Giving Up.....

Ok I am about to give up on my reef, I have a 30gal with a sump, everything I put in the tank seems to die. A few weeks ago I noticed half of my tank just died, i later found out that the heaters went poof, I fixed that problem but everything else i put in the tank dies, I have a crab and snowflake eel left. I am trying to get the tank to be self contained. I don't have a skimmer or canister filter and I just have a typical 50/50 light. I am not sure if that is the problem or not. Then the tank seems to evaporate quite fast so I use tap water with water conditioner, is that the problem? I make sure the saltine is around 1.024. Any advice or help would be appreciated. I am about to call it quits. I will test the tank when i go home.

 

Do you have live rock in your tank ? How old is the tank ? Did you cycle tank before adding anything living to it ? Do you have test kits for the water ? Hate to see you give up and will try to help but, need to know more about your tank. Ammonia,Nitrites,ph, etc.

morejongg

 

Yeah I have around 75lbs of live rock, about 2-3 in of live sand and in the sump theres around 5in of crushed misc shells sand and what have you. the tank has been going for about a year now. I did purchase a master test kit. I will test it and post the info when I go home tonight.

 

30g with 7 5gs of rock and 3"s of sand, that doesnt leave very much water in the tank. If you're not running any kind of mechanical or chemical filtration, Im sure thats the problem.

 

Sorry to hear about your problems..I couldn't agree more with geek...

 

To add to what Geek has mentioned, I dont think that using tap water is helping either. Even if he's using water conditioners.
Also, what is dieing? Fish, corals, inverts?

 

its probably not 75lbs, i forget its probably 25, half the tank is rocks and the other half is water. inverts are dying i had a damsel dye awhile back.

 

Have you checked your parameters?

 

what kind of rocks other than liverock do you have?cause some rocks will poison you fish and coral to death with minerals that leach out.

 

What color did ya make it? :laughing0 J/K, it sucks to lose fish..... How big is the snowflake?