[Rogergolf66]

I just bought a 90 gal reef tank from ebay the tank was setup for 3 years and looked great. It has 6 large claims and many soft corals and large mushrooms and some hard corals. I moved the tank last week and it was doing great after the move. now about 6 days after it is in my house the claims are getting large holes in them and the mushrooms are staying very small and the soft corals are droopy. my tank temp was to high. I ordered a chiller but it woun't be here for a few days. I am freezing 2liter bottels to put in the sump when the metal halide turns on. My queston is will my corals and claims be ok? will then repair them selfs my water quality is good besides temp. also do you have any other ideas to lower my tank temp. I took off my canopy and added 3 more fans for a total now of 6 fans on the tank. anything else I can do. Is there anything I can do to help my claims?

Please check my tank profile if you think you need more info about the tank.


Please Help

Thanks Roger

 

[Lupin]

Hi Roger.:wave:

What are your water parameters?(ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, calcium, pH)
What is your salinity level?
I would say you may have insufficient calcium level leading to the holes on the clams' shells. Shellfishes often need calcium.

Good luck.

 

[usmc121581]

Like blue said before we can say the factor that is causing it we would need to know the water parameters.

 

[caferacermike]

I'm waiting patiently for answers. I too want to help but don't want to shoot off at the mouth and then have you tell me that everythign I said is taken care of.


What is this "high" temp? High temps affect SPS corals which you have none of. Some of the famous reefers shun chillers and run their tanks at 85F.

My first guess is that your "water quality is not good". I'm pretty sure that unless you had a friend that is a succesful reefer help you with the move that your tank is in a cycle. This could be as short as a week or as long as months.

Explain your set up in more detail. IE, filters, skimmers, sumps, flow.....

If your clams have holes in them, I'm afraid they will not recover. I've not seen many clams pull through from injuries or stress. You may even need to look for pyramid snails

What water did you fill the tank with? How did you prepare before you added it?

What are the exact paramters, is this a guess, a test or what the LFS told you? What brand of test kit? How old is it?

I ask you all of these things even after reading your tanks profile.

Salinity levels, brand of salt mix.

The only thing I can recommend at this time are frequent 10% water changes daily for a few weeks to see if that helps.

I've moved 4 very large, 100+, reefs and had only 2 fish die in the process. All of the tanks where back on line in hours and looking like they did in less than 3 days.

 

[Rogergolf66]

Hi Guys,

Here are the water paramiters
Nitrates 10
nitrite 0
alkalinity blue on the test strip not sure what that is
PH 8.4

water temp is down to 80.4 it has been there since last night I have the day off today so I plan to work hard on maintaining that temp all day. I hope I can.

 

[Rogergolf66]

I am using a Mardel 5 test strip I don't know how old it is he gave it to me. The salt he was using is red sea I did have to mix my own in prep for not having enough to refill the tank. I use Kent sea salt My salinity tested with my Aquarium systems meter is 1.019 my salinity with my instant ocean hydrometer is 1.024

I have a sump that use to have bioballs in it. It no longer has bioball in has been modified and it has a large filter sock.

I am also running a UV sterilizer. I have 7 inlets were the water is being cerculated in the tank. 1 Main pump. the uv has its own pump set to the gph required for it and the water goes from the sump throught the uv in to the main tank. 4 power heads. I currently turned off all the power heads but 1 to help lower the temp. the temp was at 86 deg. So right now I has 3 lines pushing water around the tank.

I will go get a Calcium tester I think that is the only question I didn't aswer.

Thanks for everyones time I hope we can figure it out soon.

Roger

 

[Rogergolf66]

aslo forgot

about 200 pounds of live rock. about 120 pounds of live sand.

the protein skimmer is a euro-reef cs or es series im looking at the manual for it it seems large enough it is twice the size as the one i have on my 75 fish tank.

working on calcium test

anyother info you need?

 

[Rogergolf66]

just tested calcium 410ppm

PLEASE HELP BEFORE IT IS TO LATE

thank you roger

 

[Rogergolf66]

I just thought of one more thing I didn't aswer I used the same water that was in the tank before we used a small pump, and pumped some water out of the tank into storage buckets and anded the rock that had the coral on them. we repeated the proces till we had all the water and corals. I didn't remove the sand from the tank I didn't want to disterb it and kick out the nitrate pockets. It was about 6 hours before the pumps were turned back on and everything was back in the tank. The claims didn't seem to mind the trip they were opened up in the buckets before I put them back into the tank again. I did have to mix about 15 gallons of new water because I didn't have enough. I removed some of the live rock he had in the tank It was to crowded. so I had to make some new water.

Now I hope I answered all the questions.

sorry it is in so many small posts I have a 5 month old son so it is hard to spend long periods to type all this info in one sitting.

Thanks Again
Roger

 

[Lupin]

I know how you feel. Now if only the marine keepers reply.:squint: I hardly can be of help as I'm no longer into marine.:mrgreen:

Relax. They'll be here soon.

 

[caferacermike]

Your tests seem ok but I'm wondering if they are accurate. Using the old water is a big mistake. You have plenty of bio available on the rocks and sand. Old water is just that, old water. I would have refilled using all new fresh mixed water. Set your skimmer wet and start doing daily water changes. They don't have to be huge, maybe 5g a day. Get a new mixing barrel, maybe a Brute 45g, and fill it up. You can take your 5g from that barrel and just add more water and salt to it daily. Keep a powerhead in it to mix the water.

I feel you are going to need to wait about 3 weeks to see where the tank stabilizes.

 

[usmc121581]

When I moved my tank up from south carolina to maryland I transfered all the water. I knew I was getting up there late no new water was made for the transfer. So I put all old water back in and did daily water changes intill my levels went back down. I bet that those test aren't being accurate. When you moved everything and put them back you might off made the tank un balanced.

 

[Rogergolf66]

so just soi understand. the sences is do 5gal water changes for a week?

Roger

 

[caferacermike]

I don't think you'll get any one specific answer.

I'm recommending doing "emergency" 5g daily water changes for 2 weeks. Some might say sit back and see what happens. It is tough givign an answer to such a delicate situation. My answer is only meant to help make sure your water quality stays high instead of crashing out.

You see moving a tank can disturb who knows what. Without being there it is hard to determine if everything is exactly as it was before the move.

 

[Rogergolf66]

well I have another tank that has metal halide lighting also and same filter system and a protein skimmer. This tank has been astablished for about a year should I move the corals to that tank? Also what about the claims should I move them?


Roger

 

[Rogergolf66]

as far as the last question I just asked. I guess I should aslo include that I put a small cabage leather from that new tank in my 75gal tank the day I got everything and it is looking great. so I guess I kind of have my answer yes it did good in that tank, but I guess I mean since it is now stresed out will it be better to move it again to my astblested tank till this new tank gets better astablished?

 

[usmc121581]

If you do that you can stress it some more. I more you move things the more it will stress. Yiou wouldn't want to do more damage to it. But what you can do is drip acclimate it to you established tank

 

[Rogergolf66]

I just wanted to thank everyone for there time to aswer my questions.

Thank You
Roger