Troubling conditions of my tank...

1. Using saltwater to top off the tank instead of RO can slowly raise your salinity. Just test it every day and make sure you don't go too high.
2. Have you tried testing for things like Copper? Also do you have any carbon? If yes, when was the last time you replaced your carbon? Adding new carbon could remove anything bad in the water.

3. Are the NH3 or NO3 levels horribly high? pH horribly low? I see that you re-tested everything, did it all turn out okay (within reason?)

 

With the die off you're talking about and your numbers being ok, try carbon to absorb anything bad even if you can't test for it the carbon will remove it. See if that helps.

 

Do you have a recycling orasump set up with macro algae? If noted your nitrates are 0 you have either equality tests or you are not cycling correctly. Even if younhab a bunch of macro seems unlikely that you're not seeing any nitrate. Ammonia at 0is worrisome you havedie off. Po4 at this point is a little less of a worry, but if the test is anything but yellow you have Po4 if recently had die off, and have no no traces of ammonia or nitrates that is a problem.

See if a Lfs will do a Cu test for you, ifyou have any the snails would not be making it eitherand the chocolate would have melted (down the line when you start reeling you will want to home the chocolate Asheville demolish anything in the tank)

I am gonna checkout your about progress area, let us know on the algae.

 

The water quality is most likely the issue and the fluctuating params that have occurred over the weeks. Adding buffer and other things have probably worsened the SW quality. With the rock being exposed to hot tapwater and allowed to dry for only a week (which internally it would still be wet unless they are very small pieces) has introduced high(er) TDS and other metals. WalMart water is probably part of the issue. I would suggest that you start over:
1) with quality RO/DI
2) mixed to the correct salinity of 1.025-1.026 (aerating it for at least 24 hours)
3)using a properly calibrated refractometer
4)use quality test kits (Salifert, Elos, Red Sea,LaMotte...not API or test strips)
5)let the tank cycle fully
6)SLOWLY begin the stocking process!
7) Research and Read before you begin

Most likely all the brittle stars are dead as the rest of the biolife. Unfortunately this is a live and learn experience at the demise of the tank inhabitants. PS. Chocolate Chip star will eat corals. To possibly save anything left alive, place in quality SW with heater,carbon and flow. Sorry for the losses!!

 

If you follow the booklet its straight forward. And any chemistry, biology or physics background will help immensely in our hobby! API is a nice cheap brand, but the tests tend to be a little... well crap... PO4 is not going to kill animals until it is at really high levels. same with Nitrates, Nitrite and Ammonia will be the killers in the basic cycling process. I would be looking into any other chemicals present. If the RO system is not running good solid carbon you will have chlorine/chloramines as the sediment and RO filters themselves do not remove these.


I am still wary of the cycle being complete. to note, without a refugium with macro algae to remove NO3 then you have to be seeing them. In fact until the use of macro algae to remove it NO3 was an indicator that your system was biologically filtering with nitrifying bacteria... If you have never read ammonia, or nitrate, There is an issue. The PH is a little low. this could be from a lower mix of salt. You can run RO water. You will have to be religious with water changes weekly at 25% or so to keep away the algae away.

I think Sponge might be on the right track with starting over.

But I also think you can pull through this. Start by mixing your salt to 1.025-1.026. Mix the saltwater up. in a 5 gallon bucket at 30 gallon tank at 1.023 pull out 5 gallons. mix it up to around 1.035 and let stand 12 hours if you have a bubbler and a heater, and add it into the tank. Make sure any macro life is out of the tank. You can house them in the 5 gallons you pull out. The acidity will lift and you will get the right set of numbers. Don't get too focused on TDS it can and will play a part down the road, but right now be sure your RO unit is using a carbon filter, and it is new. everything from here will only server to make things better.

If you are adding that stress coat go ahead and stop you may be inadvertently converting ammonia in the tank to chlorine/chloramines which could be why you are not reading them. and still killing things off.

Baserock takes a while to get live. Again sprinkle in some food tonight and see what you get in the morning. If the animals are all out you have nothing to hurt, and a spike in ammonia will help a bacterial bloom!


( on a side note, horses wont do well in a reef tank, they are kinda like the goldfish of saltwater IMO. They are very very dirty animals, and cannot swim to save their own life so high flow will send them all wondering about and freaking out. and two in a 30 is ALOT of bioload)

 

Justin, I'm going to try and say this nicely.... even if you added a bacteria starter in a 30g tank only 1 fish should have been added within the first week. Another fish *may* have been added within the next 2 weeks. Certainly not 4 fish on the fifth day.

Please note that EACH addition to a tank creates an increased need for biological bacteria load. This means in a sense the tank will go through a mini-cycle at EVERY addition. Did you know that on average it takes a full 30 days for the bacteria to bloom and settle at the right ratio for a tank upon set up? In essence your tank, now at just barely a month old has completed it's very first cycle and nothing more. The load capacity at which you threw on it was way too much for the start up. I don't normally harp on anyone for 'livestock choice' either, but seahorses, as cool as they are... require mature tanks and dedicated high water quality.

