fish dying off one by one needhelp cant figure it out

[Boss_512]

I have a 125 with 90# of sand 100# of live rock it.s mainly panamanion i have hade the rock for a long time the sand is about 2 months old.
amonia is at .25 nitrates and nitrites, phospats all showing zero or barly regerstring on the test kits. salinaty is at1.023. I used 2 sepret kits from two different companys , I get the same readings on both.
the fish look fine behave normal then the next day there eyes and bodys seam to go cloudy then they keel over within 15 hours they do it one fish at a time first to go was my lawnmore bleny, I hade a power outige the day befor and lost about 25- 30 galons so contributed it to stress, then my black and whit hemiocus (hop i spelled that right), who had ick two weeks befor hand went the same way. I treated him with Chem-Marin's stop parasites becous it was reef safe seemd to work great. then my tomato clowns went both the same way then my clark eye clown went then my square spot anthias went then my two damsels i have my sand sifting tiger goby left and my fox face. all my crabs are fine my flame scalep and all my corals are still doing great.
I use a large sump with live rock instead of bio balls a proteen skimer.and a hot magnum for extra flow and runing carbon if need be.
what realy puzzles me is there fine one day the next they look cloudy and then boom there dead and all one at a time. the slite amonia content i figure is do to the fish dying one at a time every day almost. any Ideas or if some one has had asimaler problum any help would be greatfuly apreciated, i dont want to lose any more of my buddys.
THx

 

[GSchiemer]

I think you answered your own question. The tank isn't stable due to the power outage and resultant spike in ammonia. 0.25 is not insignificant and indicates instability in the system. My suggestion is to STOP adding fish; let the system stabilize for a few weeks and re-evaluate the situation then. In the meantime, you can do 20% weekly water changes to dilute the ammonia and perhaps provide some relief to the remaining fish. Also, when you do begin to add fish, I'd suggest quarantining them first and only adding ONE fish at a time.

Greg

 

[Anonymous]

Deffinitely adding fish one at a time is the answer for you, after a long period of stability. Before you add the first fish, the water should be stable and clean for at least a week or two to make sure nothing creeps back up on you.

You should use a small tank to evaluate fish before putting them in your display. This could prevent bringing in any diseases.

Since you said the fish got "cloudy" and then died quickly, it could be vlevet, but I have never seen that parasite in person. If it is, that would explain why they all died so fast and one right after the other.

And if that is the case, you will have to let your tank be without fish for at least a month to allow all the parasites to go through their lifecycle and die without finding fish and reproducing. If you do not do that and you have parasites in the system, any new fish you add will get the parasite and it will bloom again to kill all the fish in your tank.


In short, no fish in the tank for a month. Get a 10-20 gallon for a quarantine tank to put any new fish into for at least a couple of weeks before they go into your main tank. Then add the fish one at a time until you stock your tank.

I learned the hard way when I started. Once I did the above, I slowly stocked my tank and now I have had some of my fish for over two years without ever seeing a spot on them.

I also learned the hard way the reef safe parasite killers are not always reef safe and almost never actually kill the parasites. :lol:

 

[Boss_512]

i havent ben adding fish the ones that died have ben in there for a long time the last thing i would do is go oh a fish died time to get some new ones, i dont do that. The amonia was ot zero wen the first two died, the first thing i did was check all my paramaters,the next thing i did was a 25 gallon water change, the next one i found two days later when i came back to work thats when the amonia started to regester, thats when i went ok somthing is realy wrong there droping like flies one at a time.and since i first posted this the tiger goby is gone thats how fast these guys are going from fine to looking and acting great to looking bad to dead.

 

[Anonymous]

(nods in agreement with GS and Manny) That ammonia level is waaay too high and your tank needs to stabilize before you add anything else to it. It's hard to wait for a tank to mature, but in this hobby patience goes a long way.

