what the heck happened?

[woodstock '69]

My tank is about 6 mths old (1st tank) and has been doing well. Today I decided to remove about 16 square inches of anthelia with tweezers. I was afraid it would take over my tank.

Boy is my tank unhappy. Everything - 1 hammer, 1 frogspawn both are almost completely receeded and the colors are bad, the rhodactus, red mushroom, and purple ricordia (ready to split in 2) are way shrunk, my 2 blue torts look like hell, my horrida won't stop sliming, my 2 zoos are all closed and look bad, and for the first time ever, my beautiful monti cap has lost lots of color and is ashen looking, and my monti digitata polyps are all wierd and look like the flesh has pulled away from the structure.

Seems like an awful strong reaction to the removal of the anthelia. Should I worry more than I already am? Will everything be ok in the am?

Michael

[pledosophy]

I would do a water change and add carbon ASAP.

You did tank the rock with the anthelia out of the tank to trim it right?

[woodstock '69]

No I didn't take out the rock. Should I have? Never thought about it. It is my main biggest bottom rock and it would have added an hour or two extra to take it out, move all the corals, and then put the tank back together again. Maybe I should have?

Michael

[MarkGP]

I pick anthelia out of my tank all the time with tweezers and never had any problems with other corals. Perhaps a coincidence, and maybe your parameters are out of whack!

[woodstock '69]

I didn't just pick anthellia out, I took out the whole thing which like I said was about 8" x 8". It was by far my largest coral or colony in the tank.

[Jojoyojimbi]

so you stuck your hand in the water right? did you have gloves on? did you wash well before? do you possibly have any residue on your hands that could poison a tank?

[woodstock '69]

Jojoyojimbi-

I think you might find that there are thousands of terribly successful reef keepers here at RC who put their bare hands (not recently washed) into their tanks every day.

[woodstock '69]

Just in case anyone is wondering

Things are looking about 10% better which means to me everyone should come back within a day or two. Ill keep my fingers crossed.

Thanks for the commentary

[CyclistMT]

Woodstock, assuming you had nothing on your hands that might be causing the reaction (soap residue, oils, etc.) then it sounds like you have an allelopathic reaction going on. Removing that much anthelia likely released a significant amount of its natural toxins into the water.

How toxic it is to your other corals is up for debate but there is something in the water they don't like. Run whatever water quality tests you have to rule out any way out of whack paramaters.

At the very least a water change and running carbon are a good idea, regardless of the cause, as pledosophy suggested. Again, your corals are clearly stressed by something in the water.

That would be more proactive then just keeping your fingers crossed and would ensure a better chance of everything coming out of this OK. Good luck!

[Der_Iron_Chef]

What he said. Throw carbon in that mofo.

[dustybuddy]

pwahaha..word...carbon in the mofo and take some dirty ho water out of that johnskeee....you probly shouldve gone slowly wit it. the anthelia was probly eating up a lot of your nutrients for you...it would be like taking tons of live rock out or your wet dry filter. there mite be a spike in phosphate...

[njdevilsfan]

i would run a poly filter pad along with carbon

[AquaReeferMan]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10182869#post10182869 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by dustybuddy
pwahaha..word...carbon in the mofo and take some dirty ho water out of that johnskeee....you probly shouldve gone slowly wit it. the anthelia was probly eating up a lot of your nutrients for you...it would be like taking tons of live rock out or your wet dry filter. there mite be a spike in phosphate...


Now thats Street, son.

[pledosophy]

Removing corals is best done out of the tank. :D

Just run some carbon and do a waterchange and all will be well. A poly filter pad could also be helpful but I've never used one myself.

lucky that's all it is, a relatively easy fix.

Good Luck