I'm not trying to be mean here, just real... and honest. This sounds like a classic case of new tank syndrome. Remember with fish tanks, but especially with saltwater tanks as the saying goes... "time is your best friend". Take your time. Going ''all in'' right up front, may not be the best thing for your aquarium.

I would certainly echo sponges list above...

Ok, that all being said... I do encourage you to keep going, just slow down and research... keep coming here for advice, we'll give it freely! It's a hard way to learn lessons with the loss of livestock. Sorry this went this way. Next time if you happen to see any of your livestock panting or 'breathing rapidly' it's most likely due to an ammonia or nitrite spike and a 50-60% water change is what I would do, after confirming with a test kit.

PLEASE feel free to come over to our place (we're in Ames) with a cup of water and we'll run tests on it for you, you can also bring your ro water and we'll TDS it if needed. IF you still have any FISH that have died you can bring them as well and I can scope them and most likely be able to tell what they died from.

Again, not trying to be mean...just saying it straight out like it is. Hope this helps!

 

Lets start with the RO, where are you getting it from?
You need at the very least have a reliable source of it. That's the starting point.

On the subject of water. Lets go ahead and pull out any live stock that you have if you have a place to store them. I still have a feeling that the tank does not have a working biological base. I would take a cup of water over to jazzybio13's and take him up on the testing. This could give us a hint as to whether the tank is building nitrates as it should be. Again with the test if the nitrates are negative. We are not dealing with a cycled tank.

For the sump I would mix it a little rich with salt. I have been using Instant ocean's Reef crystals for... probably the last 8 years or so. Always been pleased with it, though there are a couple other brands that I would be willing to try, but if we are being honest... We are hobbyists. We don't posses the equipment to make thorough mineralogical analysis of the salts we mix so sales and popularity drive the market... The best advice I can give you is use what you have been using. Many hobbyists will tell you that time is key. And I would agree but I also think that stability is the other side of that same coin. Lets take the time to stabilize what you have at this point, and we can move forward and upgrade/increase from there.
Adding the sump in now will increase the overall volume of the system, and volume equal stability. However I would wait till we work on the water issues.

As a note a tanks water is not really what is cycling. It is the creation of the bacteria on porous material in the tank. sand rock work filter bags pumps and so on. The actual amount of bacteria in the water column is negligible. So adding a sump can be done, and cycling it separate is something that I have never heard of. I would tie it into the system in a few days once we have some details straightened out.

API is a very popular brand, however they are notoriously unreliable. I would trade up to Red sea. Based on personal experiences and data gather by other boards and hobbyists. It's a fine starting point.

With regards to the carbon. Carbon is part of the RO filtering process, a typical system contains three stages. A sediment filter, Which removes large particulate matter form the incoming water. A carbon filter after that that removes chlorine and chlorinates, among other common chemicals found in municipal water sources like fluorine. and a reverse osmosis filter which further filters down the water to a typically high degree. This is the most basic of water filtration you should be using. Ideally there would be a DI unit behind the final RO stage to remove the last of contaminates from the water. With this being said this is the water that you should be using to top off your tank, and mix your saltwater up. This filter has nothing to do with your actual tank, this is a separate unit that attaches to your house or apartment water source to supply the fish water.

The most basic of filtration for your tank would include rock work, and something to move water. We learned in the early 1900's that adding some rocks from the sea made tanks last longer. At the very basic of tanks you can run with just some rock. You have to seed this rock with something. At the very least a piece of live rock form another tank. You said you used live sand so we should have a biological base to work with.

As far as lighting goes. If you dont have corals in the tank now, then the lights dont matter. Lighting is for you. There will be enough ambient light from a room for a tank to cycle without issues. Same for the sump.


Lets get the water lined up first and we can continue on to the sump side of things.

 

All right, now we are talking. Based on observation ( again by far the best tool we have as hobbyists when you spend time on it) We know that there is algae actively growing. We know that there is fauna in the snails that have not died off. We know where you water is coming from, and we know what media/type of filtration you are using.

Filtration: The canister filter is fine, I know a handful of SPS keepers that use canisters as their main tank filter. The only thing here is religious cleaning. I run a fluval G6 on my frag and grow out tank so I can vouch for the efficacy of the canisters ( granted mine is a cheating unit with a computer and monitors) You will need to clean the filter out at the least once a week. toss the sponges in a washing machine or rinse them like a mad man in a bucket. Clean all pads and rinse carbon filters as well, there's a good chance that the carbon filters will only be good for about a week. sand in the bottom is a regular happenstance. I tend to dump mine into a bin in the garage and dry it out rinse and replace in time.

The biological filtration point of the tank sounds to be pretty fresh, again if the live sand was added originally there was a seed. and the fact that the original base rock is turning green is a good sign. This is typically a diatom inclusion before the green coralline algae (and later purple) will begin to take a hold. This is a good sign. To the recently purchased live rock. I think chances are when you added the live rock from the other day. I would bet that you did not drip acclimate the rock itself ( while not required it is a good idea in general) This would contribute to an acute die off. A PH swing would be my first thought, that and temperature. This will cause a good chunk of the macro life to die off. And there would have been a fuzzy slimy coating to the rocks within the first few hours. I bet we are on the right track now.

