Alaska_Phil

Let's hope not!

Hey Phil, take a bunch of pics of the build! I really want to make one myself.

Phil that just stinks greatly

What has "Changed" in the system in the last couple of weeks other than the sump. If the sump is the only change recently then let's look into the "Sump" in how it's made, cleaned, connected etc. Since this does seem to be more than just a slight shift in parameters I suspect there is a contaminant to blame.

• What type of sealants were used?
• What type of cleaners have been close to the tank in the last 72 hours?
• Anything changed in the house (New plants, new candles, air fresheners etc)?

I wish there was something we could do to help you out. I know how bad it sucks to see something like this "in progress".

the sump was built with GE pure silicon, I checked carefully to make certain it wasn't the anti-mold type. It had a week to cure before water was added.

The only cleaner I used was denatured alchohol prior to using the silicon.

This tank is in the office, and we had a major spring cleaning recently. I was out doing field work at the time, but suspect that spray cleaners were heavily used. It also dawned on me that some of the PVC piping I used had been sitting in a corner of the hangar for a year. I paint and use various solvents and lubes in there all the time, so It may have been contaminated.

I don't know that it matters what the source is, the solution is the same. Running lots of carbon and doing water changes and keeping all my measurable parameters were the need to be until things improve again.

Any updates?

Hey Phil, just an idea. Make sure the office workers don't spray glass cleaner directly on the tank, but into the napkin away from the tank. And, make sure they don't have any auto fragrance sprayer in that office area and make sure the workers know not to spray in the area also. I just thought of these things and wanted to share them with ya. It is probably something silly going on.

When I set up my work tank I had a face to face with our cleaning crew (They were very receptive) that no cleaners were to be used in my office period. They are fine with that as long as they aren't held responsible for NOT using them in my office (aka Allen is responsible for those tasks in Allen's office).

On a side note... a local reefer here in the county had a total tank crash over some kind of "Plug-In" air freshener system. It was one of the "misting" kind and apparently something in it wasn't very REEF friendly! So to make a long story short she lost hundreds of $$ worth of Reef over a $10 air freshener. She was kind enough to share this information with the LFS hoping someone else might avoid the same mistake.

well, I tested the parameters again last night:
Calcium: 450 ppm
Alk: 9.0 kH
Mg: 1380 ppm
pH: 8.3

Doesn't get much better than that, but my Monti isn't looking any better, and now my frog spawn is completely retracted and shedding polyps. Loosing the frog spawn (FS) would hurt more than the monti, I got the FS as a little 1", badly damaged colony 4 years ago, now it's skeleton is 6" across. It's as much a showpeice in my tank as Marc's toadstool is in his. I'm mixing water to do a 20% change this weekend.

Thanks for the suggestions, but I've long since trained everyone not to use spray cleaners in the lobby, and there arn't any new air fresheners or anything being pumped into the air that I can find.

Phil that stinks! I'm sorry this isn't improving.

Polyp Bail-out isn't a good sign at all. This only happens in extreme cases and is an attempt to get some portion of the animal into another area where "maybe" it will survive. It's like an anemone "splitting" under extreme stress. It's a last ditch attempt to assure some portion of the species makes it to another day.

If you were closer I'd come over and help and we'd frag some coral to another tank. Man that's gut wrenching bro!

And what I don't get, is that my open brain, just a few inches away, is looking better than ever!

I've got snails crawling around on the monti's skeleton now, so I guess it's finished.

update: As of late afternoon the monti looks like it's a goner, it's completely bleached and one of my astrea snails was already eating algae off of it.

The frog spawn is still fully closed up, just like first thing in the morning before the light come on. But at least it's not shedding polyps any more. Color is still dark, so I'm hopeful I can revive it. If I can figure out what's irritating it to begin with.

My open brain is looking fantastic today though. The metalic greens are stunning, it's expanded out fully and just looking awesome. However, last night it was covered with what looked like a mucus layer. So I gently blew that off with a turkey baster.

Toadstool leather opened up and expanded today, but only briefly and partially opened it's polyps. Doesn't look like it's generating a mucus layer though. Finger leathers look shriveled up and arn't showing any polyps, but they've been looking ill since I upgraded the lighting last year.

My zoa colony looks the same as always, which has never been great. They survive but don't seem to spread at all. But they're all open and have good color right now.

Mushrooms are looking healthy as always. Fish are looking great and my clowns appear to be gearing up to spawn again.

I'm almost finished building an algae scrubber for this tank, I should have it finished tomorrow and running in the sump by the end of the weekend. I'll start a separate blog for that, but they're reportedly used for cleaning up industrial waste and extracting heavy metals from waterways, so I'm hopeful. But it will probably take 4 to 8 weeks before I see any real benefit from it.

that's about it, water changes tomorrow. fingers crossed.

Be sure to change out the carbon again, so it is working at peak efficiency.

got the water change done today, and discovered I'd improperly assembled the reactor. The top piece inside was crooked, so the water was just circulating in the top bypassing the carbon. It's now assembled properly with a fresh load of carbon.

However, I think it's too late for this monti


On the plus side, my frogspawn is starting to expand again, no were near it's former glory, but it's an improvement.

Hey that's awesome the Frogspawn Is coming out. Maybe whatever was happening with the Monti was effecting the Frogspawn.