Live rock - hitchhikers dying

[donf]

I received last Friday 60#'s of live rock from LR.com. The tank had no fish... only 10# of live rock and some hermit crabs. The tank cycled for 2 months prior to receiving this shipment.

All seemed well.. there was lots of life... but now all is dying. Lots of worms are dying, brittle stars, crab, hermit crabs, pistol shrimp, etc. etc.

I did a 20% water change on Sunday.

I have been using purified water from the supermarket (by RO and ionized) for top off and water change.

Amonia has spiked to over 1.0.
Is this to be expected or is something drastically wrong?

 

[Thumper]

You should have been monitering the amonia very closely and a water change should have been done long before it reached 1.0. A small amonia spike was possible but with the critters dieing it is only going to add to the amonia spike. You need to get all the dead stuff out and continue doing water changes daily until you get it to 0. How are your other tests looking, more info is needed but I added 250 pounds to my tank it it never got over .25 and that was for only a ouple days. I would suspect more to be wrong than just therock having die off on it. Can you give us more info?

 

[Brad]

Yup...you are into a cycle caused by excessive die off on the rocks. The 10# that you had in place wasn't able to absorb the jolt caused by 60# of new rock.

Keep up large volume water changes to manage the ammonia. It will take a while, but it is the only way to try to keep things alive on that rock.