Help me solve this mystery!

ag09g

New member
So I took a little four day mini vacation to the Florida Keys this past weekend. Naturally I decided to do a little bit of collecting so I got a few fish, gorgonias, zoanthids, coral banded shrimp, a rock anemone, starfish and some sargassum shrimps/anonymous algae.

Yesterday we got home, everyone survived the trip and the new additions were added to a well established quarantine tank. All fish were eating last night and the corals had opened up; everything looked perfect and beautiful. At approximately 1am I checked on the tank and everyone was alive and well.

At 930-10am I woke up and, to my horror, the tank was cloudy and every fish and shrimp had died. The odd thing is that every coral was fully extended and looking completely healthy.

So....any ideas what happened? It seems to me like something released a toxin since the corals are unaffected, but I really dont know what would have done it. I did collect a piece of coralline algae that had some sponge/tunicates on it, I thought perhaps those had died and released something but I smelled it and nothing smelled bad and the pieces all looked firm and in tact.

Im glad the corals all survived but I am super bummed to have killed all those beautiful healthy fish :'(
Any help figuring this out is greatly appreciated!
 
Don't do that... Think about what would happen if we all did that... We would destroy the eco system. It is very illegal in florida to take live stock from the ocean.

I don't want to come across like "follow all the laws" I just feel very strong about protecting the worlds reef systems, and all of nature. Thats just my opinion...
 
I'm in Florida and it's definitely not illegal! You just have to have a fishing license and maintain certain size limits for fish/not take any stony corals. Everything I got was perfectly legal and did not destroy any ecosystems...

They were all babies about 2-3 inches in size. Two jackknife fish, a doctorfish and a spot fin butterflyfish.
The tank is 35g and has been set up for over 10 years. It was currently empty, fish wise, but has several pieces of liverock and a few mushrooms and zoanthids. All the parameters were in range, specific gravity 1.025, nitrates 5, trites/ammonia 0, alk 9dkh, mag 1300, calcium 1220.
There are also no medications in the system and I hadn't added any supplements or anything.
 
my apologies, I thought I read somewhere that it is illegal to take from the Florida waters.
 
That's no problem at all! Definitely live rock and stony corals are illegal, but its a free for all for the soft corals and other inverts for the most part!
 
There's no heater or chiller, the tank is at room temperature (75) and we didn't have power failure or anything, so I don't think there should have been any temperature swing :/
 
From your other posts, it says you have a 28g nano? That is what happened, you added too much too fast, crashed the tank.

Calcium 1220? HOLY.....
 
Eek calcium is 420, I don't know what I was thinking when I typed that!

And this is a different tank then the nano, it's only 35 gallons but it is well established and should have had the bacteria to handle the fish load. I tested the ammonia after the deaths and it was 0, plus the fish were in the tank less than 24 hours from time of acclimation to deaths. The corals were not withdrawn though which is what I found odd, if it had been ammonia poisoning I would have expected the corals to react negatively if it was high enough to kill the fish. That's just what I'm thinking though....
 
Actually thegrun, I remember mucus coming off of the zoas and they were definitely on the bottom of the bucket on the trip home. That could absolutely have been what it was, I didn't even think of that!
 
Another reason why you never take anything out of the ocean - particularly corals. You risk a chance of toxins being released into your DT
 
I was going to ask if you collected any sponges but zoas sAme thing. Some of those sponges can release crazy stuff. I agree with the above guess.
 
Thats why I quarantined everything! Technically you pose that risk anytime you get anything new, ocean or not. Ive wiped out tanks with store bought critters before and ive learned that's why we need to quarantine things. Hence the reason my display tank is currently fine and its only the QT having an issue.
 
I would almost think you could have introduce a bacteria strain that went crazy in the new tank with the cloudiness. This is the same type of reaction some people have when carbon dosing or sugars going into a tank. The bacteria bloom then use up all the oxygen and poof, fish die out and coral seems less effected.
 
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