Tank Crash?

[Donya]

I got home today to find my new 12g in serious trouble. I had watched the cycle finish nicely earlier in the week, and the water was fine this morning. I get home and nitrite is off the scale, ammonia is giving me colors that make no sense on the kit (it seems to be reacting with something else), and nitrates are unclear since the test kit won't be consistent. pH had dropped from 8.4 to 7.4. I turned a piece of live rock over to find what looks like it may be a nudibranch, but I'm not sure yet. The snails from the tank are acting like nothing happened. I am afraid of getting this potential nudibranch out on the offchance that's really what it is, since it's decent-sized and I can't get it off the rock without risking injuring it. The piece of rock is also currently having tons of other stuff crawl out of it and get pushed out of it by other things that are vacating the area...I found what looks like a dead micro-mantis thrimp (maybe 0.5cm max).

Is this the sort of water damage associated with a nudibranch? The snails are in a tub right now. If I can get the thing out of the water and get the tank params cleared up will it be safe to reintroduce the snails, or I am I looking at long-term tank breakdown and rebuilding?

 

[steelhealr]

Sounds like something died and is crashing the tank. I'd take out anything that looks like an offending agent. Start immediate water changes before you lose anything, up to 50% if needed and repeat every 1-2 days. SH

 

[Aquascaper]

Agreed, the faster you can completly replace the water the better.
In a 12g there's no margin for error and the speed at which this has happened sounds very much like a 'nuking'.

 

[Donya]

Ok, will do. What should I do with the snails in the mean time? Risk them back in the tank after a WC, or try to keep them isolated until the water is sure to be good? I'm kind of stuck because I have to leave for 2 hours shortly...I also have mt 5g, but the last thing I want is 2 crashes so I don't know if I want to risk putting them in there. The pH is probably also too much to acclimate the snails before I have to go.

The timeframe was probably around 3-4 hours max. Looks like some sort of isopod just crawled out of the rock (great...just what I need). If something died it's probably in a hole at the center of the rock, judging by the way stuff is leaving rapidly. Some colonista snails are also exiting.

 

[Donya]

I identified the mysterious black blob...it is some kind of cowrie. I'm pretty sure it's this one now that its in clear view: http/rfbolland.com/okislugs/scutungu.jpg

Not sure how it managed to fit inside the rock for so long.

 

[SkiFletch]

How big is the rock? Could you isolate it in its own bucket?

 

[Donya]

I can try. I dont' know if it'll fit though..my buckets arn't really the shape to accomodate it. After some water treatment and obviously a lot of new water, nitrites are 0 now. Ammonia is giving me a 0 too, for what it's worth given that it did something strange before.

I think one of the big problems now is that I can't get the pH up...it's stuck at 7.4-7.6. My usually sodium bicarbonate trick isn't working...It had 3 hours to equilibrate and the pH only changed by 0.02 on the digital pH meter. This is not a problem in my other tank, where I see a much bigger difference than that in 3 hours. Any suggestions?

 

[steelhealr]

You must treat the source first to correct the numbers. If something is dying, that can screw up the pH. Correct that with removal/water changes.

Buffering your tank includes a balance including calcium.....just adding bicarb will not always do it. Check your calcium level. Also, one hit of bicarb will do nothing over the long run. For temporizing, you'd add one tsp of bicarb to your topoff water daily.

We need:
pH
kH
Ca2+

SH

 

[Donya]

For temporizing, you'd add one tsp of bicarb to your topoff water daily.

That's basically what I'd been doing. I did another 50% WC today and the pH is improving...whatever was in there must have been really bad. pH is closing in on 7.8 and going up (doing a drip line).

One thing I noticed is this:
pH of pure H2O before salt: 8.8-9.0
pH of H2O after salt: 8.0-8.2

my previous bag of salt didn't do that to the pH...I had to adjust it. I'm using Instant Ocean because I can't seem to get anything else around here unless I want to buy a tub that's too heavy for me to lift. I will get the other param readings soon.

Unfortunately I lost a snail...another reason I did the second WC today. It walked accross the "bad" rock, and popped off and slammed shut like it had been stung by something. It died shortly after, while the other snail is alive. I saw a tentacle of some sort sticking out of a hole in the rock later on. It zipped back inside and out of sight when I got a flashlight out. This is really throwing me for a loop. The cowrie also died, and shows injuries on its foot and mantle (not done by me since didn't touch it until it was dead, and not there last night either).

 

[SkiFletch]

pH of pure H2O before salt: 8.8-9.0

This is VERY troubling to me. PURE H2O has a pH of 7.0, no higher. Pure water has no ions or any molecules dissolved into solution and therefore has a neutral pH. Where are you getting this "pure H2O" from? Sounds like something is amiss there.

 

[Donya]

pure meaning I hadn't added anything to it yet. Salt-free would have been a better word but I was typing fast.

 

[SkiFletch]

Ah, do you use RO? DI? Neither?

 

[Donya]

Distilled. I don't have access to RO at the moment, though I'm looking into getting something to use at home for RO. Distilled is what I used on my 5g and it's working great...and the baking soda works on that tank like normal

 

[SkiFletch]

Thats even pretty wierd for distilled water... Even if its only single distilled water you have there, i would expect its pH to be pretty low , certainly lower than near 9. That just seems spooky to me

 

[Donya]

It's not too unusual for distilled, or even DI (I found an initial pH on that at around 7.5-8.0 once). I used to use distilled periodically for certain freshwater situations, and I found that distilled pH values ranged from 6.0 to 8.0 pretty commonly. The particular source I've got right now is a little high, but like I said it's worked fine in my 5g. I'm mainly concerned as to why the salt is doing what it is to the pH...it puts the pH where it would be ok if that was the only stuff in the tank, but when adding new water if I need to raise the pH it's a pain.

I also did the following test in a cup:
- distilled water in cup, pH 8.8-9.0 (accuracy gets lower after 8.6 or so)
- added salt to 1.023sg, pH 8.2
- added sodium bicarbonate and let equilibrate for several hours, pH 7.5!

I'm going to run that test again on tap water, some water from one of my fw tanks, etc. and see what the results are tomarrow.