Tank Crashed will my corals make it?

[koppscouts]

Hello, I have a 40 gallon Reef and fish tank. Tank has been Up for 5 months.
With about 70lbs live Rock. Two powerheads.
I had been running a penguin 350 biowheel filter. And I switched to a 8 gal. sump. With a submersible pump rated at 1200 gph. And added 4lbs of live rock in sump.

I found out the hardway, I am assuming you just can't switch without leaving the old filtration going cause I have a very unhappy tank, because of High Nitrates I am guessing. Fish seem to be OK but all corals are shut, all zoos closed,mushrooms shrivelled, frogspraw shrivilled allong with my candycany coral and my chalice is losing color and looks bad. MY snails have died, but cleaner shrimp, hermetcrabs, And Fish seem OK And My anemone wants to get out And the first day was shrunk up. I actually found It on top of a powerhead on the top of the tank. I have put back in my old filter and running it with my sump. And did a 25 % PWC. On Sunday.

I think things have stablized (maybe for now) Current Water levels are:
Ammonia.....0
Phosphate.....0.15
NItrate.......20
Calcium........440
Magnesium 1260
PH is ..8.3
KH ........9dkh
Temp 77

Where to go from here... How long do I wait it out. Before tanking out stuff. If I know it is dead I do take it out. Any help would be appreciated....

 

[thominil]

Getting rid of the filter shouldn't have done much as live rock is your main biological filtration, and they (the filters) usually end up causing nitrate problems when they aren't cleaned regularly. Tank seams a little too young to have an anemone, usually recommended that your tank is a minimum of 8 months old before you get one so your tank is mature and stable. I would do a water change to knock the phosphates and nitrates back to acceptable levels (0phosphate, less than 10nitrate). Temp is a little low, might want to slowly raise it up to around 80 degrees over the course of a few days. If anything dies, your CUC will most likely eat it before you notice it's gone.

What kind of lighting do you have?

And lastly, Welcome to AA!

 

[koppscouts]

Thank You for your advise..... I have Power Compacts 10,000 Day 6000 one one and Antinic Blue I think 490 and the Purple(460) on the other half. Supposed to be about 200 watts. And they are 2 months old. My tank is a breeder tank So it is shallow only 16 inches deep.
And what is A CUC??

So I should do a water changes and wait? When might I know if things will start to recover or when they are dead? Also I have had the anenome for 2 months. And has looked good before the equipment change. But with my penguin 350 I was always running at 10 -20 on the nitrates. Even If I did multiple PWC over a couple of days. So I guess my Bio load is was pretty maxed out. My fish now are a kole tang bangia cardinal and a domino damsel. Just for the record.... I really appreciate your input

 

[Zer0]

CUC means Clean Up Crew. Meaning the snails, crabs, shrimp and other inverts that clean up your tank for you, whether it be decaying food, detritus, or algae.

And to help you along this site, try looking up this link when you come across abbreviations such as CUC(clean up crew)

List of useful acronyms

Also, not to be a tang police or anything, but a Kole Tang should definitely not be in anything less than a 75 gallon tank. They get quite large, and they are extremely active swimmers and need lots of swimming space. Your tang over time, would have definitely gotten stressed out as it grew and had less and less swimming space, and most likely would have developed stress-induced ich. I do not advise keeping him/her in that tank.

Also, just as thom stated, that nem really shouldn't be in that tank since it's only 5 months old, and still has the possibility of having water fluctuations which is a given in tanks under the age of 8 months. You are lucky that nem didn't get sucked in to the power head that it was on, otherwise it could have nuked your entire tank, and then things would have been even worse than they are now.

 

[thominil]

The cardinal is fine, but I suggest that you give the tang and damsel to someone with a bigger tank or return them to your local fish store (LFS) as the tang likes to have plenty of swimming space (4ft long tank minimum), and the damsel will most likely get agressive. A CUC is a clean up crew. Your lights might be OK for the anemone since the tank is pretty shallow, but usually T5 High Output (HO) lighting is the bottom end of lights that will support an anemone, but let someone with more experience in the lighting category answer that. Things don't look that bad parameter wise, so you really shouldn't lose anything else. Might want to look into a skimmer to help get those nitrates down, I would go with a CPR Aquatics Skimmer, or a Reef Octopus Skimmer. Hope this helps.