Let me preface this by saying I am very new to the hobby and very much overwhelmed at the moment. I don't know how much info is required to offer some advice so forgive me if this is lengthy.
I have a 40 gallon tank, it's been cycled for a few months (static 0ppm ammonia, nitrate, nitrite for months) after curing about 40 lbs of live sand and 50 lbs live rock. My CUC consists of two emerald crabs, four blue legged hermits, two red legged hermits, two unknown hermits, five turbo snails and one sand sifting sea star on recommendation of my lfs which I now realize was not an appropriate addition to my tank on account of numerous sources predicting it's impending doom via starvation.
My tank inhabitants were a mandarin goby (I've got a huge copepod pop), combtooth blenny, watchman goby, small powder blue (intended for a currently non cycled 200 gal when the time came) and a clown hosting two condy anemones.
I do 5-10% water changes each week, and this weekend managed to get my husbands help with he job. I use RO water and periodically fill multiple five gallon buckets in my garage just in case I need to do an emergency water change. Some Of these buckets were already premixed with salt from the week before with power heads in them to keep the water moving and I just hadn't checked the salt level or dumped them out yet. My husband has mixed salt before and knows the correct amount, so when I asked him to bring me some prepped water I thought he was making up a new batch and not using the week old mix. We did the water change using that older salt water, unwittingly, and while I checked my ammonia/nitrite/nitrate levels an hour later like I always do,
I did not check the salinity with my refractometer.
It's completely my fault and such a massive human error on my part. A few hours go by and everyone seems fine but the star fish started to stand up tall on his legs like a little table, a quick google search led me to believe the poor thing was starving so I dismissed it till the morning as nothing I could do at that point. I fed the fish some pellets and got ready for bed. I went back ten minutes later to collect any uneaten food and all of it was floating at the top when it typically sinks and I just didn't put it together.
I woke up this morning to all of my fish dead except a very poorly watchman goby. I checked my parameters again and my ammonia was 0.25 but salt was 0.031 when it always sits at 25
I'm really devastated,
I feel terrible, I loved all of my fish so much and I'm kicking myself for causing this to happen. I guess the prepped waters salt level wasn't mixed correctly or the week old bucket had enough evaporation to significantly increase the salinity.
I have corrected the salt issue and all parameters are fine. My husband surprised me with a big maroon clown, so feeling as though my water was okay now that the salt issue was resolved and the CUC were acting normal I acclimated her and put her in. An hour later, I noticed she was in distress and her entire body looked kind of burnt, color faded off on her stripes, just all around deathly, I quickly removed her and placed her in a qt tank and she's now recovering and color looks normal and while all my CUC looked fine all day, they are now acting kind of comatose hours after I've removed the clown (and the goby). No one is moving, I found my emeralds on their backs but they move ever so slightly once I righted them. The hermits are all completely motionless unless physically touched, and even my Copepods all over my glass are barely moving, thousands are just completely still. The anemones are still responsive, mouths slightly gaped on one. I guess my question is, what should I do about the CUC, would it be best to get them all out to a quarantine tank? What could have caused the burns on my clown and what kind of tests can assure me my water is perfect aside from typical ammonia/nitrite/nitrate? What would cause my crabs/pods/starfish to go completely catatonic?
I have a 40 gallon tank, it's been cycled for a few months (static 0ppm ammonia, nitrate, nitrite for months) after curing about 40 lbs of live sand and 50 lbs live rock. My CUC consists of two emerald crabs, four blue legged hermits, two red legged hermits, two unknown hermits, five turbo snails and one sand sifting sea star on recommendation of my lfs which I now realize was not an appropriate addition to my tank on account of numerous sources predicting it's impending doom via starvation.
My tank inhabitants were a mandarin goby (I've got a huge copepod pop), combtooth blenny, watchman goby, small powder blue (intended for a currently non cycled 200 gal when the time came) and a clown hosting two condy anemones.
I do 5-10% water changes each week, and this weekend managed to get my husbands help with he job. I use RO water and periodically fill multiple five gallon buckets in my garage just in case I need to do an emergency water change. Some Of these buckets were already premixed with salt from the week before with power heads in them to keep the water moving and I just hadn't checked the salt level or dumped them out yet. My husband has mixed salt before and knows the correct amount, so when I asked him to bring me some prepped water I thought he was making up a new batch and not using the week old mix. We did the water change using that older salt water, unwittingly, and while I checked my ammonia/nitrite/nitrate levels an hour later like I always do,
I did not check the salinity with my refractometer.
It's completely my fault and such a massive human error on my part. A few hours go by and everyone seems fine but the star fish started to stand up tall on his legs like a little table, a quick google search led me to believe the poor thing was starving so I dismissed it till the morning as nothing I could do at that point. I fed the fish some pellets and got ready for bed. I went back ten minutes later to collect any uneaten food and all of it was floating at the top when it typically sinks and I just didn't put it together.
I woke up this morning to all of my fish dead except a very poorly watchman goby. I checked my parameters again and my ammonia was 0.25 but salt was 0.031 when it always sits at 25
I'm really devastated,I feel terrible, I loved all of my fish so much and I'm kicking myself for causing this to happen. I guess the prepped waters salt level wasn't mixed correctly or the week old bucket had enough evaporation to significantly increase the salinity.
I have corrected the salt issue and all parameters are fine. My husband surprised me with a big maroon clown, so feeling as though my water was okay now that the salt issue was resolved and the CUC were acting normal I acclimated her and put her in. An hour later, I noticed she was in distress and her entire body looked kind of burnt, color faded off on her stripes, just all around deathly, I quickly removed her and placed her in a qt tank and she's now recovering and color looks normal and while all my CUC looked fine all day, they are now acting kind of comatose hours after I've removed the clown (and the goby). No one is moving, I found my emeralds on their backs but they move ever so slightly once I righted them. The hermits are all completely motionless unless physically touched, and even my Copepods all over my glass are barely moving, thousands are just completely still. The anemones are still responsive, mouths slightly gaped on one. I guess my question is, what should I do about the CUC, would it be best to get them all out to a quarantine tank? What could have caused the burns on my clown and what kind of tests can assure me my water is perfect aside from typical ammonia/nitrite/nitrate? What would cause my crabs/pods/starfish to go completely catatonic?