 

[Boss_512]

thanx manny i do vally your impoot the man i buy my fish from has two dagrees one in marine biolagy the other in marine ecolagy and is working on his marine enganering dagre. he quorenteens all his fish for two weeks indavidualy befor he lets me have a look at them. he is coming buy latter to take my fox face with him to put in his hospital tank then we will let what ever it is run it's corse. i do agree with you that it probably is velvet no fish have ben added in months only two lether corals, a crown and a mushroom leather. do ya think they could have ben harbering the velvet some how?

 

[Anonymous]

thanx manny i do vally your impoot the man i buy my fish from has two dagrees one in marine biolagy the other in marine ecolagy and is working on his marine enganering dagre. he quorenteens all his fish for two weeks indavidualy befor he lets me have a look at them. he is coming buy latter to take my fox face with him to put in his hospital tank then we will let what ever it is run it's corse. i do agree with you that it probably is velvet no fish have ben added in months only two lether corals, a crown and a mushroom leather. do ya think they could have ben harbering the velvet some how?

I think that any coral or rock you bring in can carry a fish parasite. I'm very paranoid about that....I actually haven't added anything new to my tank in almost 2 years. :lol: I had to replenish my snail and hermit population a few weeks ago and I cringed at having to add all those snails with shells that could have a fish parasite on them, but I had no choice.

I am currently setting up a 10 gallon reef with enough light to grow even SPS. Once I have that, I plan to add new corals to my main tank by keeping them in the fishless 10 gallon for a month before putting them in my main. Like a coral QT. But not many people have the space or the desire to set up a reef just to quarantine coral, rock, and inverts for their main tank. So you just have to risk it.

Honestly, I would not be surprized if something came in with the new corals you added. It is deffinitely possible.



By the way, your fish store guy sounds great. It is very expensive for them to keep fish apart for a couple of weeks before selling and very few LFS will do that sort of thing. Also, for him to take your sick fish for you is great. Hold on to that guy and give him a lot of business. 8)

 

[Anonymous]

I also want to point for magilla and bierboy that this gentleman is from the Dakotas!

See...people do live there. And they have aquariums there too!

 

[Boss_512]

my guy,s name is Grant he started this in a three stall garage at his home, It's called Oceans of the Midwest hes not a an LFS and is much cheeper and does house calls. He's bringing me a 10 gallon so i can start my own QT tank from now on It's kind of hard since my tank is at my work. Butt thank you for the hellp luck to you and your's

 

[Boss_512]

thanx manny i do vally your impoot the man i buy my fish from has two dagrees one in marine biolagy the other in marine ecolagy and is working on his marine enganering dagre. he quorenteens all his fish for two weeks indavidualy befor he lets me have a look at them. he is coming buy latter to take my fox face with him to put in his hospital tank then we will let what ever it is run it's corse. i do agree with you that it probably is velvet no fish have ben added in months only two lether corals, a crown and a mushroom leather. do ya think they could have ben harbering the velvet some how?

 

[GSchiemer]

You seem to be missing the big picture. Regardless of how long you've had these fish, and you never stated what a "long time" is, the real issue is the ammonia and the general instability of the aquarium, which was probably caused by, or at least exacerbated by, the power outage. That won't be fixed by buying fish from a guy with two academic degrees. No one wants to turn this into a debate. It seems like you're asking for help but not hearing the answers.

 

[Anonymous]

.... the real issue is the ammonia and the general instability of the aquarium, which was probably caused by, or at least exacerbated by, the power outage...

I agree, and re-reading his first post GS this jumped out at me...

I have a 125 with 90# of sand 100# of live rock it.s mainly panamanion i have hade the rock for a long time the sand is about 2 months old.

If I read that correctly, Boss_512 added 90lbs of sand two months ago to his tank. Even if the tank was mature, the tank would cycle again until the sandbed stabilizes. That, plus the power outage as GS stated is more than enough to cause those problems.

Again, patience is a virtue in this hobby Boss_512. Let things settle down in your tank, do regular large water changes with aged saltwater and add nothing new until things level out.

