unexplained death

[m3rcury]

so, i come home tonight and my coral beauty is in the corner of the tank kind of wedged under a rock and dead.

i have a 40g breeder, with 60# live rock, a cpr bak pak 2 skimmer, and a penguin 300gph powerhead.

water parameters:
temp 80
SG 1.027
PH 8.1 to 8.4 not sure which. my GF and i disagree on what color it is. first thing i'm going to do after i get paid is get a digital ph meter. the important thing is that whatever color it is, it is the same color it has been the last 4 times i've checked it.
NH <.25
nitrate ~20
PO 0
KH 10

i have a very small rock with button polyps and a couple of mushrooms on it. they are open and appear happy. i have a very small thing of star polyps that was on one of the pieces of live rock. it is open and happy.

my snails are all accounted for (except maybe one, but i always count 9 and then keep looking for another 15 minutes before finding the last one).

the sea cucumber that i have was compressed and stuck to the glass like it was holding on for dear life. but, it was right close to the powerhead, so maybe it was trying to keep from getting blown away. at first i thought it was dead, but when i pulled it off the glass and moved it, it slowly crawled off into the rockwork. so, it is behaving normally.

the coral beauty was active and swimming around last night. no signs of distress. it was eating as normal. when i would feed it, it would normally only eat about 1.5 flakes of food, but it was not emmaciated and appeared healthy. it would pick at the rock pretty constantly, so i assumed it was getting nutrition from algea as well. i had the fish about 2 months and there was absolutely no change in behavior as of last night.

then, i come home and it is dead. the body was in good condition, the fins were a little "eaten" off, but i assume that was post death because the rest of the body was in excellent shape. not visible trauma or attacks on the fish was evident. the color was still very vivid when i found it.

what else should i check? what could possibly have caused this? i don't want anything else in the tank to die !!!

thanks,
david

 

[kevin2000]

My 02

Not sure if I followed your thread correctly.

Dwarf angels can be tricky fish ... for the most part they can be great members of your tank .. but they are a bit touchy and your reference to "nh<.25" makes me wonder whether your tanks mature enough to handle a dwarf ... most fish don't do well with any level of measurable ammonia. As a general rule the Dwarf angels will prefer/thrive in a mature tank but are iffy critters in a new tank.

Additionally I suspect your tanks too small and probably too new for a sea cucumber ... there is an inch per gallon rule with cukes just their is with fish .. don't recall the inch per gallon rule off the top of my head but a google search will help.

Hope this helps.

 

[m3rcury]

yes, good point. lee had suggested this same thing to me privately (the sea cucumber). i think what worries me is the sudden death for no apparent cause.

the NH reading is because i had these color scales and i can't tell if it is 0, or .25, or somewhere in between. i know for sure it isn't over .25 though.