On May 16, 7:59*am, Big Habeeb aka Mitch
wrote:
On May 15, 5:09*pm, Gill Passman wrote:





Casey wrote:
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??
Its around 580 ppm and water is now turning a bit milky... We have changed
about 25 gal in last 2 days but the problem is I tested the Tropic Marine
salt we've been using and even though there is no calcium listed in the 75
nutrients shown to be in the salt the level is HIGH. *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....

Has anyone tested instant ocean to see what the calcium level is??

Haven't tested tank today but Tuesday's levels
PH * * * * ~8.15 ish (hard to tell)
Ammonia *0 - 0.1
Nitrite * *.05
Nitrate * *6 - 7
Alkalinity *4
Calcium * *540-560

Yesterday's levels
PH * * * ~8.0-8.05 (again hard to tell)
Alkalinity * 3.75
Calcium * *580

Could the Alkalinity be more of a problem than the calcium??
I think the water is turning milky because the salinity is dropping trying
to mix it weak and even some fresh to drop the calcium.

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!

The first thing, and most importantly is to stop panicking.....it hurts
to lose fish and your inverts/corals but acting an impulse will kill
even more.....time to start being rational.....the worst thing is to
start adjusting stuff drastically and causing more stress to your
livestock....

The water is milky because of calcium precipitation - as hard as I've
tried to find out I have never heard anyone say that high calcium
actually kills fish - it just looks ugly.....

The most likely cause of your losses is the sudden change in the water
parameters. The best way of losing more fish is to change everything
again suddenly....you need to do this gradually but also paradoxically
as quickly as you can.....I'm guessing the raised nitrite is down to the
deaths but you do need to fix it (with water changes)

Adding additional fresh RO water is a bad idea....just continue with
your normal top up regime.....But doing water changes is a good idea
because of your nitrite and ammonia will rise with unfound bodies etc
etc, which will result in further deaths....and of course to reduce your
calcium.....

What I have found (and experienced) is that salt mixes tend to settle
and so therefore your salt mix could make up higher concentrates of
various minerals....someone told me to roll the salt bucket around the
floor to mix it and since I've done this my calcium, magnesium and
alkalinity tend to remain stable on my mixes....without the playing
football with the tub I was getting random results....(usually high calcium)

I also learnt that unless levels drop significantly the best bet is not
to add anything other than the sal****er mix on your water changes....of
course your need to add calcium and other minerals or buffering will
depend on what you are keeping but this is where the testing comes
in....Keep it simple and then complicate it if you need to on the basis
of the health of your livestock and test results....

In your position I would do small water changes once or twice
daily....changing between 10 and 20% each time.....

JMHO and not overly experienced with marine but quite a few years of
fish keeping otherwise under my belt

Gill- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

YOu need massive water changes immediately.what a bunch of bull****
Don. High calcium levels are not oging to do them in and yo know it.
Why panic the dude. 25% water change, with mixed synthetic salt of
oucrse, not freshwater, and then do it again the next day.......It
does not take long for calcium to cprecipitate out and become yet more
calcium on the tanks substrate. *Odds arew the fish died because
calcium chloride was merely dumped into the tank in larger doses than
accustomed to and fish swam right into it *before it got diluted and
mixed. I wuld assume in 2 yewars yo already new that yo do not
arbitrarily add fresh water to a tank, unless its merely to bring
evaporaiton of tank water back to normal level. After topping off tank
then do a water change and then your SG will not change.

OH, and keep your dad away from the tank unless he gets a gripe on
what is proper and learns how to measure correctly!

High calciumn levels DO NOT kill a fish or at least not in short
order...........as described above............- Hide quoted text -

- Show quoted text -

No big deal with precipitation of calcium. Just pretend its winter
time out and its snowing......................after a certain point it
all goes into preciptation and does little in the way of increasing
the test readings.....a perfect way to create a new clean white
substrate and cover up that nasty gray sand and cyano you have on the
tank bottom.....fresh as the newly fallen snow or calcium precipitate
in your case!