 

[Boss_512]

THX GUYS

 

[Anonymous]

You seem to be missing the big picture. Regardless of how long you've had these fish, and you never stated what a "long time" is, the real issue is the ammonia and the general instability of the aquarium, which was probably caused by, or at least exacerbated by, the power outage. That won't be fixed by buying fish from a guy with two academic degrees. No one wants to turn this into a debate. It seems like you're asking for help but not hearing the answers.

Nice post. :?

He seems like he's listening to everything. Sounds like he's going to QT his fish. And the ammonia could have started with the death of the first fish since he didn't test until after that.

 

[Omni2226]

Exactly..he comes to ask help and peeps assume its poor husbandry.."your tank is unstable"..."dont keep adding fish"..etc etc....sheesh..

The sand added caused it?...ummm if it was live/cultured from an existing system it would have immediately absorbed and procesed any amonia/nitrite, so if anything it would have helped, not hurt.
If it was "dead" sand there was nothing in it dead or dying to start a amonia chain.

Looking at all he types I see this "a fish had ich" "after treatmen it died" ...not long after another died...sounds like the fish may have had ich,being healthy they can and do fight it off. Then came a power outage which caused stress (low oxygen,no flow possibley amonia burn to the gils). Once one of the bigger fish died it started a chain reaction.

Your doing the right thing. Get an expert to take a look, start a QT tank and let the system go fishless for a month to six weeks so the ich can cycle out. Hang tough this is a battle you can and will win.

 

[Anonymous]

Exactly..he comes to ask help and peeps assume its poor husbandry.."your tank is unstable"..."dont keep adding fish"..etc etc....sheesh..

The sand added caused it?...ummm if it was live/cultured from an existing system it would have immediately absorbed and procesed any amonia/nitrite, so if anything it would have helped, not hurt.
If it was "dead" sand there was nothing in it dead or dying to start a amonia chain.

Looking at all he types I see this "a fish had ich" "after treatmen it died" ...not long after another died...sounds like the fish may have had ich,being healthy they can and do fight it off. Then came a power outage which caused stress (low oxygen,no flow possibley amonia burn to the gils). Once one of the bigger fish died it started a chain reaction.

Your doing the right thing. Get an expert to take a look, start a QT tank and let the system go fishless for a month to six weeks so the ich can cycle out. Hang tough this is a battle you can and will win.

I agree with your scenario of how it played out for him. That sounds text book.

 

[Boss_512]

thx Omni, it was culterd sand from an astablished system that is about 9 years old got it from my guy Grant. but to keep you guys up to date, Grant droped every thing off ffrome an astablished tank. IE..( the water two small pieces of live rock) brand new tank and we pulled the hot mag of the back of mine took out all the carbon and filters cleend it and stuck it on the QT. ANd to let every one know i have ben doing this for 7 years and i still don't know an1/8th of what there is to know thats why i asked for help this was somthing new to me. we got the fox face in the tank about an hour ago hes still going looking rough but all the others had died by now. We medacated him with a copper treatment so i hope he makes it. but 4-6 weeks befor my first restock not a problum i was thinking 8 weeks. It's ok I still have my corals to watch. allways trying to look on the bright side.

 

[Boss_512]

This tank was 7years old and the sand was also untill i added more i gave my brotherinlaw about 40# from my tank to help him save some money and allmost all of my acupora skelatons i had for 7 years. THer was know way i was giving up my panamanion. but it's nice to talk to some one about my tank without them amidietly thinking i just went out and bought a bunch of rock, sandfish and corals and dumped it in my tank and when it starts to all die go why did it do that?

 

[Omni2226]

Well glad to hear one fish may pull through, and the 8 weeks sounds good to me.

There is a very very good chance that letting it go fishless will rid the system of ich and with a qt tank set up future problems may be avoided.

Good luck and have fun watching those corals! Not to mention all the bugs running around...bought a couple of magnifying glasses...man a whole new universe has appeared...see you in a few years Im off to hunt bugs...