Trust, but verify.

Moral of the story:  Trust, but verify.
So I've had some fish in a tank that's smaller than what's appropriate for them until my 120 was ready.  The stress of the confined quarters caused them to get ich and so I started researching how to treat it without chemicals, etc.  I came across a great article on Reef Central by Steve Pro that talked about treating the fish with hyposalinity at 1.009 to 1.010 for two weeks, and that will kill the ich.  So I decided to give that a shot. 
I was talking to a good friend of mine about this and asked what kind of impact that would have on corals.  My friend said that SPS would die, but LPS and softies should be fine.  So I proceeded to slowly reduce the salinity over a period of two days.  This was where I made my mistake.  Now, this should have sent red flags up all over the place for me, but since I trusted the person, I just blindly believed it.  I took the advice, without verifying it.
Some of my corals turned to brown jelly, almost right away.  I treated all of the corals with an iodine based coral dip, then an RO rinse and put them in another tank that had the correct salinity.  Over the next couple of days, I saw some of my corals die.  The frogspawn shriveled up and the flesh just fell off the skeleton.  Ricordeas literally dissolved.  An RBTA shriveled up and has just disappeared.  Another split into two and hid under a rock for days.   Over the next couple of days, I used a sponge in my nanocube and did 50% water changes daily to keep the water quality decent.  I lost a bunch of corals.   A BUNCH.  Almost all of my LPS including acans, frogspawn, blastos, etc.  Some of it was just really pissed and eventually pulled thru.  I don't think anything came thru unscathed...everything had some kind of damage to it.  Luckily my duncans pulled thru (one of my favorite corals).  The zoas and palys remained closed for days. 
That was a week and a half ago now.  Many things are doing better.  Most of the zoas and palys are opening up now, not fully, but at least opening.  I know they will pull thru.  I lost all but one of my acans.  I also lost some of my original corals that I bought at my first Fall Fest,  like my purple tip frogspawn and my sun coral.  All in all, hundreds of dollars of corals were lost, but at least I was monitoring things and I was able to save some.
Anyway, I'm not posting this for sympathy, but as a lesson to others.  On this site, there's lots of advice that gets passed around; and I would say most of it is good.  But occasionally, you'll get that one bad piece of information and it can be devastating.  So I go back to how I started this posting...trust, but verify.  Your tank is your responsibility.  Anything you choose to do to it, is on you; not on the person that told you to do it.  I don't blame the person that gave me the advice, I blame myself.  I didn't verify what they told me.  This was an expensive lesson for me, but I'm sure one that will stick with me for a very long time.
--AJ

 

I'm really glad to hear your stuff came back.  You have some sweet stuff and that would have been horrible to have seen it all go.
Yeah, I should have asked more...but it wasn't because of my position.  My position is administrative in nature...working with the rest of the officers to organize stuff and preparing for things.  I never equate it to my knowledge in the hobby or let it prevent me from asking questions.  I read a lot.  I ask opinions a lot.  In this case, I was just in a hurry.  I got careless.  Someone told me something and I took it and ran.  I didn't verify.  I didn't want the ich to progress too far before I started treatment.  I didn't want to loose anything (which I might add does seem like it's worked pretty well on the fish).  I still see myself as a noob with this stuff...I don't have near the experience as you or Jason G, Eric, JB, Craig, Sone, Joel, RC, etc...some of you guys that have been doing this stuff a really long time.  And speaking of experiened folks, I saw Bill lurking the other day...hope he's considering getting back in!  He was another gold mine of info and experience.
Thanks for making sure that I didn't feel that way. 
I posted so that others could know...not just about what happened to my stuff (that's really not the point), but to take the advice they get and verify it against multiples sources for accuracy.  If things conflict, dig deeper.  I try my best to make sure that what I tell others is accurate, but I'm sure I'm guilt of giving people bad info because maybe I didn't clarify something or I got confused.  I would hate to have someone make a mistake based on my bad information.
--AJ

 

Yeah, that's *always* possible with me.  /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/hehe.gif
--AJ

 

The fish are looking good. As far as killing the live rock, it has recently been cooked so there wasn't much visible life on it (i.e. featherdusters, etc), but based on what the rest of the people have been saying, I would not keep your rock in the hypo tank if you care about the feather dusters...but the benefit of leaving some in there is that you shouldn't have to worry about the tank having to cycle....but that could probably also be accomplished by doing a water change on your main tank and using that water for your QT tank.

--AJ

 

Thanks for the offer Eric!  Maybe I'll take you up on that and get a frag of that pocillipora I gave you a while back.  What color was that again?  I just got some pink from JB last night, but I think that stuff was green, right?
The salinity was not all the way down to the target of 1.009 when I noticed the stress.  The whole thing is kind of running together in my memory.  I wouldn't put money on it, but I would say around 1.016...about 1/2 way to target.
The fish have never showed stress.  All of them are swimming around, and eating very well. 
Yeah, based on what Craig said, 1.019 wouldn't do anything. 
--AJ