Emergency! Help please!!!

[Nick S]

I just got back into the hobby a few months ago. I have a few chromis, anthias, a goby, a powder blue tang, and a frogspawn coral. Everything's been healthy for weeks. This morning, everything was looking fine. Got home from work and one of the blue lightning chromis are dead and the linkia star was stuck on the glass, dead, with like guts hanging out of a tear on the back of each of its arms. Also, my Frogspawn coral has shriveled up since this happened, and it was looking great for a month that i had it. What's happening!!!??? Salinity checked with hydrometer and double checked with refractometer. 1.026 SG. Temp is steady 81.5 checked on two separate thermometers. I fed the tank and the rest of the fish ate. They look ok.

Here are the specs of my setup copied from another post of mine....

Hi guys n gals. I'm back in the hobby after years away. I have a 225 gallon show tank with a 75 gallon fuge. I applied a lot of the same concepts as I did a few years ago. Maybe things have changed? I should have started this thread before I delved into it but here's what I got...any advice is more than appreciated...

Lifereef sump with skimmer and 3 media chambers with carbon and gfo. Two blueline pumps, one running the skimmer and the other returning to the show tank, media chambers, and refugium. When I had my reef set up before, I got Southdown sand from Home Depot. Couldn't find it so I got pavestone desert play sand this time. 4" deep in show tank and 6" deep in fuge. I got 150 pounds of Marshall island rock and very porous base rock below it. I have a precision marine kr620 kalk reactor and use only ro water (kent marine ro/Di). Got me two ecotech mp40 power heads. For lights I put together t5 end caps and reflectors I had and am running four 4 foot ATI bulbs on a new vue660 ballast and two 6' bulbs on another vue660. So far I have 6 chromis of two types, three bangaii cardinals, four dispar anthias, a Catalina goby, a powder blue tang, blue linkia star, and snails and Cukes and conchs etc.

Sorry for the Boring post but if anyone who has gotten down here have any advice as to what I should add/remove/change, it would be a great help! Thanks in advance!

 

[aandfsoccr04]

well for starters, if you did a little research on the species that you intend on purchasing, you would know that linckias have a dismal survival rate in captivity. It seems the only thing they feed on is fauna from the sandbed and once they deplete that they starve to death. That's problem number one. I'd do a water change and run carbon immediately.

 

[Nick S]

Thanks for the reply. I didn't know they were that finicky because when I had the tank set up previously, I had one and it was as healthy as could be. But now that you mention their eating habits, it makes sense because I didn't add the star last time until the system was established for a couple of years and I had a thriving sand bed. Thanks for the info and sorry that I killed a star :uhoh2: I feel pretty bad about it. I've had very few losses my first time around at this. Any explanation for the chromis dieing and the coral shriveling? Both were displaying healthy behavior up until this happened. Maybe the star dieing caused bad elements to enter the system? Thanks again.

 

[FlammySnake]

You said something about sea cucumbers?

 

[Nick S]

Yes Flammy. I have three cukes that I got from liveaquaria with my clean-up crew package. They all seem to be doing well today. Would they have killed my star???

 

[OregonReefer2]

Not to derail your thread but could you PM me where you got your Marshall island rock?

The stuff has been illegal to harvest for 2-3 years now and I haven't been able to find a reputable source (IE: not AquaCon and not illegally harvested) for it

 

[Nick S]

Oregon, I bought it second-hand from a hobbyist in Jersey. He had a reef tank in his office and reduced it to fish only with the fake coral stuff. I paid him $4 a pound. I found him on craigslist because I too had the problem of not being able to find Marshall Island. The pieces were smaller than I hoped for my size tank but had no choice. Good luck finding some!

 

[Nick S]

OK, so some good news...I just ran home to check on the tank and add a bunch of macros and pods and whatnot to my fuge that came in from reefs2go.com and all the fish are looking good and eating well. Even the frogspawn is back to normal. Must have been (hoping so) the death of the star that stressed them out. Gonna change the carbon tonight and do a 50 gallon water change each day for the next few days. Thanks for the help.