I think I made a water change mistake

Ok guys, so my coral hasn't all recovered yet. My birds nest turned white, My torches and hammer all shriveled and so did my Candy cane. I am disappointed in myself for not doing the research first and freaking out with so much change at once but I feel good because I learned a very valuable lesson and will not make that mistake again.

My Zoas are all ok so far but I am going to have a friend hold them for me until my tank is ok.

Now here is my questions.....

For further sand cleaning, I have a diamond goby and i am going to add a bunch of nassarius snails, sand sifting star, sand conch or other sand cleaners. I am also getting a siphon for cleaning the sand and gravel.

I am deciding on the hydrometer that I want and ordering one.

I am also adding a skimmer to my tank.

Now I have questions, do you guys think I should start all over and recycle my tank and everything? Or should I just replace the coral? I am asking because if my tank crashed, I would have to do all that right? If the coral just got really pissed, it should be ok now right? My fish are all fine now but my nem isn't back 100% yet and my zoas don't look as great as they did before all this.

Also, if the tank crashed and i need to recycle and everything, should I get new liverock and sand? If I can, I would like to take the opportunity to change the sand. It is currently a crushed coral with tons of shells and stuff. I want to change it to just sand now. If I have an opportunity to do that now, I want to take advantage of it.

What do you guys think?
 
CoralN00b said:
Ok guys, so my coral hasn't all recovered yet. My birds nest turned white, My torches and hammer all shriveled and so did my Candy cane. I am disappointed in myself for not doing the research first and freaking out with so much change at once but I feel good because I learned a very valuable lesson and will not make that mistake again.

My Zoas are all ok so far but I am going to have a friend hold them for me until my tank is ok.

Now here is my questions.....

For further sand cleaning, I have a diamond goby and i am going to add a bunch of nassarius snails, sand sifting star, sand conch or other sand cleaners. I am also getting a siphon for cleaning the sand and gravel.

I am deciding on the hydrometer that I want and ordering one.

I am also adding a skimmer to my tank.

Now I have questions, do you guys think I should start all over and recycle my tank and everything? Or should I just replace the coral? I am asking because if my tank crashed, I would have to do all that right? If the coral just got really pissed, it should be ok now right? My fish are all fine now but my nem isn't back 100% yet and my zoas don't look as great as they did before all this.

Also, if the tank crashed and i need to recycle and everything, should I get new liverock and sand? If I can, I would like to take the opportunity to change the sand. It is currently a crushed coral with tons of shells and stuff. I want to change it to just sand now. If I have an opportunity to do that now, I want to take advantage of it.

What do you guys think?
Click to expand...

definitely get a refractometer instead of a swing arm hydrometer.
Crushed coral IS bad, but you could start pulling some every time you do a WC and replace it slowly with new sand by using a PVC pipe to direct it into the tank without much sandstorm. If you go and pull all of your rock and substrate you will need a place to house your fish and coral because you will definitely spike your tank if you yank it all out. If it were me i would just let the tank slowly recover (and don't throw out frags until they start turning green with algae because I have had a couple come back from waaaay whiter than I would have thought). Pull the crushed coral over a long period of time and replace with sand or stay bare bottom (much easier if a little less aestetically pleasing). Your nem is probably the best gauge of current tank happiness. If it is recovering, so will everything else (minus too far gone SPS). Enough of my rambling. . . Good luck! Let us know what you decide to do.
 
Ok everyone, so I took all the advice here, then made a decision. I actually pulled everything from the tank, salvaged what i could and then got rid of the rest. I lost alot of coral. My neon candy canes, xenia, kenyas, toadstool and a few polyps all passed on. I lost two fish too. One small tang and one small wrasse and a cleaner shrimp. Some snails too. It could have been much worse.

I had a tiny blue tang in there (impulse noob buy) and I needed to get him into a bigger tank. I picked him up at an inch in size, and he grew to almost 3 inches in a few months so I had to get him in a bigger one. I traded him at the LFS since I had the tank empty and he was hard to catch.

My Zoas were held by Mai for me and kept safe. My Diamond Goby survived and so did my two clowns. I traded the Tang for a Firefish and another clown. So now I have the Diamond Goby, Firefish Goby, and three tiny oscillaris clowns. I will eventually change the clowns to different clowns.

Now, I took all my liverock out and started to clean it right away. I also took out all of my water and discarded it. I then took out all of the crushed coral I had and tossed it too. Man, that was the worst 6 hours of my life. The tank smelled horrible. I wouldn't wish that on my worst enemy.

After my tank was completely empty and dried up and clean, I started to add my new sand. I picked up 30 pounds of "NATURE'S OCEAN BIO-ACTIV LIVE ARAGONITE REEF SAND". I wanted a powder fine sand for my diamond goby and I wanted a nice white sand. I couldn't be happier with this stuff! It looks amazing and my coral and goby are happier than ever! I now have a 1.5 - 2 inch sandbed of fine white sand.

I then used the same brand of Natural Seawater. My LFS sells it for a reasonable price so I decided to give it a try. Once all my levels were perfect, I added my livestock back in. My Goby paused for a second and then quickly got comfy. My nem is doing great, my clowns were perfectly fine and so if my firefish. I put my zoas back in jsut the other day after a month of no issues. My nem took two days to open up fully but he is back to normal and perfect! He is open and happy, my Goby is so active now. He never hides, he loves exploring the tank and he has a great personality. Definitely much happier.

I picked up a few free frags from some great people on here and then purchased some more high end stuff. Everything is doing great! I haven't been happier with this hobby. Instead of getting discouraged by it, I learned more skills and am super happy with the hobby. I enjoy it even more now.

I am going to add another wave maker and a skimmer or media reactor to it. Other than that it is all good, until I maybe switch it to LED's from the halides.

I'll put up some tank pictures tomorrow. Thanks again for all the help guys!
 
Glad you're back with a fresh start and a healthy attitude towards it all! Take it all as a learning experience, and just be glad to learn what you've learned! I'm looking forward to your new tank pics.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top