Article of Humility: Never Add What You Can't Test For: H2O2

[ezrec]

[Please see the Article Of Humility: The Case of the Amazing Disappaearing Phosphates for a little background on my 55g "Emerald Sea" tank]

Learn from my mistakes, so that you do not repeat them.

So after my "dead water" phosphate experiment, which revealed that my phosphate load was much higher than I expected, I tried a radical experiment.

My reasoning was this: I am running PhosBan, but all my phosphous is already locked up on my diatoms and suspended algea. How can I kill the algea, and release the phosphorous?

My (inept) solution: Hydrogen Peroxide, my old friend H2O2.

I figured I can turn off the pumps, dose the sump water with 100ml of 3% H2O2, wait a few hours for all the H2O2 to react and convert to O2 and H2O2, and turn back on the pumps. When the newly released phosphours hits the PhosBan, it'll no longer be available to the algea. After a few days of this, surely my algea problems will be history!

Unforutnately, 3 hours is not long enought for 100ml of 3% H2O2 to react with 3 gallons of water. Not having a test for H2O2, or even free oxygen, I (stupidly) turned the pumps back on, and went to sleep.

The next morning, everything was still looking fine.

Little did I know.

That evening: panic.

The tank was much clearer, which was when my stomach turned. To be this much clearer, this quickly, the H2O2 would have to have still been active. I started looking at my inhabitants, and first off noticed that my Aiptasia were retracted, and their tips were white. I knew this was going to turn ugly.

Over the next 48 hours of pancied water changes, I had to bury:

* The Porcelain Crab
* All Turbo Snails
* All "mini" feather dusters
* All copepods (total decemation of all species)
* All Peppermint Shrimp
* Over 90% of my chaetomorphia algea
* Brittle star (very sad - he just fell apart over ~30 hours, starting at the tips)

Surprise survivors included:

* Both leather corals (after slughing off their outer layes, now have new tenticles and are feeding again)
* All aiptasia (woo hoo pest tank!)
* Small red calcerous feather duster
* Stone crab
* Calcerous algea
* Bristle worms
* Sea Cucumber
* 50% of the hermit crabs
* Tunicate snails

Lesson learned - never add an experimental chemical to your tank you can't test for!

[Randy Holmes-Farley]

Wow, sorry to hear about the disaster.

Manual scraping of the sump might be have been a better plan. :D

[ezrec]

Additional note: I have found two 'baby' turbo snails (< 1mm) since the disaster, and at their size, there should be plenty more around hiding in the rockwork.

It seems that the H2O2 stress may have caused my turbos to spawn. I'll have to use my new 10g for a controlled experiment (with much lower quantaties of H2O2!) to see if I can encourage turbo snail spawning without killing the parents.

[ReefWreak]

Very interesting experiment. Thanks for sharing. Also awesome that you have a tank of "things that everyone else hates" :p

I've been considering doing that in my 2.5g pico now that I've found one mojano.

[Boomer]

Sorry to hear that. I have been telling people here for years not to play with the stuff as they do not understand its chemistry.

Just to give some old input form using the stuff for decades, not just in the hobby but also in the bait minnow industry, where it is more common place. To achieve saturated O2 levels in FW the dosage is 1-2 ml / gal @ 3.00 % H2O2 and you are 30 times that. And it takes ~30 min for all of it to react and covert to O2 @ 1-2 ml / gal. And, the higher the temp the faster it reacts. This will be faster in seawater as O2 sat is lower than FW and we run much higher temps than the bait-minnow industry.

Yes, an O2 kit would have been a good idea or a H2O2 kit. Heavily aerating the sump also would have been a good idea to drive off the excessive O2 before you turned on. I can not even fathom what the O2 levels could have been, other than 400 % sat O2, plus the unreached H2O2.

If we assumed that 2 ml / gal H2O2 raised the O2 up 2 mg / l and you were below NSW sat for O2, then maybe the O2 level would have been on the order of 100mg / l O2 in your tank if all was converted to O2. And NSW is around 6.5 ppm. Of course, it would be nowhere near this level as there would be allot of oxidation going on.

A safer method would have been to add bleach to the sump. At least with the bleach you could have added dechlor to it before you turned the pump back on. Not that I world suggest anyone to go out an do this.

And yes as a side note, yes stress can/will cause some inverts spawn. Just stirring up the bottom and making the water cloudy can do this at tims for Tube Anemones a Christmas Tree Worms.