There should have been an ammonia hike in the tank after that die off, and a nitrite spike a few days later. Because we have not seen these I am still betting that the test kits are not accurate enough. A good tip with the API stuff is to hold the tube against the color chart itself in high light, The bar that you cannot make out through the test tube is the best match ( or the one closest to the color) its difficult with API.

Lighting is going to contribute to the growth of algae. I am going to say your lighting choice is fine for now, you should probably cut time back to around 6-8 hours for now to inhibit algae growth for now.

Algae itself: Pics will give an indicator of the type. I would imagine its hair algae, and I would doubly so if it is growing on a snail shell. This is a nuisance algae, and is easily removed both physically and with a water change. When we thing back to our nitrogen cycle (not the tank side of it, but the actual biological chart) We know that food is added to a closed system, which our fish eat ( and often don't eat) the feces, and waste products form fish along with the uneaten food creates ammonia (NH4, toxic to animals in trace amounts as it builds in brain) the NH4 is eaten up by nitrosomanas sp ( I have had a handful of absinthe's this evening so I am not positive its the right spelling) bacteria which consumes the ammonia and produces Nitrite (NO2, Toxic, builds in the blood and replaces O2 suffocating the animals) Nitrite is consumed by Nitrobacter bacteria and converts it to Nitrate (NO3, toxic in high concentrations it takes a good bit) Plants and algae use Nitrite as fuel along with CO2 Produced by the animals in the system. Plants do use a very trace amount of ammonia NH4 however the amount they use is negligible in the closed system, and macro algae are using nitrates in the system, not ammonia. So from this we know that the algae in your tank is using some nitrates to convert to energy and grow.

Water: We can test the TDS of the walmart water, but its not going to tell us much. Its going to read somewhere between 12-45 depending on how long it is sitting in their system and when in the pour you test it. Even the most amazingly filtered water begins to build TDS when it hits a container. I think the Hobby has been steadily growing on the TDS bandwagon without really understanding the reading of what a total dissolved solid is. Which we can go into in another thread. its a bit heavy. The RO water should be fine so long as there is no chlorine in it. I would look to a LFS for your water. Most will sell you gallons at a pretty good rate. I would use that over walmart, that would be a personal preference, but there is a good chance that the LFS is going to be paying much much much more attention to their system. You really want to be using RODI water to get the purest you can, and the LFS should be able to provide that. You can get away with using RO only again, so long as the filtration is using carbon to remove chemical contaminates.


Also, don't ever hold back on admitting a bad move, Some may snicker at it, but the reality is they have done it too. I don't care how careful you were when you started. you messed up. we all have. That's how you learn. and I will be the first to admit I have done things to my tanks that was so incredibly stupid both starting up and moving along in the hobby. And from time to time still do things that I would NEVER recommend to someone. A 'dumb move' that is admitted can lead to an obvious clue that would have been committed.

I would go ahead and check out the LFS for some water, and if you can find some mix up the sump and let it stand till tomorrow. Take some time to watch the tank tomorrow after getting the sump ready. Lets give the tank some time to settle. We are still under 2 months which is an ideal cycle time (research can be provided upon request) so we are probably still looking at a sketchy period in the tank. Lets see what we get tomorrow.

 

With regards to the photo.

Rock: The green coloration is the beginnings of bacterial infestation ( good) and diatom growth( good) You should see the 'sun' facing side of these rocks in the next couple weeks start to darken green a bit and possible turn a lighter brown. You are on the right track.

Acrylics: that is not crazing, that is splintering from the drill and bit. With glass you want to go really really fast diamond bit, and move quick with water and or oils to cool it down. With acrylics you want to go nice and slow. the vibrations from the drill along with the chipping motion of a high RPM setting will cause those splits. try going a little bit slower on the bit and a little less pressure. let the blade scrape away at its own weight, you shouldn't have to push too hard or much at all.

Good choice of snails. Stay away from any that already have algae on them I have a nasty Bryopsis outbreak form a $.99 Astrea that has cost me a good bit in salt for changes... Ask the petco person when their orders come in and snag stuff then. I know ours comes in on Wednesdays. And drip acclimate for a long time, they tend to stiff on their salt water ( usually in the 10.21 range) because its cheaper.

Life forms on rocks: !!! What an awesome Find! I have been looking for one for a while! This is a 'ball anemone' which... is actually not an anemone at all! While it is in the anthazoa genus, similar in morphology to anemones. BUT!! Its a type of Corallimorph (Corallimorphidae) a mushroom! Of the species Pseudocorynactis By far my favorite kind! I am so happy for you. they are super neat! They will snag up fish if they get close and can eat considerably larger than their mouth. The ball/tentacle is amazingly strong and sticky!

More info here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XYwcX6AVw5I

Than at tidal gardens is awesome as well.

While they are able to snag things up, they are considered reef safe and make some pretty cool additions to a tank. There are a number of color morphs as well.