I thought I would post this to help others learn from my mistake. The TLDR version is never make assumptions with your tanks. So here is the whole story.
I finally had my wife's new Nano 24 ready to go. The replacement tank came in from Innovative Marine on Monday, and I got the sand, water, and rock in there. I gave it a few days to make certain that the tank was fully cycled (the rock and water had been in another container for about a month just waiting on the glass).
So we went shopping on Saturday to pick up a few items to put in there. We came home with 2 small Zoa rocks, a coral, and a Ricordia from Aquatic Art, and picked up a pipe fish, a tiny goby, and 2 sexy shrimp from Aquamart. We put everything in the tank after a long acclimation. Nothing was acting normal, but we just assumed nothing was real happy with the move. We also dropped in a Superman Monti that was losing some color in the main tank.
About 24 hours later I noticed that one of the brand new corals was completely melted. When we checked everything else closer we notice the monti was gone as well. I can take a hint that something was not right with this tank, so we decided that everything needed to come out of this tank now. Both fish, one shrimp, the Ricordia, and the 2 zoas came out alive and went into the main tank.
The next step was to figure out why this was happening. Test kits showed perfect water quality. PH, Amm, Nitrite, and Nitrate was all spot on. Finally my wife asked about salinity. I told her that I knew the salinity was good since I had checked it when I put the rock into the container to cycle a month ago. When I went ahead and checked the salinity to prove I was right, I discovered that the tank was sitting at 1.036. My failure to check this before putting in livestock killed at least three things so far, and the chances of those tiny fish and shrimp surviving in my large tank, or of me ever getting them out of there if they do, is pretty minimal. I still have hope for the two Zoa colonies and the Ricordia.
I hate to say this, but it actually took me almost an hour to realize that I had never put top off water in the curing container. It had started at exactly 1.026 about a month ago, but of course it was much higher by the time I put the water directly into the new tank. Well being stupid and not checking all the parameters has cost me, both in monetary and guilt terms.
I pass along my own embarrassing story in the hopes that it will help someone. Never trust what you think, always run the tests. I do not even have a good excuse for not taking the time to check this since I use a refractometer, and that means the entire test would have taken 5 seconds.
Live and learn.
I finally had my wife's new Nano 24 ready to go. The replacement tank came in from Innovative Marine on Monday, and I got the sand, water, and rock in there. I gave it a few days to make certain that the tank was fully cycled (the rock and water had been in another container for about a month just waiting on the glass).
So we went shopping on Saturday to pick up a few items to put in there. We came home with 2 small Zoa rocks, a coral, and a Ricordia from Aquatic Art, and picked up a pipe fish, a tiny goby, and 2 sexy shrimp from Aquamart. We put everything in the tank after a long acclimation. Nothing was acting normal, but we just assumed nothing was real happy with the move. We also dropped in a Superman Monti that was losing some color in the main tank.
About 24 hours later I noticed that one of the brand new corals was completely melted. When we checked everything else closer we notice the monti was gone as well. I can take a hint that something was not right with this tank, so we decided that everything needed to come out of this tank now. Both fish, one shrimp, the Ricordia, and the 2 zoas came out alive and went into the main tank.
The next step was to figure out why this was happening. Test kits showed perfect water quality. PH, Amm, Nitrite, and Nitrate was all spot on. Finally my wife asked about salinity. I told her that I knew the salinity was good since I had checked it when I put the rock into the container to cycle a month ago. When I went ahead and checked the salinity to prove I was right, I discovered that the tank was sitting at 1.036. My failure to check this before putting in livestock killed at least three things so far, and the chances of those tiny fish and shrimp surviving in my large tank, or of me ever getting them out of there if they do, is pretty minimal. I still have hope for the two Zoa colonies and the Ricordia.
I hate to say this, but it actually took me almost an hour to realize that I had never put top off water in the curing container. It had started at exactly 1.026 about a month ago, but of course it was much higher by the time I put the water directly into the new tank. Well being stupid and not checking all the parameters has cost me, both in monetary and guilt terms.
I pass along my own embarrassing story in the hopes that it will help someone. Never trust what you think, always run the tests. I do not even have a good excuse for not taking the time to check this since I use a refractometer, and that means the entire test would have taken 5 seconds.
Live and learn.
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