amcvay1979
New member
Hello all. I woke up yesterday morning to find that the circuit in my basement tripped overnight around 3 a.m. and most of my fish had died.
This circuit will trip every now and again but more often recently, like once every 2 to 3 weeks, typically overnight. When I find it I reset the breaker, everything comes back on and I've never had any fish loss. From my best estimate, the tank was without power from 3 a.m. to about 11 a.m. so about 8 hours. My system is a 150 tall, open top with 35 gallon sump with a skimmer and 2 gyre pumps.
When I woke up and found the fish death I took a water sample of everything I could test for. Temp was 71 (same as the house temp via AC), salinity was 33ppt, a little low but nothing crazy. Nitrate was detectable but not over 2 ppm, phosphates spiked to 0.23 ppm, ammonia was detectable but not overly high.
Ph had dropped to about 7.4 which is what got me thinking the Dissolved Oxygen dropped to dangerously low levels. Here's why I think this. I'm in the midwest and temps are in the high 80's to low 100's in July/August and we run the AC constantly. My system has a fresh air intake but we typically turn this off when humidity gets really high because it becomes a losing battle trying to bring in hot, humid air to cool the house. Anyway, last summer I found my ph dropping to 7.6 when the AC was running all the time so I would have to turn on the fresh air intake more often.
The only other thing that peaked my interest was I began feeding New Life Spectrum Ick Shield pellets just 2 days before. My taller, skinny fish regularly show signs of ich every few weeks, but they're fat and happy fish and it don't bother them, just some minor flashing every now and again and I've always just lived with it. I had this food on hand but never used it, so I tried it and they loved the stuff, so I figured I'd give it a shot for a month.
Anyway, my total losses are as follows; Yellow Longnose Butterfly, Bristletooth Tomini Tang, Mimic Tang, 2 fairy wrasses, 1 cleaner wrasse, 1 clown goby, 1 bengai cardinal, 1 mandarin goby, 1 chromis, 2 tomato clowns. I couldn't find the mandarin, the clown goby or the chromis, but haven't seen them over the past 24 hours.
I'm left with 2 chromis, 1 melanaurus wrasse, and 1 bengai cardinal.
Since I'm 99% sure the mandarin didn't eat the pellet foods, I suppose I can rule out the food being the issue, or...would this medicated food have compromised their health just slightly enough to where a low oxygen event could have killed them?
I did locate the cause of the tripped circuit, I think, and it tripped 5 or 6 times yesterday but not again since I removed it.
Thoughts?
This circuit will trip every now and again but more often recently, like once every 2 to 3 weeks, typically overnight. When I find it I reset the breaker, everything comes back on and I've never had any fish loss. From my best estimate, the tank was without power from 3 a.m. to about 11 a.m. so about 8 hours. My system is a 150 tall, open top with 35 gallon sump with a skimmer and 2 gyre pumps.
When I woke up and found the fish death I took a water sample of everything I could test for. Temp was 71 (same as the house temp via AC), salinity was 33ppt, a little low but nothing crazy. Nitrate was detectable but not over 2 ppm, phosphates spiked to 0.23 ppm, ammonia was detectable but not overly high.
Ph had dropped to about 7.4 which is what got me thinking the Dissolved Oxygen dropped to dangerously low levels. Here's why I think this. I'm in the midwest and temps are in the high 80's to low 100's in July/August and we run the AC constantly. My system has a fresh air intake but we typically turn this off when humidity gets really high because it becomes a losing battle trying to bring in hot, humid air to cool the house. Anyway, last summer I found my ph dropping to 7.6 when the AC was running all the time so I would have to turn on the fresh air intake more often.
The only other thing that peaked my interest was I began feeding New Life Spectrum Ick Shield pellets just 2 days before. My taller, skinny fish regularly show signs of ich every few weeks, but they're fat and happy fish and it don't bother them, just some minor flashing every now and again and I've always just lived with it. I had this food on hand but never used it, so I tried it and they loved the stuff, so I figured I'd give it a shot for a month.
Anyway, my total losses are as follows; Yellow Longnose Butterfly, Bristletooth Tomini Tang, Mimic Tang, 2 fairy wrasses, 1 cleaner wrasse, 1 clown goby, 1 bengai cardinal, 1 mandarin goby, 1 chromis, 2 tomato clowns. I couldn't find the mandarin, the clown goby or the chromis, but haven't seen them over the past 24 hours.
I'm left with 2 chromis, 1 melanaurus wrasse, and 1 bengai cardinal.
Since I'm 99% sure the mandarin didn't eat the pellet foods, I suppose I can rule out the food being the issue, or...would this medicated food have compromised their health just slightly enough to where a low oxygen event could have killed them?
I did locate the cause of the tripped circuit, I think, and it tripped 5 or 6 times yesterday but not again since I removed it.
Thoughts?
