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[kycoralhead]

Can a CO2 overload disrupt the bacteria in a plenum? I recently had a CO2 valve go south and almost kill everything in the tank. I recovered with small loss of life, but the tank has gone green. Not the water, but the walls of the tank and the live rock. I tested everything and the only thing out of balance was the nitrates. I had a plenum installed and normally measured almost zero nitrates. Did the die off of the live rock cause the nitrate rise or does the large PH shift cause the plenum bacteria to go south. How is the best way to recover? I know I should have had a controller, but I did not.

[AF Founder]

Can a CO2 overload disrupt the bacteria in a plenum? I recently had a CO2 valve go south and almost kill everything in the tank. I recovered with small loss of life, but the tank has gone green. Not the water, but the walls of the tank and the live rock. I tested everything and the only thing out of balance was the nitrates. I had a plenum installed and normally measured almost zero nitrates. Did the die off of the live rock cause the nitrate rise or does the large PH shift cause the plenum bacteria to go south. How is the best way to recover? I know I should have had a controller, but I did not.

It's hard to say what bacterial population shifts took place, but the excess CO2 clearly dropped the pH level and killed off the coralline algae leaving a habitat for green algae to flourish. I would get a lot of snails to feed on the green algae and as the system returns to normal coralline algae will replace the green algae. Also, work to get the nitrate level down by water changes and other export mechanisms.