If your gonna be dumb, ya' gotta be tough

[jjgina]

I started a small 30 gallon reef tank with 4" sand bed and live rock.
Cycled perfectly, rock was lookin' good, added small clown and snails.
At about 2 months old I thought adding calcium would help with colors.
I read the directions and added the appropriate amount to some premixed water for a day. I did a 10% water change the next day and added the water with the calcium(kalkwasser). Needless to say, I managed to kill almost everything in there because I neglected to see the words in big bold letters saying "ADD SLOWLY".
Well it's been another month and I managed to get the Ph back down to 8.2, salinity at 1.25. The clown made it for a long time but finally succombed to the intolerable conditions and died. All the snails died quickly and I'm not sure the starfish that I put in was ever even alive. There are a few things in the rock that have come back but mostly everything that I saw before appears to be gone. There seems to be a good amount of algea growing, green, brown, red.
The only thing wrong at this point seems to be Nitrates are over 50ppm. The fiddler crabs and snails that I put in died within a day.

My question is: Should I keep trying to nurse this tank back to life or should I start over with new rock and sand?

If I nurse this tank, is the only way to get rid of the Nitrate by water changes or should I put some Caulerpa in to help?

Should I put in one of those replenishing kits for the sand bed and rock?

I hope that I am really tough, because I feel really dumb !!!!!!!!!

[Rin]

If I were in your place, I would do several 50% water changes--each a day apart. This assumes you want to try to save anything left in the tank. If not, trash it and start over. (But I think you can save the rocks and sand, you just need to rinse the crap out of it.)

After three or four days of this, test your water--Nitrates, Nitrites, Ammonia, Calc, Alk, and pH. If anything is abnormal, do more 50% water changes until everything reads OK.

Let your tank stay like this for a month. Check your params at least once a week--more often, if possible.

Then start over...add slowly.

There are probably a million ways to do this. This is just what I would do.

Good luck.

[organicreefer]

you should have done a whole bunch of 50% water changes right when this happened.i would do that now ,let the tank chill awhile, then ,mabe add a little new live rock ,and maybe seed the bed and then start over.during this whole proccess ,which i reccomend take about a month ,you should invest in a good book,and read it.get some alk ca test kits(saliferts) and use them.if you want a simple system of maintaing youre levesl,i reccomend you try a two part buffer ,like b-ionic.
so do those water changes,get those test kits,get a book,and ask any questions you have ,there are plenty of us here more than happy to help.
dont take this as a fatal blow,youre tank can recover and become successful,stick with it