I had a 120 that was established for a year, and I went out of town for 5 days and everything was dead except for two fish and all inverts, when I came back. Some one was feeding and adding water everyday. The water turned a light brown and the only reading that was shown off when I tested, was ammonia and was at 1 ppm. The two fish that were alive, were breathing very heavy. They are doing fine now. Was it the ammonia that killed them, and how did it get there? I am fairly new, so any comments will be appreciated.
Everything dead in 5 days
- Thread starter jtrim123
- Start date
Sorry to hear about your troubles....
If you haven't found evidence of any equipment problems, then it's possible if not likely that the fish were overfed, especially considering they'll eat almost until the point of where it's harmful to their own health, so if your tanksitter fed until the fish were done eating, that could create a lot of waste.
I leave my tank months at a time with my parents just feeding and adding water every day or so, so I know how nerveracking it is not being around to check on stuff. I'm sorry you didn't have a good outcome over only 5 days
the ammonia is either from things dieing, over fed fish food that wasn't eating, or the fish eating a ton, pooping a ton, and it not breaking down into nitrate fast enough.
If you haven't found evidence of any equipment problems, then it's possible if not likely that the fish were overfed, especially considering they'll eat almost until the point of where it's harmful to their own health, so if your tanksitter fed until the fish were done eating, that could create a lot of waste.
I leave my tank months at a time with my parents just feeding and adding water every day or so, so I know how nerveracking it is not being around to check on stuff. I'm sorry you didn't have a good outcome over only 5 days
the ammonia is either from things dieing, over fed fish food that wasn't eating, or the fish eating a ton, pooping a ton, and it not breaking down into nitrate fast enough.
ludnix
New member
This is what I did when I left for 3 weeks. During that time the skimmer's recirculating pump completely failed, but fortunately the LFS employee was able to replace it for us. If we had someone else watch the tank for they never would have realized there was anything wrong with the skimmer and we really would have been in trouble.
luther1200
Premium Member
It is possible 1 of your larger fish just died, and the person didn't notice. And if they didn't get the fish out it would create a large amount of ammonia. Did you have any large fish?
The overfeeding thing is a definite possibilty -- I have heard of many people measuring out the food into daily "packets" and then hiding the food containers, since it's very easy to overfeed for people who don't understand reefs.
The fact that the water turned a light brown might have been from all the uneaten food in the water -- if it was a decomposing fish then I think it would have just dumped the ammonia into the water unless it fueled some kind of micro-algae in the water column.
I would get an ATO and just have a person feed every two days or so, and use a webcam to watch the reef and make sure that everything is okay, with a reef store on call in case something needs fixing.
The fact that the water turned a light brown might have been from all the uneaten food in the water -- if it was a decomposing fish then I think it would have just dumped the ammonia into the water unless it fueled some kind of micro-algae in the water column.
I would get an ATO and just have a person feed every two days or so, and use a webcam to watch the reef and make sure that everything is okay, with a reef store on call in case something needs fixing.
