FalsePerc
New member
Hi all,
I was recently hospitalized for a period of a week, and left my reef tank in the care of a competent friend. The hospitalization was anticipated a day in advance, so I had the opportunity to ensure that all was right with the reef and write out and explain in person detailed instructions for the aquarium's care. The fish, 2 false percula clowns, a lubbock's wrasse, and a blue damsel, were as healthy as can be and had been living in this aquarium for well over 3 months at this point in time. I fed them a little bit extra before leaving, but it was nothing excessive. On the first day of my hospitalization, my friend tested calcium, alkalinity, and pH and dosed B-ionic two-part according to my instructions. He also fed the fish a pinch of food, and reported that they were active and happy and begging for food. The next afternoon, he returned to find all of the fish dead and adhering to the tank's pumps. At first, he imagined they'd been sucked into the pumps and perished in that manner. However, he was resourceful enough to bring a water sample to a highly trusted local fish store for thorough testing, which was performed readily and without charge (props to Aqua Hut on Long Island, for anyone in the area!) He also took a detailed, 5 minute video exploring every crevice of the aquarium and took a tremendous amount of photos, which he shared with the patient LFS employee.
After testing for every parameter in the book and reviewing the photos, the employee (who remembered my tank from my own prior visits) reported that the water conditions could not be any closer to ideal, and stressed especially his surprise at the on-target alkalinity/calcium levels and low levels of waste (absolute 0 nitrites/phosphates and "astonishingly low" nitrates).
To complicate the story and add to my bafflement, each and every coral in the system not only survived whatever event spontaneously killed the 4 healthy, hardy, and established fish, but continued to thrive. I returned home today and made the same observation. After testing the water on my own, this is what I came up with:
KH = 9 dKH
Ca = 450 ppm
NO3- < 20 ppm
NO2- = 0 ppm
Temp = 78.9 F
Salinity = 1.0265 / 35 ppt
Mg = 1350 ppm
PO4 = 0 ppm
The aquarium is a 9 month old 28 gallon nanocube with a 5 gallon refugium containing a heavy-duty sponge filter, an air-driven box filter containing seachem's "Matrix" biological substrate, and an airdrome for circulation. For skimming, I employ a Venturi-driven CPR bakpak that hangs on the refugium. For mechanical and chemical filtration, a magnum 350 canister filter is loaded with a filter sponge and a mix of regularly-changed chemi-pure, purigen, and matrix carbon. It has a shallow sand bed of roughly one quarter inch of fine Southdown sand (same goes for the fuge).
The reef is home to a variety of corals: SPS, LPS, and a few softies. Additionally, it houses a tiger tailsea cucumber, sand sifting star, 2 peppermint shrimp, a skunk cleaner shrimp, a menagerie of snail-killing baja and Halloween hermits, a large and badass scavenging nassarius snail, a brown brittle star, a small yellow cucumber, Sally light foot, emerald, and acro crabs, a derasa clam, and a variety of sponges, only one of which was purchased: a healthy and fast-growing red-orange variety. Not a single invertebrate in this reef was affected by the mysterious pescicidal event.
I am completely stumped by this sudden loss of fish life in the face of thriving invertebrates, and all I can ask is: what on earth could possibly have gone wrong here? My solitary hypothesis is a tremendously weak one: my friend tested and dosed prior to feeding the fish their last supper, and he reported that he had difficulty locating the proper testing reagents and ended up touching all of the testing reagent bottles. It is possible, I suppose, that one or more of these reagents could have been on the caps or sides of their bottles, and may have therefore ended up on my friend's finger tips and therefore been absorbed into the few pinches of food (new life spectrum marine formula). The only support for this is that my friend has peripheral neuropathy that results in very poor sensation in the fingertips, which may have prevented him from feeling an irritating reagent's presence on them. Once again, however: this hypothesis is weak and I know it. I feel I can rule out a fish-hungry predator based on the fact that all corpses were recovered by my friend completelyintact, from the sides of the circulation pumps.
Anyone on here wanna try their hand at solving this bizarre murder mystery? I'll attach a photo of the reef as it was before I left. The lights are off now, but I'll post an "after" picture tomorrow. In the mean time, you can visualize this "after" picture by subtracting the fish but changing nothing in the health of the corals.
Seriously, though: what kills a damselfish but not a clam? An ocellaris clown but not a forest of SPS? And all at once, nonetheless?
