If it had just been the screen, I'd say the lights went out. But never heard of it happening to everything.
If it had just been the screen, I'd say the lights went out. But never heard of it happening to everything.
Neither have I. I'm honestly stumped. Lights are working fine as of this morning--just replaced them, too. They are the same 40w 2700K CFLs. No idea what happened, but the water has been changed (roughly 50%) and I've cleaned the aftermath out of the sump. I'm hoping the new single-sided screen will work out a bit better as, at the very least, it should allow for more water flow around the algae and also prevent the die-off that would occur in the middle. Hopefully everything pulls through...
Well, the death is still ongoing. Corals that were doing so well are now dying and/or dead. Ugh...
The only time I have had a screen turn to mush and crash my tank was when I tried to use Biopellets in a BRS reactor.
With cyano, isn't there a special ratio of N/P that encourages growth while discouraging most macro algae growth? Ultra low phosphates and high nitrates is what I remember being the ideal scenario for cyano growth. New tank syndrome usually fits this scenario which is why most people get cyano outbreaks on new tanks. The rocks/sand is able to sequester phosphates in the beginning which leads to low phosphates and high nitrates. If that is the case, I can see how some types of macro algae/sea grasses may cause that scenario depending on the species N/P uptake, and on your system it might have just passed the tipping point as your sea grasses grew.
Just tossing out ideas, obviously I don't know the exact answer, and you would have a much better idea than I would on that anyway, Mr. Biologist.
Amp,
Sounds like you have something else going on in your tank.
Any metals? Kid tossed in something? A change in water that you use for top off?
I had a cat once pee in a tank, really raised the ammonia level!
Some marine bacteria can give off phosphinothricin under starvation conditions, if that's any use to you. It's also known as glyphosphate or "Round-Up" is the artificial version. On the other hand, if toxic metals have been deposited in the sand bed, precipitated to calcium carbonate, a massive increase in bacterial activity can produce excessive Co2, reducing pH and dumping the metal content into the column. That's purely from research, not experience.
This is part of what I was thinking, at least with the start of the cyanobacterial growth. NO3 is currently not detectable with the old Elos kit I have, but that doesn't mean it isn't higher than the PO4 concentration, which could very well be causing this. I know freshwater systems often work this way, too.
Something I'm also considering, though there isn't any possibility of throwing something in the tank, since I'm the only person there. I'm actually going to go ahead and replace my RO/DI filters just in case, even though TDS is measuring 000 out of the final DI stage. I'm also running carbon fairly aggressively and have from the start. That doesn't mean I can completely rule other things out, but I'm doing everything I can to hopefully do something close to it.
This I've actually read before, but never really thought about it. Something very, very odd I noted when I removed the screen with all the cyano sludge was that the screen reeked of... chlorine. That's right, chlorine. I tested the tank with some low-range strips and got nothing, but I wonder if some strains of cyanobacteria are capable of releasing chlorinated compounds or chlorinated species when under specific conditions. This stuff was literally making my whole sump smell like it...
In any case, the death is continuing. The Montipora that had done such a good job of hanging on to dear life suddenly started sloughing tissue in select areas. Whatever is going on is just not stopping... I'm at a loss at what to do at this point.
Wow. Really sorry to hear this. I was looking forward to seeing your tank grow out. It looks very interesting and different. I guess we've all read about similar situations where a tank is doing fine and the mysteriously crashes. The massive foaming in the sump is quite odd too. Could some aerosol have been present in the air? I am also wondering if the DSB had something to do with this? Could a pocket of hydrogen sulphide developed and been released? How about alkalinity and ph levels? Normal?
I know it's discouraging but keep at it and keep us posted.
Chlorine?
There was an incident at a LFS several years ago where the person making RO/DI water got the output hoses mixed and ended up filling jugs with the wastewater instead.
Luckily this mistake only had an effect on 2 or 3 customers but it was a real mess.
There was a time last year where the chlorine and chloranamine levels in our local water supply shot up because of additional dosing by the water company.
People using de-chlorinator ran into problems in their fish tanks as it was more than the chemicals could handle.
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