...And Everything is DEAD! Where do I go from here?

[lotusstar]

Hey all.
Well several people read through my original post of please help is my system crashing. Thought I would update everyone and see if anyone can help me analyze what went wrong because everything went from perfect friday night July 3rd to dead by afternoon July 8th when I got home. A few days and the really troubling part is nothing "appears" to be wrong. I tested my parameters yet again and it's same as usual they have been since May.

temp 77-79
sg 1.024
amonia 0
nitrate 5
phosphate 0
ph 8.0 (up from 7.9 it was at when I started this)
alk 4meq/l. I had a lot of confusion with this, I thought my reading was dkh but it had been 4meq/l all along.

Those have been my parameters pretty much since I bought the tank established from someone else in May. The only thing I did differently was on Thursday of last week, 2 days before everything started dying I added 40 lbs of sand. That's the only thing I can think of that I did differently but don't know how or why that would have killed everything?

Anyway, when I got home my coral beauty that had been in hiding since Sunday and wouldn't eat was dead at the bottom of the tank. He was almost bleach white for his body. And the weird thing is he had some sort of clear slimy blob wrapped around his head. The only way I can describe it is if you've seen the movie "The Abyss", it was like that blob of water/slime stuff and it was wrapped around the coral beauty. Or if you haven't seen the movie think of the body of a jelly fish i guess.

So I have no idea where to go with the tank from here. I don't know how to figure out what went wrong, how I went from great eating and looking fish on friday to all dead 5 days later. Especially with the consistency I've maintained in water quality. Anyone have any ideas what I should do? I can't buy a new fish until I figure out what's going on, my LFS keeps telling me I have great water quality but that can't be the case. There must be something I, and they are overlooking? Any suggestions, I will be all ears!
As always, Thanks!!!

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

Where did the sand come from? Did you treat it or wash it or do anything else to it before adding it to the tank? How big is the tank? What substrate was in there to begin with?

I'm sorry, I haven't seen your original thread so I'm not sure if you've answered these questions already.

 

[Eb0la11]

Describe the sand you added to the tank and how you added it?

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

PS - don't let this alter your love for the hobby. There are two kinds of people doing this whole reef thing - people who have had a major crash, and people who will have a major crash.

 

[lotusstar]

Ha, no no way with this alter my enjoyment of keeping a reef tank. That is actually why I want to really analyze this and figure out what happened because I will one day be successful, but just not today apparently hehe. I need to figure it out so I can make sure it doesn't happen again if it can be prevented. Ok, to answer the questions about sand.

It was aragonite sand, 40lbs that I bought from the LFS. I don't remember exactly but want to say the brand was caribisea? The tank already had a very very thin bed of the same stuff, aragonite. Not even half an inch and I wanted a little deeper without going DSB. So added 40 lbs which brought me to about 1.5 to 2 inches in a few spots. The tank is a 92G corner tank. When I got home I did wash it out, that's what I had always done when I got new sand was to wash it. Didn't do anything else to it though. The way I added it to the tank was with a pvc pipe that I poured the sand down the pipe so it could fall on the bottom without causing days worth of cloudiness. It actually worked pretty well.

 

[boret]

Sorry to hear Lotusstar!!

When you say, EVERYTHING, what do you mean? You only mentioned the Coral Beauty. If everything dies in a tank you should have a tremendous spike in Ni from all the die off. The first thing you do in those cases is a large water change. Did your cleaning crew (crabs, snails, etc...) die as well? Any corals? SPS, LPS? Any softies?

If your parameters are good the only thing I can think off is someone (a kid, a drunk roommate, *insert crazy person here*, etc...) that threw something inside the tank like perfume, beer, etc... Otherwise there is no reason for EVERYTHING to die. A kid threw a sharpie inside of one of the LFS around the area. The owner caught it early but still all the corals lost the coloration, everything turned brown and he lost about 50% of the livestock.

Are you dosing Kalkwasser? Kalk overdose could cause a tank crash.

How do you control the temperature? Big swings in temperature could kill a bunch of stuff.

The other thing I can think of is oxygen depletion. At some point the power in your house went out for several ours and there was no oxygen exchange because there were not any backup powerheads, air pumps or the like running.

Do you think that might have happen? Do you have a way to check with neighbors to find out if there was a blackout? (was your alarm clock blinking)

Best of luck buddy! Your 92 was coming along nicely!

B.

 

[liverock]

Dead sand

Dead sand

""thing I did differently was on Thursday of last week, 2 days before everything started dying I added 40 lbs of sand. """

Could be after adding the sand, it may have smothered your live sand bed.....I have seen it happen before.....sand bed dies, can puke a tank......that is unless you mixed the new with the old thoroughly...then you got me...