Thanks,
Mike
I was recently hospitalized for a period of a week, and left my reef tank in the care of a competent friend. The hospitalization was anticipated a day in advance, so I had the opportunity to ensure that all was right with the reef and write out and explain in person detailed instructions for the aquarium's care. The fish, 2 false percula clowns, a lubbock's wrasse, and a blue damsel, were as healthy as can be and had been living in this aquarium for well over 3 months at this point in time. I fed them a little bit extra before leaving, but it was nothing excessive. On the first day of my hospitalization, my friend tested calcium, alkalinity, and pH and dosed B-ionic two-part according to my instructions. He also fed the fish a pinch of food, and reported that they were active and happy and begging for food. The next afternoon, he returned to find all of the fish dead and adhering to the tank's pumps. At first, he imagined they'd been sucked into the pumps and perished in that manner. However, he was resourceful enough to bring a water sample to a highly trusted local fish store for thorough testing, which was performed readily and without charge (props to Aqua Hut on Long Island, for anyone in the area!) He also took a detailed, 5 minute video exploring every crevice of the aquarium and took a tremendous amount of photos, which he shared with the patient LFS employee.
After testing for every parameter in the book and reviewing the photos, the employee (who remembered my tank from my own prior visits) reported that the water conditions could not be any closer to ideal, and stressed especially his surprise at the on-target alkalinity/calcium levels and low levels of waste (absolute 0 nitrites/phosphates and "astonishingly low" nitrates).
To complicate the story and add to my bafflement, each and every coral in the system not only survived whatever event spontaneously killed the 4 healthy, hardy, and established fish, but continued to thrive. I returned home today and made the same observation. After testing the water on my own, this is what I came up with:
KH = 9 dKH
Ca = 450 ppm
NO3- < 20 ppm
NO2- = 0 ppm
Temp = 78.9 F
Salinity = 1.0265 / 35 ppt
Mg = 1350 ppm
PO4 = 0 ppm
The aquarium is a 9 month old 28 gallon nanocube with a 5 gallon refugium containing a heavy-duty sponge filter, an air-driven box filter containing seachem's "Matrix" biological substrate, and an airdrome for circulation. For skimming, I employ a Venturi-driven CPR bakpak that hangs on the refugium. For mechanical and chemical filtration, a magnum 350 canister filter is loaded with a filter sponge and a mix of regularly-changed chemi-pure, purigen, and matrix carbon. It has a shallow sand bed of roughly one quarter inch of fine Southdown sand (same goes for the fuge).
The reef is home to a variety of corals: SPS, LPS, and a few softies. Additionally, it houses a tiger tailsea cucumber, sand sifting star, 2 peppermint shrimp, a skunk cleaner shrimp, a menagerie of snail-killing baja and Halloween hermits, a large and badass scavenging nassarius snail, a brown brittle star, a small yellow cucumber, Sally light foot, emerald, and acro crabs, a derasa clam, and a variety of sponges, only one of which was purchased: a healthy and fast-growing red-orange variety. Not a single invertebrate in this reef was affected by the mysterious pescicidal event.
I am completely stumped by this sudden loss of fish life in the face of thriving invertebrates, and all I can ask is: what on earth could possibly have gone wrong here? My solitary hypothesis is a tremendously weak one: my friend tested and dosed prior to feeding the fish their last supper, and he reported that he had difficulty locating the proper testing reagents and ended up touching all of the testing reagent bottles. It is possible, I suppose, that one or more of these reagents could have been on the caps or sides of their bottles, and may have therefore ended up on my friend's finger tips and therefore been absorbed into the few pinches of food (new life spectrum marine formula). The only support for this is that my friend has peripheral neuropathy that results in very poor sensation in the fingertips, which may have prevented him from feeling an irritating reagent's presence on them. Once again, however: this hypothesis is weak and I know it. I feel I can rule out a fish-hungry predator based on the fact that all corpses were recovered by my friend completelyintact, from the sides of the circulation pumps.
Anyone on here wanna try their hand at solving this bizarre murder mystery? I'll attach a photo of the reef as it was before I left. The lights are off now, but I'll post an "after" picture tomorrow. In the mean time, you can visualize this "after" picture by subtracting the fish but changing nothing in the health of the corals.
Seriously, though: what kills a damselfish but not a clam? An ocellaris clown but not a forest of SPS? And all at once, nonetheless?
Thanks,
Mike
