Neptune Aquatics

Tank help Please

patchin

Supporting Member
This is bad timing with the swap and all, but my tank chemistry is having problems. Most of my mushrooms are melting, plus my xenia has mostly melted away. Took a sample to AG and this is what came back:
ph 7.9 A little low
Nitrate 50 overfeeding new clowns, most likely
Iodine 0 can I use the dipping solution, if so, how much in 40 ga?
Alk 9.0
Ca 470
Ammonia 0

Did a 10% water change, so nitrate is a little lower now. The AG guy said xenia needs Iodine, well, I guess everything needs iodine. It's not in IO mix?
ASM skimmer still not producing. Water level in skimmer is up to the top of the cylinder, right where it bevels in.

Any help, ideas would be much appreciated.
Steve
 
I don't think lack of iodine will make xenia melt. Water change will deal with iodine.

Did you spike your temperature at all?

I would lean towards temp, ammonia, or s.g. for mushrooms and xenia melting.
 
The highest temp I saw was 81.5, I believe. Would that do it? Most of the shrooms were on one particular rock and the xenia was close to it.
 
That temp should be ok.

Almost sounds like the mushrooms were fighting with something and maybe the there was some necrosis to go around.

I've never had my xenia close enough to mushrooms to see if that would happen. Were they yuma ricordeas by chance? Those can be pretty powerful. I've had those sting LPS after some turbo snails rearranged my tank for me :(

Where there any aggressive lps near the mushrooms and xenia? The silver/green or the orange/green acans from the swap perhaps? Echinata and subechinata can put out some long sweepers after dark.
 
There were a couple very small zoos and a green toadstool on the same rock as the shrooms. The xenia was on the next rock over, not touching the shrooms. The toadstool's polyps are retracted.??????
I'm perplexed. This happened before the Acans went in. I wish I had a guarantine tank now.
 
What is the salinity? I don't understand why the skimmer is still not working for you. It worked great on my 100G and 50G tank. Raise the water up a bit. I had it as high as 1-2" before it overflow into the collection cup.
 
dosing with anything? I've found that added chemicals will mess with skimmate production. I found that when I run fresh carbon my skimmer does really well shortly after.
 
A natural cue for Xenia to die in nature is temp. What are you normally running it at, did it spike to 81.5?
 
Xenia dying?!?! Is that possible?

I agree with Art, if you added supplements to the system then your skimmer might not work for a while. BTW, NEVER add iodine. A reef only needs a minimal amount of iodine and you will get this from water changes and frozen food. To much iodine can be real bad.

Unfortunately I don't know what would cause your xenia to "melt". I'd just keep doing small daily water changes until it stops. You don't want that dead "goo" floating in your water.

If you need new xenia or shrooms, I have a bunch that I fragged recently. I can repopulate your tank for you.
 
my xenia melted awhile ago as well. it also might have been due to heat issues. I remember it dying around summer when temps went up a bit.
 
What are you using to measure salinity?

If it's the classis swing arm one then you may want to reconsider getting a refractometer. It's a bit more accurate.
 
If you can get a sample of the salinity measured by someone who has a refractometer that may be a good thing.

I find that the swing arm ones read too low. So is you are measuring the water sample at 1.027 it could be much higher, but the fact that the skimmer is not skimming could also be the salinity is too low. Is the water foaming at all? The foam should be like a wet looking foam like a latte or rapidly deflating whip creme/heavy creme (not cool whip).
 
when you took your water sample to AG, did they measure salinity for you?

not sure if it's accurate by the time it gets to the store... but they could double check your swing arm.
 
I didn't know mine was inaccurate, so I don't think they checked it. I did notice that the swing arm had a prefered range of 1.022-1.024, which I thought was quite low.
 
Hi,

I just want to chime in on the swing-arm comments. A swing-arm may not be as "accurate" as a refractometer, but it is "reliable". As long as you rinse you swing-arm and make sure the arm doesn't have bubbles on it then it should consistently read the same, which is the most important. So, whether or not your reading of 1.027 is accurate or not it is more about the relation to your "normal" reading.

Try to get your salinity back to what it was and keep it there. A swing of .003 in a short amount of time is big, but over a few days shouldn't be catastrophic. Bring it back down slowly and use a top-off to keep it constant.
 
My skimmer is bubbling, just not enough to get it into the collection cup. What has made it is very watery. The sooner I get it working, the sooner I can get back to feeding my corals without fear of spiking my nitrates.
 
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