How do yÒυ know if your tank is recycling?

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ZaxXx

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Had a terrible temperature spike to 30 32 , lost many sof corals and mushrooms and rics sadly...
Sustrate also didn't look as good as before.
I removed all of the rocks and substrate , just abit left now .
Got a chiller and reset all the rocks , didn't have my full flow in until a few days ago. But my corals aren't really recovering... Rocks all look dusty and lil furry. Looking kak basically.

What's the story now?
 
Are you certain a temperature spike is what caused your problems? How quickly did the temperature rise to 32?
 
ZaxXx said:
Had a terrible temperature spike to 30 32 , lost many sof corals and mushrooms and rics sadly...
Sustrate also didn't look as good as before.
I removed all of the rocks and substrate , just abit left now .
Got a chiller and reset all the rocks , didn't have my full flow in until a few days ago. But my corals aren't really recovering... Rocks all look dusty and lil furry. Looking kak basically.

What's the story now?
Click to expand...

ZaxXx said:
A few weeks . . . As the durbs heat came in
Click to expand...
Zaxx with temps going that high for that long many things will have battled and or died. It will take a while for a tank to come back from such an episode and things most likely will be out of ballance for a while. The corals that have survived will recover, but they will need good water quality for a length of time, as will the rest of the tank. Thats the bad news :(

the good news is there is lots you can do to help the tank recover propperly:)

I see you say you have a chiller and I am taking the assumption that its installed now and that the temp on the tank is down around the 25 mark?

Is you tank up to full internal flow now, all circulation pumps working? Do you have them on a controller with good random flow?

I would dose with a bacterial sollution (my personal preverance would be 'stability' but you can get a number of different barnds to use) Dose as per instructions on the bottle and give the bacterial population (which is the backbone of your biological filtration in a tank and would have been hammered by those temps) a chance to recover. You def want to dose bacteria (for a number of reasons) but not the least of which is that there is a good chance of cyano bacteria establishing and outcompeting you other bacterial strains which you def do not want. cyano isnt a huge monster to deal with if it does set in, but its a very good chance that it will come in this case, so does with bacteria now.

Water changes are critical now. a good routine of 20% per week (if you can depending on tank size and vollume????) will realy help. But before you do a water change take one of the power heads and 'blow' it over the rocks, deep in the reef and all over the place except the sand which you dont want to stir up in the process. You will get lots of that 'furry stuff' as yopu call it into the water collumn and when you take the old water out you will get lots of it out at the same time.

But for the rest, just keep the tank parameters (especially temp and SG) within good levels and constant and the tank will bounce back over the next few months:)
 
I ran temps of between 30 up to 32 this summer and all my corals and fish were just fine.
 
Yup.... Crispin's advice will be golden for whatever the problem was, but it may not have been temperature related. Do you have a very high bio-load? Is there adequate skimming and flow? Remember that if one coral dies and is not removed in time, it can cause a domino effect as you get one ammonia spike after the other.

Whatever it was though, Crispin has the solution.
 
Zaxxx temperature can do strange things like mess your salinity up. reduce the oxygen in your tank. take the ammonia in your tank and make it toxic etc. basically it can cause your tank to crash. this would kill off aerobic bacteria too! So vasically it converts uour liverock from being cured to being uncured!. So yup back to square one and cycle your tank with a bacteria source like stability or prodibio or microbe lift special blend or therap. dont usw brightwells to cycle as it may cause algae. if poss keep lights on less. and do regular water changes. the crash might also identify that uou need greater circulation or air movement around tank. Good luck and hang in there.
 
one of the main things that happens in high temps is the lack of O2. Increasing surface agitation will help with this
 
I dont have many fish, only 4.
Skimmer works very well also
Flow im sure is ok, a wave maker would be perfect though.

Probably that cos i didnt remove the dying corals ASAP, corals started dying in a week after it passed 29degrees... Peppermint shrimp also died. Tank was progressing well before that.

Chiller is at 26degrees . . .
Removed all the kak now, even scraped the sand off. Reset all the rocks too.
ive got 2x2400 and 2x6000 lh seio's on now.
Cut lights to only blue.
Guess all i can do now is get a stability and start over slowly... Nothing much i can do now...


Thanks :)
 
Remember the life forms inside the rock that you cannot see also took a knock. The tank will cycle again. The dead stuff inside decaying, rotting away and eaten. And because you do have fish, then do what @crispin advised on the water changes.
 
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