Tank move and fish dying

[DiverDave32]

Hoping someone can help me shed light on what I did wrong here.

I started preparing to move my 110 gallon tank a few days ago. The move is about 11km (6 miles) away.

I have moved the tank three times in 1.5 years. The first move, I lost a squirrelfish and gobby but the 6 other inhabitants survived without issue.

The second move, I thought I perfected things and had no loss of life.

Now this horrible move. I lost a Unicornfish, blue-spotted puffer, gold spotted rabbitfish and my 2 lemon chromis aren't in top shape. Only my Tibecen angel is swimming around.

Here is what I did:

I took my old 55 gallon tank, live rock and fish and transported them to the new place in 5 gal buckets. Fish were in the buckets about 1 hour. I added the live rock to the tank and then the fish. I brought 35 gallons of water from the old tank and with the live rock didn't need to add any of the new water that I had made up the night before. In the tank, there were two powerbeads and a heater. During the move, the temperature of the water dropped by about 3F from 79 to 76F.

The next day when I arrived I was very sad to see that half of my fish were dead! I took them out immediately and started working on the main tank.

I tested both ammonia (0) and nitrate (0) and for pH (8.58) read with Apex.

I am really not sure what went so wrong here. I am hoping that I don't loose any more fish but am not confident.

On the main tank, I do 32 gallon water changes every two weeks. All my parameters are good but my nitrates have always been a little high, around 30 ppm without any major change prior or post water change.

After 1.5 years, I was really seeing great growth of the fish and am really upset that they didn't survive. Could the 3F temperature drop be responsible? I find it hard to believe that such a small change would kill off so many fish. Would not having a powerhead in the buckets cause them to die within 1 hour? I also didn't feed them 24 hours prior to the move to help reduce their waste production.

Any insight of suggestions on what I could do differently would be greatly appreciated. It is really upsetting!

Dave

 

[thegrun]

I'm not seeing anything that jumps out at me as a likely cause. Once you had the fish back at your new house how quickly did you raise the temperature and how high did you raise it to? Did you have a and bed and if so did you reuse it or start with new sand? If you reused the sand or used new "live" sand you may have had a short duration ammonia spike that dropped back to zero by the time you tested that was high enough none the less to kill your fish. That would be my guess as the most likely cause. Sorry for your losses.

 

[DiverDave32]

I am actually still raising it. It has gone up from 74F to 78 over the last 24 hours. 1F to go. pH is a little high 8.58 but need to recalibrate probe so it might be off a little.

I had a shallow sand bed less than 1" deep on average. I did transfer some to the new tank but there was none in the holding tank.

I think the next move, I will have the tank set-up at least a week in advance to hopefully stabilize things and only bring the fish to keep tank to tank time under 1 hour.

I am just keeping my fingers crossed that when I go back to the new place that my last three survivors are actually survivors

Thanks for the input.

Dave

 

[thegrun]

I'm scratching my head on this one as to the cause of the deaths. I suspected the pH reading was off, but if it is accurate that would have been enough of a shock to kill. pH that high without some dosing cause is rare.

 

[gone fishin]

I know you had two powerheads going but just to toss it out there is it possible you may have got into a low oxygen issue with the 55g. Were the fish on the larger side?

 

[DiverDave32]

Low O2 could be a possibility. I did have one of the powerbeads right at the surface and it was stirring up the water quite a bit but I will try adding more circulation. The fish were not in the buckets max 1.5 hours. I had them divided between three buckets.

The Unicornfish was quite large, I would say 12" maybe even more. I was actually looking into what to do with him as he was getting a little large for the tank.

I am happy to say that my three remaining fish seem to be pulling through. They are swimming vigorously and eating! My CUC also seems fine.

Just tested the water parameters and phosphate and nitrate have actually gone down!

Spec Grav. 34 ppm
pH 8.49 (Using an old test kit get between 7.8 and 8)
Temp 78.8
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 16 ppm
Phosphate 0.51 ppm (I was at 1.7 previously). Just started testing as had a slight diatom bloom.

I just had a thought. I added all my live rock to the transfer tank, I have about 30kg (66 lbs). Perhaps disturbing the live rock and now having it in a smaller tank with less water could have increased the ammonia and nitrate which led to fish dying. Would it be better not to have the live rock in the transfer tank if the fish will only be held there less than 24 hours?

Thanks all for your input.

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Two questions

1 did you have any kind of oxygen supply in the buckets that you transferred the fish in?

2 Are you saying that you had a 12" fish in a 55 gal tank?

 

[DiverDave32]

Hi,

I didn't have o2 in buckets but the tank to tank time was around 1 hr.

I did have a 12" fish in the 55 gallon but that was only the tank that I set-up to transfer the fish more rapidly as moving and replumbing the 110 gallon takes too much time. The fish spent less than 12 hours in the 55 gal tank.

Do you think that the fish could consume all the 02 in a 5 gallon bucket within 1 hour. They were also divided among three buckets. I was thinking that it could be an o2 problem but the time was quite short.

Thanks,

Dave

 

[SeattleReefer]

1- wow, you move quite often!
2- a 12" fish in a 110?

 

[Dkuhlmann]

Yes Dave, IMO your fish died of lack of oxygen. Also a 12" fish in a 110 still isn't close to being enough tank for it. I'd say at least a 10" tank.

 

[DiverDave32]

I will definitely pick up some portable battery operated air pumps for the next move.

Yes, I know that he was way too big for the tank. I picked up the tank second hand and they had him. I was thinking of trading him in. He was really a beautiful fish with quite a prominent horn. Really a shame.

My Angel is doing well since the move and parameters are good. My two Chromis are definitely highly active again but aren't really eating. They did nibble at some mysis shrimp today so think they will be back to eating shortly.

Thanks all for helping me avoid this in the future!