corals die for no reason at a loss

[custom reef]

ok this is what is going on my friends 120 gallon reef ready with 200lbs of live rock. twin 175watt 14k mh twin 40watt 420 blue, a few fish about 6. and had about 10 mushroom a couple of leathers some zoes gsp, cabbage coral. and a clean up crew. tank has been set up for 3 years now and doing fine had a break out of asptia a lot about 150 of the little buggers. then all of a sudden they started to fall of the rocks and die. then all the corals started to die off one by one. but the fish are fine. after about 3 water changes of 20 gallons each over a 4 week period every thing was dead except the fish. one sailfin tang his colors went dark and stopped eating he gave him to me to see if i could save him and i did fish is fine. did another water change of 25 gallons. did all water tests and and every thing seemed good salt 1.024 ph 8.3 nitrate .05 nitrite .05 phosphate 5 calcium 450 mag 1400 amm. was a little high because of coral death but came down with water changes. let tank run for 4 weeks with out doing anything to tank did water test again and every thing was good, so i added 25 snails and some zoes and a kenya tree and a couple of mushrooms.
everything seem good for about 3 days then all the corals i put in turned black and died i have been keeping reef tanks for many years and never had a problem like this im at a loss as to what might be going on the only thing i didnt test for is copper but i dont see how copper would have gotten in the tank he gets his water from me and its ro and i change my filter every 3 months. plus i have dsm tester on the ro and it reads 171 on the input and 0 on the output my friend did tell me he has been using tap water as top off when needed has been for 3 years now with no problem then he tell me he is on a well and he needed to change the water softner on the house filter. he did that after this problem started and now is using spring water for top off. has anyone had a problem like this or might know what might be going on.

 

[Jacksparrow]

copper

Aloha, I'm rather new at reefing so forgive me if this sounds like a noobie thing but a friend of mine had a similar situation and it turn out to be that when he added a fish or coral he had bought at a LFS he would add the LFS water to his own after acclimation for what ever reason. He found out that they had been treating the tanks with copper pretty heavy for ich and what ever else copper is used to rx for. I relize this is a kind of a noobie mistake but it is one way copper can get into your tank without relizing it.. Hope you find a answer soon.

 

[jamesdong009]

There's always a reason why corals die. This was probably due to the chain reaction of other things in the tank dying and fouling up the water. If anything dies in my tank, I will take it out immediately, run fresh carbon, and skim wet for awhile.

The numbers seem a little off also. Nitrites and ammonia need to be at zero and the phosphate level of 5 is way too high if I'm reading it correctly. You want phosphates to be as close to 0 as possible. I usually run a PO4 of ~.05 in my tank if that helps. Have you tested for alkalinty in the tank? Having a good stable Alk is an important factor in keeping corals alive as well.

I'm sure using well water for top off didn't help things either because of the unkown contaminants there might be. RODI water should always be used for top off.

HTH

 

[custom reef]

i wish it was because of copper from lfs but hasnt put anything in the tank from any lfs in a year.

i know the numbers are off a little, but the numbers were right on before this happened. everything was at 0. and doing great. the first thing to go wrong was the aptasia started to die and they can pretty much live threw anything. the numbers got higher because everything started to die. i thinking it is because of the well water, maybe metals were building up over time then every thing couldnt take it anymore. is it possible for the metals to get into the rock and not come out after many water changes. should i replace the rock and start over. i tried to use carbon lots of it. to no effect. skimmer is still taking out some nasty smelling stuff. dark black. i was thinking maybe also his kids were doing scuba gi joe, but he says no. or maybe his wife with some kind of cleaning fluid near the tank she is a neat freak, you could eat out of her trash bucket its so clean, she cleans the inside of a vacuum cleaner. who cleans inside a vacuum cleaner. but thanks for the replies. keep them coming people.

 

[Greg Hiller]

Hmmm...I'd certainly suspect the well water, but I'd say there's a decent chance that something else, some toxin got into the tank. I'd check around carefully for anything that might have fallen into the tank (batteries? coins?). Are their young children in this house that could have tossed something in?

You might try running some Polyfilters on the tank. They are supposed to take out a great many different types of toxins.