Ugh...potential disaster...calcium snowstorm?

[joefitz]

Bad day.

So this morning I get a call from a friend of mine that needed an emergency ride to the hospital...while I was drip-dosing a two part calc/alk additive. Needless to say in the rush, I forgot to stop the additives... I came home to an extremely cloudy (white) tank.

I immediately stopped the dosing but I'm not sure what to do next. I'm making as much RODI as I can so that I can mix some fresh saltwater up and start water changes...

Is there anything else I can do?

Nothing looks incredibly stressed at this point, other than me, but this can't be good. I was only dripping the additive so it isn't like I emptied all of it in there, but obviously it was way too much.

Ugh. So...did I in all likelihood just kill my tank or is there still a good chance things will pull through? Would I be better off trying to set up a couple rubbermaid containers as quarantine tanks for the fish and/or corals while I figure out how to fix the main tank or should I use the new saltwater I'm going to make to do water changes? At this point, I plan on doing the latter. Unfortunately, I don't have much water right now and I have a LOT of water volume (350g or so) so it is going to be a while before I can do much of anything at all.

I feel like such an idiot.

Joe

 

[dad300]

LOTS of Water changes to dilute what is going on. Did you test your parameters?
calc, alk, PH?
have your corals begun to shed or slime?

 

[dad300]

How long were you gone? it may be you came home just as it reached critical mass and began the snowstorm.

 

[joefitz]

I was gone for about four hours...but I definitely came home just as it began because it was only a little cloudy when I arrived home, more like a slight haze. I knew something was wrong immediately, remembered that I had been dosing, and stopped it immediately. But over the next hour, it got worse and worse. It seems to have levelled off a bit, that is to say, it doesn't appear to be getting worse anymore, but at this point it is hard to really say.

I shut my lights off in an effort to potentially reduce the stress on the inhabitants (and I'm not sure how much good my lights are going to do in this situation anyway).

I am hoping to do a 10% water change in a few minutes and then another one later tonight.

My readings yesterday: calc had been at 380 and my alk at 11 dKh with a PH of 8.3... My calcium reactor has been offline the past week or so which is why I started a small dosing regime to maintain levels.

My PH has dropped from 8.4 this morning to 8.1 right now. My calc is down to 350 and my dKh is at 12.

 

[~Flighty~]

I'm sure someone more knowlegable will chime in, but I don't think the snowstorm is a very damaging problem. Baisically the calcium reaches a point where it forms little crystals and falls out of the water. the crystals are messy, but similar to sand and pretty inert. the problem is that the calcium doesn't stop crystalising untill it reaches a lower concentration in the water (what you're seeing with the test) so you'll have lo calc after the event.

 

[smcnally]

Does higher alkalinity cause it to condense at lower Ca levels? 350 isn't high at all for Ca. I keep mine right around 440-460 and have never had condensation.

 

[dz6t]

After a calcium crash, the pH and calcium level will normally drop. I would just leave it alone if I were you. A 20% water change should not hurt either.

 

[joefitz]

The PH is still dropping...down to 8.07 now. Not particularly low or anything, but I do hope to stop it from falling. I'm going to be doing my first 10% change in the next hour or so, hopefully that will help.

It does already appear to be getting a little better. I've increased the output of my skimmer so hopefully that will help remove the particles faster too.

 

[joefitz]

Well, I still haven't done a water change yet and the tank is definitely clearing. I can see pretty well into the tank now even with the lights off. Everything seems to be ok so far. A few of the fish seemed pretty scared by the whole event but most have resumed their normal activity, scouting around the tank and whatnot. I turned off the lights so the snails are out in full force and even my lettuce nudibranch seems to be doing ok. My anemones look ok...the only coral that seemed at all affected so far was an open brain, but even that looks ok for now.

The ph seems to be slowing its plummet as well...it is at 8.06, a drop of only about .01 over the last hour which so I think that will probably hold.

I'm just letting my freshly mixed saltwater heat up and then I'll be doing a 10% change. Hopefully, as some have suggested, this will be a case of it looks worse than it is...

Thanks for the notes all...

 

[dad300]

That is Great news!!!

 

[skyedolphan]

Joe I have done the same thing in the past but at a much worse case the whole tank was non seeable ( is thta even a word ) and it lasted for 8 hours even with doing a 50 gallon water change my brain also was the only one really effected but pulled thru with no problems just make sure that no calcium deposit sits on any of your corals that is were you get the problems keep water circulating good and skimm the hell outta it ..

 

[joefitz]

1st water change done...preparing the next. Ph has risen to 8.14 since the water change. I cleaned out the skimmer -- wow did that pull out a lot of white stuff! I can see end-to-end in the tank again. Everything seems a-ok...the open brain that looked a little agitated is even back to normal already.

Lessons learned:

1) Never help friends in need (j/k)
2) Don't put a 350g tank in a 600 sq ft apartment unless you also happen to rent the apartment next door (or don't mind living in a disaster zone)
3) Do water changes more often (as opposed to never); they aren't very hard to do
4) Don't wait a week to fix an important part of your setup (my CA reactor in this case); especially if it means you have to do something else on a regular basis to compensate
5) Don't make things more difficult than they need to be: I was drip dosing something that I could easily have just tossed in the tank in the quantities I'm dosing...trying to be "nicer" to the tank by drip dosing it ended up resulting in this mess
6) Always keep an extra bucket of RODI and/or mixed saltwater so you don't have to make it in order to do a fast water change
7) Buy a house (for the second time in a month I've been outbid on a place I wanted...grrrrr)


I'm sure there are many others, but those are the first ones that come to mind.

Thanks again to everyone...

 

[AbbeyRoad]

ohh yuck! hope all is well (tank and friend) and the tank regains stability.

 

[starrfish]

Joe, I was glad to get to the end of this post! Glad everything worked out ok.

 

[NateHanson]

phew!

Glad things are working out Joe.

Nate

 

[joefitz]

Thanks all...figured I'd do a quick update... Everything seemed "back to normal" before I went to bed last night. I emptied the skimmer one last time, mixed up a fresh batch of saltwater (so I could do another change in the morning), cleaned off the glass, did a quick spray of the rocks/corals to try to get sediment off them and went to bed...everything looks a-ok this morning.

I've done another 5% water change this morning and will likely do a few more of them throughout the course of the day. It has been far too long since I did a good water change anyway...

I am very glad I have a decent size skimmer...once I set that thing a little 'wetter' it really yanked the gunk out of the water column. I suppose that is another lesson I'll take away from this; I know a bunch of people are going skimmerless these days but wow, I can't imagine having recovered from this episode nearly so quickly without a skimmer. I'd rather have a big womping skimmer so if I'm a bonehead again I have help digging myself out.