Massive death in my tank.

[lmluckenbach]

Well, the tank has been through a rough couple of weeks. Sorry, this is gonna be a long one.

7-16-2011- Saturday

At this point, I have 2 ocellaris clowns, 6 line wrasse, flame angel, coral beauty, a bunch of snails and hermits. All seem to be the picture of health. 72 gallon tank.

pH: 8.0

Nitrite: 7 ppb (yep, ppbillion)

Nitrate: ~25ppm

Ammonia: 0

Phosphate: 0.55 ppm

Test kits: Salifert/ Hanna Checkers for Nitrite, Phosphate. All brand new kits/regents.

Added 4oz Dr. Tim's One and Only. Tank had been running for 3.5 months at this point, and although the ammonia/nitrite levels have consistently been at zero, nitrate has been sitting around 25ppm, and my concern was that it was from a weak biological system. (Started with dry, BRS Pukani rock.)

7-28-2011- Thursday

Added two flasher wrasses from online. One looked healthy, the other very stressed. Stressed one immediately swam to the bottom of the tank, kind of under a ledge, but not really, and just sat there all day. I thought for sure he'd be dead by morning.

7-29-2011- Friday

Both wrasses came out for mysis shrimp. The stressed one ate a ton, and then went into hiding. This is the last I saw the fish despite my best efforts to find him.

7-31-2011- Sunday

Added some shells that my girlfriend's dead grandmother supposedly collected on the beach in Hawaii. I rinsed them off pretty well and let them soak overnight in some rodi. A few still had dirt on them which led me to believe that they were never bleached. As I write it, I can't believe I allowed it...

8-02-2011- Tuesday

Woke up to a dead Flame Angel. Very shocked as there was no sign of anything wrong with him prior to this morning.

Immediately fished out all the shells, except one that a hermit had already taken one up as his residence, which made me think nothing was wrong with them.

pH: 8.0

Nitrite: 11 ppb

Nitrate: 5-10ppm

Ammonia: 0

Phosphate: 0.50 ppm

Did a 20% water change.

Already had plans to pick up a RBTA that day so I went ahead and did so. Wound up coming home with a GBTA as well, along with the ~5lb live rock they could not be removed from.

Oh, I had been keeping the salinity at 1.2, but I bumped it up to 1.23 for the anemones. I did this by topping off with salt water as opposed to reg rodi for a couple days.

8-03-2011- Wednesday

Other flasher wrasse found dead. While fishing out the body, I found the skeleton of the first one.

8-04-2011- Thursday

Did a 20% water change, added the other 4oz of Dr. Tim's one and only I purchase a few weeks ago.

Also thought I was being stupid about the shells I'd taken out, since if they were emitting toxins hermits would not have been using the shells, so I put them back in.

8-08-2011- Monday

pH: 8.1

Nitrite: 19 ppb

Nitrate: 25ppm

Ammonia: <.25 looked like there could be some color...not sure.

Phosphate: 0.83 ppm

Coral beauty seemed to be hiding out more than usual.

15% water change- which was all the water I had mixed.

I had to leave out of town for work that afternoon.

8-10-2011- Wednesday

I get a call from my girlfriend saying that both clowns and the coral beauty are dead. She can't bring herself to get them out. At this point the only live fish is the 6 line wrasse.

8-11-2011- Thursday

I get back in town late, get the dead fish out, realize I have no salt water mixed.

Also realize that the fan I have over the sump never got plugged back in after Monday's water change, and that apparently, while I'm gone, the girlfriend keeps the house at 79 during the day. Tank was at 84.5, usually sits around 78. Dropped the temp in the house and put the fan back on.

Although more hermits had taken to the shells I put in, I removed the rest just in case.

8-12-2011 -Friday

20% water change in the am, temperature was back down to 78. Last remaining fish (6line) acting normal, anemones haven't changed. Whoa. Ok as I say that, the rbta has really expanded today, and they were pretty close to each other, often touching, on the same rock, and now the gbta has relocated a bit. Either way, they both look fine to me.

pH: 8.1

Nitrite: 20 ppb

Nitrate: 5ppm

Ammonia: <25

Phosphate: 0.76 ppm

Tested after the water change, but obviously this is after having three dead fish in there for 24 hrs.

Alright, so obviously there are a few things going on here. First, the shells could have introduced some sort of toxins to the tank that would not show up on tests, although that seems unlikely given the fact that some hermits are now housing in them.

I received two wrasses, and one looked very bad. I do not know when the fish died, because it could not be located, but it could have been as early as Friday/Saturday. The flame angel died Tuesday, so the dead fish in there could very well have lead to its death, and the subsequent death of the other flasher wrasse the next day.

My next assumption is that the death of the coral beauty and clown fish was due to completely different circumstances; those being the increased heat from 78 to 84.5 deg from Mon-Thurs while I was gone. I know 85 deg is too hot, but I would not have expected it to kill the fish...although that is a pretty big change... Or, I guess I am surprised the fish died and the invertebrates survived.

I'm also a bit worried that I'm just trying to convince myself that it was the heat and a dead/missing fish in the tank that caused all this death, and not some other mystery problem.

Obviously, though, all this death in the matter of two weeks has me....concerned. And confused. And frustrated. And pretty worn out.

Alright, now I'll defer to you experts to give me some opinions. Thanks a lot in advance.

