Help!

[Murdock5150]

With out going into all the details, my tank is crashing. I know what the problem is and I need to do a major water change a.s.a.p.

My question is this:

My system holds close to 90gls of water. What is the largest amount of a water change I can do without totally stressing everything out?

[Sk8r]

50%. I just did it on an "ionic imbalance", 50% one day, 50% the next, ro/di water salt mix.

Not near as stressful as bad water.

Get your fish/moveable corals out to new salt water asap while you straighten this out: no need for them to sit in the soup if you've got the means to land them in qt with good circulation/filters/carbon, etc.

[Murdock5150]

Thanks. I figured about 45 to 50gls. Everthing is closed up and dying anyway so it could only help.

[Sk8r]

A paint stirrer on a drill can help mix salt water fast if that's an issue. It's not optimum, but you know that: use it as soon as you have water clarity. Again, if you can't get enough ro/di fast enough, just use conditioned tap and battle the phosphate/nitrate issues later. If the issue is oxygen that trumps everything. Run carbon immediately for anything that can't be moved. If you have a diatom filter run that.

[Murdock5150]

The tank is cloudy. Hasn't changed "thickness" in 2 days. I did a 20gl water change sunday morning. Things have only gotten worse. The only thing I can see on my tests is the ph is low- 7.8 or so. There are only 3 fish in the tank - none have died...yet. My frogspawn is totally retracted. The xenia is all shrivled. My leathers are all closed up too. Everything else follows the same pattern. I have access to purified water and the wife is on her way to get extra salt mix. The only issue will be heat and mixing.