Help! Weird situation

#1
hello guys,
I’ve got an interesting thing going on in my tank. Yesterday I came home and it was as if my lights were off all day. All my corals were closed, and there was a spider web looking thing on all of them. I tested my water and ammonia was high at 50 ppm, nitrite 0, nitrate 40 ppm. Salinity was 1.026, calcium is 480, ph 8.2, and alk is 7.5 (for my tank normal). Today did water change and ammonia was 0, nitrite 0, and nitrate 10 ppm. Rest was the same. Corals are still closed, but fish and shrimp/hermits are all fine and still eat. No difficulty breathing. Weirdest part, all brittle stars and brittle worms are dying/dead. Weird little graveyard of those. They look like dead spiders (gross!!) anyone had this?
 

SynDen

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#3
Just a guess from looking at the pics, but I would say something has spawned, or something caused a bacterial bloom. What all is in the tank? Dose vodka or anything to the tank?
 

Cherub

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#4
something went toxic. Anyone with chemicals on their hands sticking their hands in the tank? Dead fish anywhere? Dead snails? Have you checked phosphates at all? Try to get everything that is dead out, even the spider looking stuff. I would do another water change or two in the next couple of days at least 20%
 

zombie

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#5
Could have been a sand bed bomb since it doesn't appear the sand has been regularly maintained. Something probably stirred up a particularly nasty part of the sand, creating a temporary ammonia spike which then killed a bunch of your sand dwelling stars and copepods and creating a chain reaction.

I would remove anything dead you can see, continue doing 10-20% water changes every time you see ammonia not zero and every other day for a week or two even if it shows zero. Make sure to lightly vacuum the sand when you do these to try and clear up some of that crud.

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reefkoi

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#7
thats what happened when my tank was nuked out with flatworm exit, the bristle worms and tiny brittle stars first came out all at once and died off then the corals all died but the fish were just fine have you added anything new? treated with anything recently?
 
#8
Nothing new. I do a 20% water change once a month, my phosphates are usually at like .1 and kinda hang there. Everything on the sand happened literally in the last day or two.. I tested with the salifert test kits. I haven’t had flatworms but sounds like a similar reaction! It’s insane how fast that happened. But no hands in the tank, the only thing I can think of is we had drywall put in but it was about a week before this in a different room. We used some seachem prime so maybe that’s whats helping so much today.

Haven’t tested today yet but corals are opening up again, probably about 40% open which is a lot better than yesterday. Water isn’t cloudy. Fish, crabs, shrimp and snails still doing good. Funny thing is, isopods are fine lol
 

SynDen

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#10
ya stray current or a busted heater would be my next guess. Tested for voltage in the tank at all?
 

zombie

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#11
Voltage won't cause that, but copper could. Did you test for copper? A busted heater or pump could leach enough to kill inverts pretty quick, but corals are slightly more tolerant and fish don't care.

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