danial123

hi guys, its been awhile, and i'd like to report my tank is going great! i think i have pin pointed the problem, and that is i didn't dechlorinate the tap water properly with a water conditioner. i didn't think that it was that important to add water dechlorinator because my dad keeps a huge 5 feet freshwater tank, and everytime he changes the water, he just connects a hose from the bathroom tap straight into his tank so i didn't think much about water conditioners. but after talking to him about my puzzling tank crashes, i realised, what i didn't see was that after he puts water in the tank he adds dechlorinator i shuda stayed til the end to watch how he did his water changes in stead of just seeing the beginning. but anyway a big to everyone. happy reefing. finally for me.

i just changed 20 percent of my water yesterday dechlorinating it with seachem prime, the water is still a little milky but i'm assuming that's just the tank cycling and it'll pass with time. i added in friendly bacteria as well. some of my zoanthids and green star polyps are starting to open again, during the crash they were completely shut with a layer of brown film on top but the brown film has been more or less shedded. hopefully my corals will make a full recovery. nitrite=0 nitrates=5 i don't have an ammonia test kit yet gonna get one soon to test it out.

yeah i have siphoned off almost all of the coral chips its only a thin layer now, so i doubt it'll trap anything, will siphon it all off next water change. by the way, what brand of distilled water do you guys use for water top ups?

i have just gotten my brand new bottle of seachem prime today, and i can already feel that my problem is solved. thank you guys for all the help and advice, i will definitely update you guys on any further changes.

wow, thanks for all the replies, i think its most likely the tap water, cause i realise the pattern is when i start doing water top offs or changes more frequently, with diamond water (which i tot was safe but i now know it isn't) or water that's been sitting around for a few days (cause it doesn't remove chloramine) that it starts happening. i never knew chloramines could do so much damage, i'm going to get a big bottle of seachem prime and hope for the best.

thanks for all the replies, well, i've only done testing on nitrates and its about 10 ppm which i think shud be pretty ok, i just used up my ammonia test kit so i'm not sure about that one. i do measure my salinity with a hydrometer. the tank i have now is 15 gallon and i'm using activated carbon catridges, and i don't think i plan to have anymore fish after all these incidents, at least for a very very long time. just be sticking to softies i guess. i too think that perhaps is the untreated tap water, more specifically the chloramines, i'll get my hands on some seachem prime or safe and see how it goes.

LOL, i doubt that's the case but thanks for the laugh.

what brands of anti chlorine wud you recommend? and what RO/DI unit would you recommend?

i've been keeping fish for about a year, well, on and off anyway, and for some reason whenever i set up a tank, it always crashes within a few months or even weeks. i'm going to share with you guys as much as i can, and i hope someone can at least let me know where i went wrong. it all began with freshwater fish at first. i set up a 5 gal cherry shrimp tank with a HOB filter, and all was good in the first few months i did my water changes every week and such and all of a sudden my tank crashed, the water smelt like chlorine/bleach (or ammonia? i've never smelt ammonia before but i heard that it smells like bleach?) not a single shrimp was left alive and the water was extremely cloudy and there was foam at the top of my tank. the week before my freshwater tank crashed, i had started doing a bit more frequent water changes with tap water so i concluded that i had simply added too much untreated tap water thus the chlorine smell in my water. a few weeks after that failure i decided to change it into a saltwater tank, i did my research and started putting coral chips about 2 to 3 inch thick substrate and live rock to start the tank cycling. the equipment i had at that time was the HOB filter from my freshwater tank and airstone skimmer as well as wave maker. after about a month i decided to put in live stock which were some mushroom and zoas since they were the easiest to keep, later on i started adding a few damsels and a clownfish, i had about 4 small sized fish at that point of time (which now i know is over stocking). my room is rather cool so i didn't have to install a chiller, my temperature was constantly below 28 degrees. all was fine and good, until i think i overfed my fish and the next day the water turned cloudy, (but no chlorine or bleach smell, it just had this really really fishy smell, so i changed the water and did some more research on improving water quality in nano tanks. i read this article about the benefits of doing small frequent water changes and doing daily freshwater top offs, so this time, instead of using untreated tap water, i used the diamond water system which i guess is similar to RO units that i had in my house PLUS tap water dechlorinator instead and did water changes every week. and a few weeks later, my water smelt like bleach/chlorine/ammonia? EXACTLY the same smell as what my freshwater tank smelt like! and my airstone skimmer's collection cup was overflowing. and the entire population was WIPED OUT! it was devastating cause even the bristle worms that i never saw before all started crawling out of the grounds and writhing in death. this time i came to a few conclusions, maybe my old equipment (the HOB filter) was contaminated or i had changed the water chemistry too much with my frequent water top ups and changes. and maybe i had overstocked. after much grieving and much much more research i decided to throw away ALL my previous equipment (even the cup that i used to do water changes with) and i bought a new pail, a powerhead filter with sponge and activated carbon, and a new airstone skimmer. as well as a this time 15 gallon tank. this time i put in 3 to 4 inch thick substrate of coral chips and a few kg of live rock and i let it cycled for 2 months. after which i once again added softies like zoas and mushrooms, this time for the fish, ever few weeks i would add only one fish. so in total i had 3, 2 clownfish, a yellow coral goby. so the bio load was manageable, this time out of a fear of past mistakes (whenever i started doing frequent water changes or top ups my fish would get that stupid chlorine/bleach/ammonia smell) i stopped doing water changes at all, relying more on the skimmer and live rock filtration, and doing water top ups only when necessry like once a week. but after a few months, still the same chlorine/bleach/ammonia smell came back and wiped out all my fish!!!!!! this time though instead of throwing everything out, cause i tried to save my corals i did a massive water change almost 100 percent and in a weeks time my corals were all looking as good as when i bought them and i was really relieved and happy. from this incident i concluded that perhaps i shoulda done water changes and maybe the build up of ammonia or nitrate or whatever it was caused the crash (cause i didn't change the water for 3 to 4 months) and a heavy bioload too (2 clownfish one yellow coral goby in a 15 g tank?) so this time, i decided to not have any fish at all. ok, so now we're getting closer to the present. this time, i did 10 to 20 percent water changes with a pail of salt water that had been sitting around for at least 24 hours (cause i heard this gets rid of chlorine too and lets the water settle) about once or twice a week. all was fine and good........... until i went out for about an hour to buy some food back home, before i left the water was crystal clear and totally odorless. when i got back disaster struck! the same chlorine/bleach/ammonia smell again! i swear i'll never forget that smell for the rest of my life. all my corals who were in the process of healing shrunk again and looked like they were on the verge of death. this time i did a 100 percent water change once again and further more i removed almost ALL the coral chips cause maybe they were trapping toxic or something and here i am now typing this to you all. is there someone out there who can tell me what went wrong? SUSPICIONS SO FAR 1 too many water changes, (but i used diamond RO water and let my water sit for 24 hours before using it) 2 too many water top ups (same as above) 3 too heavy bioload (but my latest attempt i didn't have fish at all!) 4 ineffecient filter system (but i didn't even have fish...) THINGS NOTED 1 water has a heavy chlorine/bleach smell 2 protein skimmer goes CRAzzzzzy over flowing with foam. 3 usually before it happens i do a fresh water top up (but i have to do it sometime right?) thank you very much for reading this.