Richard TBS

 

[Eb0la11]

Re: Dead sand

Re: Dead sand

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15326245#post15326245 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by liverock
""thing I did differently was on Thursday of last week, 2 days before everything started dying I added 40 lbs of sand. """

Could be after adding the sand, it may have smothered your live sand bed.....I have seen it happen before.....sand bed dies, can puke a tank......that is unless you mixed the new with the old thoroughly...then you got me...

Richard TBS

This was my initial guess. That seems far fetched though with it being a very thin layer of sand.

Stirring an old sand bed can release a lot of pockets of waste that are decaying and poison a tank, but that type of thing should become obvious with checking parameters so Im stumped.

 

[lotusstar]

Hey guys,
Ok let me go through and answer these questions as best as I can. First, Boret, when I say everything I mean everything except my corals. I didn't have many, when I bought the tank it had a small thing of frogspawn, some mushrooms, serveral dusters on the rocks, and a leather coral. On sunday a small piece of the leather just fell off of it, it had looked awful that day so I pulled the part that fell off out of the tank. I left the rest in to see what it would do for a day, and now it looks great and totally normal again.
My list of fish I had was a blue tang, coral beauty, clown, and poor mans idol. Those 4 things are what's died. The frogspawn, leather and the mushrooms look absolutely great. As for clean up crew I never had much of a clean up crew yet, I was working slowly on figuring out what to put in there. Had 3 turbo snails and about 5 hermit crabs. The crabs, well I haven't accounted for all 5 but have seen 3 and they are still alive. I have 2 dead snails, 1 is still cruising all over the rocks cleaning away.
I'm guessing due to some of this die off of snails I"m getting some algae growing on the glass so having to clean this off by hand.
As for crazy people throwing something in the tank that could be a possibility since saturday we threw a 4th of July party and had a bunch of people over. But by the time the party started the first signs of bad things was happening, the blue tang was already looking bleached and dying early that afternoon.
Haven't been dosing kalk as I specifically knew that doing it wrong could cause problems if not done right. So I was reading massive amounts of stuff about making it and how to dose it correctly to keep this from happening before I began dosing. Was planning to start dosing probably next week or so.
Temp control, I have a heater plugged in but it rarely goes on from what I've seen. I have 2 temp gauges to make sure one isn't malfunctioning. The first is the glass stick on one that I've used on all my tanks through the years. And second is a digital probe. The heater kicks on now and then but not often so I haven't noticed any huge swings in temp not from a day to day basis, but honestly not sure from hour to hour.
No chance of having power outage either cause I was off for 4th holiday so I spent pretty much all day getting the house and yard ready for the party we had on Saturday. Plus the kids are home for the summer vacation and hadn't had any power outages.
Ok for the sand bed question. After I added the new sand I did a water change of about 10 gallons or so as usual and I used a gravel filter on the sand bed to try and mix it in some but didn't totally mix the 2. For the most part the old was under the new. But as Eb0la said, I would have figured parameters would have tipped me off to that.
I hate to stump you guys as much as I am stumped, but lets keep the brainstorming going. Thanks!

 

[SharkLover1981]

I think its defintely the addition of 40 lbs of sand. too much sand on an already established reef. not too mention it was recently moved as you said from another reefer. so your stirred up the old stand in the move and then let that settle and topped it off with some more new sand. I'd be upset if I were your sand. I'm sorry for your loss

 

[lotusstar]

Ok. So if it was the 40 lbs sand that caused my problem about how long should I wait til I reintroduce fish. How long does the sand need to reestablish itself? Unfortunately it seems no test will indicate when my fish can live or die since my parameters are still fine. So any suggestion? Should I wait like a regular start up cycle and wait 4-6 weeks? Will I eventually see amonia ni spikes? When do you guys think I could expect to get back going? Also would it be safe to add more clean up crew sooner than the reintroduction of fish? Starting to get some algae buildup that is annoying to see but would my tank also kill snails and stuff?
Thanks for everyones help and good wishes!

 

[SL38]

Just a thought.. when you washed your sand, was there any chance you accidentally had soap/chemicals in the bucket or on your hands? That coulda caused a crash.

 

[boret]

Algae.... I think you need to start keeping an eye on phosphates. Is your test kit reliable? Algae bloom seems part of the cycle. I would try to run a reactor with carbon and GFO just to clear the water.

I am still not 100% convinced that the sand was the problem.

