Can Fluval foam harm anything?

So I have this really crappy Hang on Skimmer that does not work properly. When it is running it makes Millions of bubbles and I cannot figure out why, I have tinkered with it for hours trying to get it to work. Well I wasn't running it because the bubbles, but yesterday I decided to Ghetto it out. I saw I had a unused Fluval foam block still in the box so I just laid it( I did rinse it like the directions said) in the return where the clean water goes back in the tank and it stopped the bubbles, finally. Well I looked at the tank a little while ago and I have a Fish missing and the Anemone is about the size of a Silver dollar. My brother failed to mention that he saw the fish, that is missing breathing heavily late last night and the anemone shrunken, but not as small as today . I tested the water and the only thing wrong was the Nitrates were really high. So I guess the fish died. I removed the foam because that is the only thing I have done differently with the tank in months.

Any ideas?

 

My brother just mentioned that My Coral bandits were being aggressive when he saw the fish before it died. My anemone is completely closed, I'm not sure why because my nitrates are back to normal, could he have eaten the fish? In the past I've seen anemones shrink when they have a large meal......

 

I have been using this foam for a few months now, so far everything has been good until a few weeks ago. But not sure if that is because of the foam.

 

Could it be the skimmer? The Anemone always shrinks when I run it, but I always thought it didn't like the bubbles, it shrinks when I dose as well......

 

Where are you dosing the chemicals? Are you pouring them into your DT or in your sump? I just moved my ALK line to the other side of my sump to stop blasting corals with ALK every hour.

Also how much are you dosing at once? You might have some pretty large swings if you are dosing too much at once.

 

I dose half a teaspoon of calcium once a week, I don't have a sump to dose in so I mix it with fresh water to replace the evaporated water. I tested the water today and Nitrates were 40 ppm instead of 300 ppm like yesterday , nitrites were zero, salinity was 1.023, Alkalinity was 260 ppm, and ph was 8.0 ppm. Calcium was 275 ppm. I don't have any coral at the moment. I have been putting a little calcium to increase coralline growth because my calcium was really low.

 

idk if I am right but your ALK is at 14.56 dKh!

Someone might need to chime in but I think that might be one root cause of the problem.

 

It's been like that for months though and nothing has happened until I added the foam. The Alk did not change with the foam as well. My kit says 260 ppm is in Buffering capacity range though.....

 

I retested with a better test kit and ph is 8.2 and Alk is in between normal and high on the Red Sea color chart.

 

slowly bring your salinity to 1.025

my 2 cents

the bubbles you mention is part of how a skimmer works unless you mean that bubbles are forming on your water surface.

in this case you need more water flow on the surface, or in general and a mechanical filter. its the same principal as your fluval, these foams absorb large particle matter and in the long run can cause peeks of nitrate due to the build up....but not after one day...... these foams need to be cleaned and or replaced regularly