"Casey" . wrote on Thu, 15 May 2008:
We have a well established 180gal reef tank. My father inadvertently added
WAY too much calcium chloride on Sunday. Tuesday I noticed a dead fish.
Yesterday I scooped out 5 more and today I don't see the last couple. The
2.5' long waving hands looks almost dead, the 1.5' leather coral looks BAD.
All the mushrooms are now closed up. Could this all be from the calcium??
You don't have to diagnose the problem exactly, because the treatment is
the same. Clearly your water is screwed up. Replace it.
We have changed about 25 gal in last 2 days
I mixed up r/o water and salt to a high concentration of about 1.029 or so
thinking that it would take a high concentration to get a reading and to my
amazement it tested at 700-800!!!!
What can I do?!?!? I can't just dump in 25-30 gal fresh water to drop the
calcium because that would screw the salt level, ph, etc....
Of course you can't just dump in fresh water.
But you can do a huge water change. In a 180g tank with totally messed up
water, you replaced 25g and hoped that would fix it?
Try replacing 75-100% of the water.
It would be best to do it all at once, but it's almost as good to do it in
stages, if you can't make that much new water at once.
E.g., Replace 50g every six hours, four times in a row.
You wouldn't ordinarily want to make such a drastic change, but that's because
ordinarily your existing water is "ok", and the animals (fish/coral) have
adapted to the current conditions.
Not so with your situation. Your animals are dying in their current water.
The solution? Change the water.
If I don't get this thing headed in the right direction TODAY I'm afraid
Everything will die :-( !!! Most everything in the tank has been doing
great for over 2 years or more and has multiplied in size several
times... man I hate to see anything die!
You need a massive water change. Immediately.
Good luck,
-- Don
__________________________________________________ _____________________________
Don Geddis
http://reef.geddis.org/
To me, truth is not some vague, foggy notion. Truth is real. And, at the same
time, unreal. Fiction and fact and everything in between, plus some things I
can't remember, all rolled into one big "thing." This is truth, to me.
-- Deep Thoughts, by Jack Handey