[JamesL]

The higher temps them selves won't kill the fish, but higher water temp means less oxygen in the water. So if there is not enough surface agitation to allow oxygen to enter the water, could suffocate the fish. Inverts are pretty tough critters, unless copper gets involved. I had lost all of my fish in a 24g due to lack of oxygen (re-arragned rocks, kicked up a tons of debris), but all my hermits survived.

But that is a bit extreme. All on all, it is really hard to say what has gone wrong. I guess parasites could be a possibility, though I doubt that would cause such quick deaths.

I would do some hefty water changes over the coming weeks, then add fish back slowly.

[lmluckenbach]

Hmm. I feel like I have plenty of surface agitation- I have the return water split four ways, with the heads right at/ just below the surface, and three separate internal overflow boxes...I have a mag18 for a return pump, but obviously it's split up so that limits quite a bit.

[+KimP]

As far as possibly introducing something into the tank from the shells. I don't think it's likely, but are you running carbon just to be sure? Sorry all of this is happening, I'm sure it's frustrating!

[lmluckenbach]

Not running carbon. This is my first tank, and although I've certainly heard of people running carbon, I've not researched it. I kind of assumed it was something needed more for tanks with sps/maybe lps. I'll check it out.

Thanks for the responses!

[Timfish]

Sorry to hear about your loss! Good job giving the sequence of events though, it helps trying to figure out what happened. I don't consider myself an "expert" but after 24 year I guess I'm experienced and certainly don't have a shortage of opinions As I was reading through this my first thoughts were pretty much in line James and Kim. I'm going to GUESS a pathogen of some kind was introduced with the wrasses. I agree with James point about parasites, 4 days is really not long enough for "ick" to proliferate to the point of killing off established fish. He also makes a good point that the higher temp could have helped contribute at least by adding stress to the fish but wouldn't consider it the primary culprite. I also have to agree with Kim it seems unlikely a toxin would still be strong enough to kill fish when it sounds like the shells sat around for a while and were well rinsed, besides it would apparently have to affect fish a lot more strongly than the anemonies. It's quite possible the clowns and coral beauty died of other causes but unfotunately there's no way to be sure (this is a common frustration for me, there's just to many variables we can't test for). You certainly can't do anything wrong running carbon and doing water changes so I wouldn't hesitate to do both. You might also consider setting up a quarantine tank and pulling out the 6 line and leave your display tank fishless for a month. There has been a lot of discussion in previous threads about quarantine tanks so you could start with a search there but I would keep it simple and use a UV sterilizer.

[+KimP]

Carbon will pull toxins out. If I were you, I'd run it for sure until things are settled down, just in case something got into the water. You can use poly-filter pads too. They're nice because they turn colors according to what (if anything) was in the water.

[lmluckenbach]

I've actually been meaning to set up a quarantine tank, so this is probably a good excuse. As for the UV sterilizer, that's something else I have very little knowledge of, besides that when I did look at them, they seemed very beneficial, and very expensive- or, I guess, very normal priced for this hobby. I guess I didn't realize they were that common in the hobby, but I'll definitely look more into them.

As for the carbon, I've been looking around and it seems that most people recommend running carbon maybe one week per month, or after medications, or maybe after massive death like I have. Would I be best suited using a reactor, or would a filter bag be sufficient? If I were going to use a reactor, I'd prob order the one from BRS, so maybe I could go grab a poly-filter from the LFS in the meantime? And while I'm at it...anyone have a quick thought on running GFO?

[+etannert]

I run carbon and GFO (and Seachem Purigen) 24/7 in my tanks. Carbon helps your water look clearer and aids in binding toxins out of the water, so why not? I have nano tanks (bc14 and nc24) so my tanks have the potential to go downhill much faster due to the small body of water. You can run it passively (mesh bag in your sump/filter), you don't have to use a reactor. But it's not expensive and if you rinse well before using, it won't hurt anything and just might help, so - why not?

[lmluckenbach]

Well, I did read that it's possible for the carbon to pull out beneficial nutrients from the water if it is run too often, and that the ill effects of this may not be visibly noticeable. As in, the fish may suffer internal health effects that cannot be seem externally.

Like most things in the hobby, though, that was just a theory. I'm definitely going to start running carbon. I've also heard it wasn't necessary to run it all the time to get a noticeable difference in water clarity, so I'll just do some trial and error and see what happens.

Thanks again for all the input.

[Juiceman]

I was on vacation for 8 days and my fan went out. the tank got to ~86 deg. Didn't lose any fish. I few sps died but that was it. I doubt that was what did it. I would say a pathogen added from the wrasse. Start running carbon for sure, solved almost all of my new tank problems. Simplest way is to get some activated carbon and put it in the micron bag and put it in your filter sock or right over your return pump intake. I run GFO and Carbon 24/7 and use TLC aquacultured bacteria from Fishy Business and I have 0 nit, nitrate, phos, and ammon. Less headache for sure. you may also check your oxygen levels. I had a mass die off in a new tank I started, and figured out i had really low oxygen for some reason. added from flow and agitation and i'm stocked back up with no problems.

[lmluckenbach]

Hmm. That's interesting. Who knows what happened then. Well I'll be running carbon and GFO as soon as I get my shipment in from BRS, and I'm also shopping around for a UV sterilizer. Surely between all this and keeping a better eye out for any more temperature mishaps I can avoid any more "major' problems...Or, I guess, greatly limit the possibility of something like this happening again.