Fish emergency.

[hotelbravo]

I woke up to 3 dead fish, all snails dying, urchins all dead, anemones looking on the brink of death, eels breathing hard looking bad and all coral looking like they are dead or dying. The tank is 180 gallon and I did a water change the night before and used all of my remaining salt so I cant do a water change yet. I have no fresh carbon and used my last test strips last week. I am waiting on petco to open since my normal LFS is closed on sundays. Im going to buy carbon, test strips, and ammonia remover. I dont think petco sells salt but if they do ill get some and change some water. What else should I get? What could have happened?

 

[fishinthewall]

Temp? Power outage? Nitrite, ammonia, salinity? Not sure what else could happen overnight.

 

[uncleL]

I would think a temperature Spike? Check the heaters one may have broken? Sorry for your losses!

 

[slief]

Did you account for all 3 Anemone's? If so, as mentioned above, Temp spike, ammonia, salinity could all be factors. If you are dosing anything, what is it and could you have over dosed? Did you clean your glass with Widex? Does your water smell odd? The other thing would be hypoxia. Could something have happened to drop the o2 level in your tank? Are all power heads and pumps operating properly? Do you have adequate surface agitation? Those factors could lead to low o2 levels that will cause fish to die. Excessive stray voltage from a pump possibly? Lastly, do you run a heater and could there be an issue with it? Lastly, if you lost a large fish, that could have triggered a chain of events leading to other casualties. Just some ideas.

 

[Sk8r]

At least LPS corals tolerate ammonia far better than fish do, though there is a limit. Temperature issues maybe. But new saltwater is your best bet. I think Petco does sell marine salt. Wishing you good luck. Get everything alive into clean water would be my best guess what to do, and lessen the death load in there until you can sort out what's 'off' .
Stray voltage, a rampaging anemone, or something 'off' in the water change would be my best guess as to what happened.

 

[snorvich]

Sounds like a toxin.

 

[kmbyrnes]

Sorry for your losses. Petco around here sells salt.
Hope you get things back in shape quickly.

 

[hotelbravo]

Went to petco and got API ammonia test kit and the nitrate/nitrite kit. I had .5 ammonia so I added some ammonia remover and no nitrite or nitrate. The temp has been stable at 78. Salinity at 1.025. I bought I a big container of carbon and put some in a container in the display and a good bit in the sump. Both eels look like they are done for. Yes all 3 anemones are accounted for.

I bought salt from petco but my.pump isnt working to pump the water from the garage into the display. Luck is not working on my side.

 

[insomniac2k2]

Although it kind of sounds like your anemone's may have nuked your tank. Is there a chance of high copper concentration in your tank (all of a sudden?)

 

[Dmorty217]

You only have ammonia because of everything that died/ is dying. I would suspect a toxin or a heater causing stray voltage for the deaths to be widespread (fish,inverts, and corals). I'm sorry man, hopefully you can figure it out quickly enough

 

[hotelbravo]

There is a chance of copper in the system. I just hooked up a RO/DI unit last week and home depot was out of the plastic Ts I needed to split the rodi into 2 brutes. So I got a brass T thinking its freshwater it wont matter. Well my LFS told me that was wrong so I went to lowes and found a plastic T. So one brute was filled while the brass T was being used and I figured it wasnt enough to cause a problem so maybe this is the source of the issue im having

 

[FirstContact]

Sorry for your losses. Don't give up. The eels look great in your avatar.

 

[hotelbravo]

so i went to borrow a friends testing kit to verify and to get his hose and pump to do a large water change. he said it sounded like a temperature swing was the cause. i didnt heat the water up from the brutes outside in the garage so when i went to my friends i got a digital temp probe and he verified with his apex that the digital probe was accurate and i took it home to test my temp since the only thing i have is a glass thermometer. well i guess my glass thermometer is wrong because it says 78 but the temp probe said 83. i went out to check what temp the water in the brutes are sitting and they were at 72 so clearly a large difference. i have turned my heater down and am waiting to see what this does.

 

[hotelbravo]

Update: I did a large water change shortly after my last post and by last night I have lost every living thing in my tank except the two eels. ALL snails and hermits dead, feather dusters, clowns, anemones, shrimp, 7 fish. Im pretty devastated. I dont know what to do.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

WOW Hodge I'm so sorry to hear that this happened. I guess what needs to happen now is figure out what in the world caused this to happen. Do you have any idea at all what might have caused it?

Where do you live maybe we can get some care packages together to get to you once you get your tank up and running. I've got a RBTA I can spare

 

[hotelbravo]

My mind has been racing with possibilities from type of mousepad I added under the return pumps, type of hosing I used, to cleaning the tank out with vinegar a few weeks ago when it was not up and running yet. my temp is a little high and ive unplugged the heater and the temp has not gone down. ive tried adding bags of ice to bring it down but it doesn't keep it down. my wife said that the clamp she was using to hold the hose in the tank while changing water had rust on it and it ended up falling into the tank. so no telling if that was an issue. or the brass fitting that i used to make 40 gallons of water before i realized and replaced it.
and i am living in south Mississippi right now

 

[power boat jim]

You could probably eliminate the brass ts as possibility. Brass is made of copper and zinc. In the unlikely event the fittings were to erode the zinc is the first metal that would leach out of the fitting. I dont know that zinc is particularly toxic the tank and copper is difficult to get into soultion. it would take a very low pH to dissolve it. Thats not a condition you would find in your city water supply. Good luck with finding the cause and recovering.

 

[Dmorty217]

so i went to borrow a friends testing kit to verify and to get his hose and pump to do a large water change. he said it sounded like a temperature swing was the cause. i didnt heat the water up from the brutes outside in the garage so when i went to my friends i got a digital temp probe and he verified with his apex that the digital probe was accurate and i took it home to test my temp since the only thing i have is a glass thermometer. well i guess my glass thermometer is wrong because it says 78 but the temp probe said 83. i went out to check what temp the water in the brutes are sitting and they were at 72 so clearly a large difference. i have turned my heater down and am waiting to see what this does.

The glass temp probe is accurate unless it is broken. You need to calibrate the temp probe you're using. The 8+ degree difference isn't great but you didn't do a 100% water change so it shouldn't of been widespread death. I doubt the brass fitting is to be blamed.

 

[cincyjim]

Sorry to hear about your losses. I can't imagine how you must be feeling over this. I hope you are able to figure out what happened.

Jim

 

[wnehez]

Just my two cents, but it would have to do with the water change you performed. If everything was fine one day, then you did a water change, and the next everything crashed, simple elimination would point towards the water change. To be safe, I would get a copper test and see if there is copper in the tank. I know people are saying its impossible for that to have leaked into the 40 gallons, but theres got to be a reason everything died after adding that water. I wouldn't be too worried about the rust as I have had some rusty parts fall in my sump quickly and everything turned out ok. The temp being 83 shouldn't have caused an issue especially if your tank has been running at that temp for a while. That's not instant death high. Again, I've had my tank reach around 83-84 during summer and things were OK. Like I said, everything is pointing at the water change. But first things first, test for copper. Ask your LFS to test it. Extremely sorry for the loss. Very devastating stuff. Keep your head up.