seeing idea is working okay.

 

[lljdma06]

Well Ang's tank still has crazy stats, ammonia 8.0+, Nitrite 5.0, Nitrate 5.0 ... so daily water changes are in order for the time being.

My largely base rock tank is starting to cycle I think, amm .25, nitrite .5 and nitrate 5.0. So hopefully the seeing idea is working okay.

Yeah, gotta keep those up. I wonder if something didn't die in there.

It seems from what I've read, that for the cycling process to be effective, you don't need ammonia numbers past .5ppm, as long as you maintain that, you're fine for cycling. So you can definitely get rid of excess ammonia.

llj

 

[castiel]

Oh I am sure there was some die off, whether it was just sponge and stuff, or worms ... something definitely died in there! The only livestock (that we know of) are the livestock and teh feather duster worm we see now and again. I am sure the clam hasn't survived the dramatic swings, unfortunately.

 

[lljdma06]

Oh I am sure there was some die off, whether it was just sponge and stuff, or worms ... something definitely died in there! The only livestock (that we know of) are the livestock and teh feather duster worm we see now and again. I am sure the clam hasn't survived the dramatic swings, unfortunately.

How's the cycling process going? I mean, I know the answer, but people here don't.

 

[castiel]

Haha true. Well I take it as a very positive sign that Ammonia is so much lower than yesterday in the problem tank! We did a 75% water change last night, but a day on it's still only at 1.0. I know this is still too high, but given Nitrite has remained high and nitrate has increased, suggests that the tank is finally starting to deal with the ammonia?

Ang's
Ammonia - 1.0
Nitrite - 5.0
Nitrate - 10

And in my tank the cycle looks to be in its latter stages already:

Peter's
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - .25
Nitrate - 5

Which leads me to start thinking about stocking! Here are initial thoughts:

A variety of zoas around the bottom-middle of the tank
I'd love a hammer located at the top of the rock.
And a xenia of some kind.
Maybe some mushrooms inbetween.

Livestock - ideal would be a goby/shrimp pair, but I'll have to see how easy it is to get that around here! From recent LFS visits, a goby of the right kind might be a struggle. I'll have to start making friends and see what chance I stand here =0)

 

[lljdma06]

Haha true. Well I take it as a very positive sign that Ammonia is so much lower than yesterday in the problem tank! We did a 75% water change last night, but a day on it's still only at 1.0. I know this is still too high, but given Nitrite has remained high and nitrate has increased, suggests that the tank is finally starting to deal with the ammonia?

Ang's
Ammonia - 1.0
Nitrite - 5.0
Nitrate - 10

And in my tank the cycle looks to be in its latter stages already:

Peter's
Ammonia - 0
Nitrite - .25
Nitrate - 5

Which leads me to start thinking about stocking! Here are initial thoughts:

A variety of zoas around the bottom-middle of the tank
I'd love a hammer located at the top of the rock.
And a xenia of some kind.
Maybe some mushrooms inbetween.

Livestock - ideal would be a goby/shrimp pair, but I'll have to see how easy it is to get that around here! From recent LFS visits, a goby of the right kind might be a struggle. I'll have to start making friends and see what chance I stand here =0)

Haha! I was thinking a goby/shrimp pair for my 8g too. What are you thinking regarding inverts and CUC?

llj