 

[Cbravo212]

Was the sand live sand? Was the sand wet when you got it or was it dry. If it was live sand and there was a tear in the bag, you would have had some dieoff in the sand. But in order for this to be true, your ammonia test kit would have to jacked up as well.

 

[lotusstar]

When I washed the sand I washed it in the same buckets that I used to transfer water from the original tank move back in May. I hadn't washed it out with any soap, just used water and let them air dry. Which these are the same buckets I use to make up my salt water for water changes.
Boret, I think my test kits are reliable. I just bought the kit in May and so far has seemed reliable. My tests show no phosphates and the LFS said my phosphate levels were fine as well. Algae bloom does seem like part of a cycle but as you pointed out in the corner thread it usually does seem to be the other way around. Fish would live while the corals die first since they require the more pristine water conditions. I have been planning to buy a carbon reactor but had just been running carbon in a sock in the sump. As for GFO I wasn't sure if I would need it since I seemed to have no phosphates that are detectable. And like you, I'm not 100% convinced anything, sand or whatever is the problem. I still think the problem is not found.
As for the sand it wasn't live, it was dry sand I got from the LFS. When I bought the tank in may the tank was very dirty. I honestly thought the sand he was using was mud, it looked and had the consistency of mud. When I got it home I spent quite awhile cleaning it out and realized it was typical aragonite.

 

[PRDubois]

__________________________________________
spent pretty much all day getting the house and yard ready for the party we had on Saturday.
__________________________________________

Could be a cleaning product from getting the house ready?

 

[boret]

Did you guys play country music at the party??... that can be deadly to fish and other house pets!

 

[otrlynn]

When was your last fish added to the tank? Sorry, I did not read your previous thread. Is it possible that you just had a sick fish, which spread the illness to other fish? A disease like marine velvet (amyloodinium ocellatum) kills very quickly from what I understand. It is possible that your problem just occured around the time you added sand, not because of it. I would do your normal water changes, keep running carbon, and keep watch on the tank and see how the inverts you currently have are doing. If the inverts seem okay after a week or two, I'd add a few clean up crew members. If they are doing okay after another week, I'd consider adding a fish. However, I'd probably set up a QT tank now, so that it would be cycled and ready for the time I wanted to start buying fish. I highly recommend QT for all fish purchases, at minimum to get them eating well, and so that you can treat them if you see signs of disease.

 

[che25]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15334553#post15334553 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by boret
Did you guys play country music at the party??... that can be deadly to fish and other house pets!

There are only two kinds of music: Country and Western.

Sorry about your loss. I find it interesting that the crash attacked the fish and not the corals. To me, this would suggest some type of pathogen that attacks the fish and ruling out the sand bed theory. I would do water changes, test, and add livestock slowly. Sometimes, sh** just happens.

Good Luck.

 

[Superstretch18]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15335312#post15335312 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by otrlynn
When was your last fish added to the tank? Sorry, I did not read your previous thread. Is it possible that you just had a sick fish, which spread the illness to other fish? A disease like marine velvet (amyloodinium ocellatum) kills very quickly from what I understand. It is possible that your problem just occured around the time you added sand, not because of it. I would do your normal water changes, keep running carbon, and keep watch on the tank and see how the inverts you currently have are doing. If the inverts seem okay after a week or two, I'd add a few clean up crew members. If they are doing okay after another week, I'd consider adding a fish. However, I'd probably set up a QT tank now, so that it would be cycled and ready for the time I wanted to start buying fish. I highly recommend QT for all fish purchases, at minimum to get them eating well, and so that you can treat them if you see signs of disease.

I was essentially going to write the same thing...

I think that you can rule out any bacterial crash or chemical introduction by the fact that the corals are doing fine. Typically the corals would be as impacted by either, if not more sensitive to them. Granted, that's not always the case; but it is much, much more often than not.

Just a thought, but sometimes having house guests can really stress out the fish. Tons more traffic in front of the tank can be troublesome to the fish, lights on for long periods of time, flashes from fireworks (?) or worse, one of your guests thought it was a good idea to pound on the tank to get the fish to react. Stress opens them to infection or weakens them against a disease that they are already trying to fight.

Another thought is that maybe there was a cucumber or some other toxic organism in the tank that died, released a poison that was toxic to the fish, but wouldn't impact the corals. You would probably know if you had something like that in the tank, but it is worth mentioning in case something comes to mind.

The slimy blob isn't really a concern; just means that the flame was decomposing in the tank long enough for there to be a bacterial bloom around it. Gross, but not really an issue.

FWIW, I would probably wait a couple of weeks before adding any fish to the main tank, so that if there are any pathogens present, they can cycle out naturally before you add additional hosts...