So who's going to make it overnight?...

[Matt L.]

...we'll see in the morning

Well, I will confess to having the fortune of always hearing of other people's reef catastrophes and never really having one of my own... until now.

I just returned from Utah this afternoon, having been away since Friday morning. Housemates were looking after the tank, but what went wrong, the untrained eye could not see. Sometime during the trip, the backpressure on my calcium reactor, which had been recently adjusted, increased so that the CO2 flow stopped. This apparently caused calcium and alkalinity levels to plumit. Upon returning home at about 7:00PM, my instinc was to simply increase the CO2 flow to an acceptable level. Well, this was a reefing mistake I should have knon to avoid: never make an adjustment and then leave, which is exactly what I did. Upon returning home three hours later, I found the CO2 level had increased, in my absence, so dramatically that it was flowing uninterrupted through the bubble chamber and the pH in the tank plunged to 7.15! I have been slowly bringing the pH level back up since 10:00PM. The clowns are okay, but the other fish tend to hide at night. The clam seems normal, as do most of the corals. So we'll have to see. I'm mostly worried about the fish. I'll post back in the morning.

Matt

 

[AbbeyRoad]

eek! Good luck! This is everyones fear while away.
If you need anything, just ask.

 

[MarkO]

Hopefully you caught it in time... I know the feeling

 

[Moe_K]

Ooof! That sucks, Matt. I wish you luck.

 

[NateHanson]

Air stones, or just plain air lines! Blow off that CO2. Hope everything pulls through.
Nate

 

[~Flighty~]

How is it looking now?

 

[Matt L.]

Here's how everyone did

Thanks for your concern everyone. By closing the CO2 solenoid manually and adding an alkalinity supplement, I was able to raise the pH back up to the normal daytime level of 8.2 by morning. So the pH went down a full unit in under three hours and then back up a full unit within eight hours of that.

I regret not being able to e-mail sooner, but I was busy at work this morning.

First the bad news. I lost most of my sensitive Acropora sp. frags, including:
Blue/Turquoise Acropora Tizardi 6"
Blue/Purple Tort 6"
An unidentified Acro frag I just bought 4"
Blue Tip Teal Staghorn 8"
I also lost half of my pink tip frogspawn.

The good news is that the rest of my tank, including my fish, seem to have survived. The two black perculas, the flame angel, and the yellow citron goby all were behaving normally. The Majestic seemed a little skittish but ate heartily when fed.

My green T. Squamosa clam also appears quite happy, and has continued to develop a blueish hue around the fringes if the mantle. The soft corals seem fine, and my torch coral simply hasn't inflated as much as normal. I think my rose BTA spilt, so I'll have a rose BTA for trade soon.

Now my question is: what do I do now???

My water parameters were somewhat of a mess before all of this happened, with calcium and alkalinity in particular being too low, depsite my efforts with adjusting the calcium reactor. Then, the reactor goes down over vacation, and I lose what little alkalinity I had, followed by overadjustment of the CO2 flow upon returning, plummeting the pH down to 7.15! So now I am adding supplements to raise the alkalinity back up, and that special supplement I use with Calcium and Magnesium in it with the proper Ca/Mg ratio.

Should I perform a massive water change this weekend? Like 50%?!? Would that stress the fish out too much? I've never done a 50% water change; only 25% water changes bi-weekly. I can match pH, temperature, and salinity, and the water change would be with the same salt I have always used. Or, should I forget the huge water change, perform a smaller 25% water change, and try to bring Ca/Alk back up with supplements? I am really in unfamiliar territory here.

Please advise,

Matt

 

[Matt L.]

Air stones, or just plain air lines! Blow off that CO2. Hope everything pulls through.
Nate

I skim 24hrs/d, and I think that helped blow the CO2 off. I don't think the dissolved CO2 displaced dissolved oxygen, what with the survival of the fish and the fact that ORP (when adjusted for pH) didn't change all that much through the ordeal,

Matt

 

[~Flighty~]

are you running carbon?

 

[Matt L.]

are you running carbon?

Actually, no, not at the time. I can, but I would be curious as to why? Would the frags that died pollute the tank? Wouldn't that be taken care of by the skimmer?

Matt

 

[~Flighty~]

I always thought the rule of thumb was stuff dying releases its most toxic stuff as it goes. So, things that sting stuff release that stuff into the water. Corals and stuff can have pretty toxic chemical defense stuff.

And stuff.


So.... do you like stuff?

 

[this is me]

Which regulator and solenoid are you using. My old milwakee did the same thing.