What is Going on? Trying to be specific this time

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schnebbles

New member
So I think it was 2 weeks ago, I had a sick anem that I think started this whole thing.

40 g started in October, everything was running great. Shouldn't have gotten the anemone but I did.

It was apparently dying and killed a couple fish and by the time it dawned on me it was too late for them

did appx 15g wc to lower ammonia to zero.

Fish still dying a day/2 later when ammonia spiked back to 1 so I do another 15g wc.

Ammonia stayed at zero so I added fish Friday. They all died. $250 worth of beautiful fish. 2 clowns, starry blenny, 2 clown gobies, royal gramma and a small pinkbar/aurora goby.

I was pretty much just replacing what I lost with these fish. All was well when I had that same amount before.

My inverts are still fine, cleaner shriimp, crabs, brittle star, tuxedo urchin, peppermint shrimp. My firefish is still alive and I believe a small high fin red banded goby is still hiding (he hid a lot before but I don't think he's died).

Did I just change out too much water? 30 gallons in several days?

I tested every single paramater this morning, have done ammonia checks 2/3 x a day since that happened before I added new fish and then they all died that fast.

Maybe I acclimated too fast b/c my husband was rushing me to go somewhere (I should have stayed home and not rushed, hindsight...) Temp acclimated with a little water in the bag for about 10 min, then added my water to their bags for about 10-15 min.

Ammonia -zero
nitrate - 5ppm
mg - 1320
cal - 460
salinity .124 (will put up to .126)
Alk - 8.9
ph 8.2

Nothing looks off to me and I just don't understand. I'm so upset, I nearly didn't work yesterday and tore my whole tank down and cried. But it's still running.

my corals are all ok EXCEPT my large birdsnest has just died about as fast as the fish. Not sure what would cause that either.

I'm not doing any water changes for at least a month, agreed? Do I need to let my water age?

I'd added Vibrant cleaner in the recommended dose 3x but I don't think that would have caused issues.

The clowns were beautiful black and the starry blenny was absolutely adorable and I could just cry thinking about this.
 
IMO you need to press pause, fast. Stop adding things (chemicals, fish, etc.). Keep on with the testing and hold off on WC's unless nitrates spike. If ammonia >1 a WC wont solve as the nitrogen cycle is already kicked off. A WC will dilute, but until the cycle completes it will remain.

Likely the cause of the ammonia spike was the death of the nem and other fish.

Again, press pause and let things settle themselves out.

Do you have a skimmer? What is your filtration set up? Remember that in a small system, a minor error is amplified due to the low volume of water. A larger system can get away with a little death here and there.
 
Agree with the above, way to much to fast. You need to slow it down. Nothing good happens fast in this hobby. I'm slowly transferring from my 60 to my new 90 and I'm almost 2 months in and just moved one fish over so I slowly ramp up the bio load and not overload it.
 
Yes, I have a protein skimmer (HOB reef octopus). I have a small canister which I do keep clean, I put new carbon in it after the ammonia spike the 2nd time. I don't have much in it, I mainly have it for the carbon. I'd been doing about 15g w/c every other week and everything was stable until the anemone. I can't believe one little anemone could reek such havoc.

I'm on pause now, trust me. I just can't figure out why the death since the parameters look ok.

The nem wasn't dead when I had to pull it. Stupid me for not listening. It had moved to the bottom of the tank though and suddenly I realized it had to be killing fish.

I think things "seemed" to be going so swell, I pushed it. Then when I had a disaster, I didn't realize it wasn't safe to add new fish.

I'm broke now so even if I wanted to, I have to wait. How long until I might try a couple new ones? A couple weeks? a month?

I'm leaving things as is for now. My firefish is good and my little high finned banded goby is still ok, he just came out to eat.
 
Your tank basically crashed a week ago, and you tried completely restocking it in one go. Not a shock in the slightest they are all dead now. I'll assume you are typing salinity in wrong. You should be shooting for 1.025. I'd say wait longer than a single day without testing ammonia. Like, maybe a few weeks of a stable tank, and then SLOWLY add fish. No more than one or two at a time.
 
schnebbles said:
Yes, I have a protein skimmer (HOB reef octopus). I have a small canister which I do keep clean, I put new carbon in it after the ammonia spike the 2nd time. I don't have much in it, I mainly have it for the carbon. I'd been doing about 15g w/c every other week and everything was stable until the anemone. I can't believe one little anemone could reek such havoc.

I'm on pause now, trust me. I just can't figure out why the death since the parameters look ok.

The nem wasn't dead when I had to pull it. Stupid me for not listening. It had moved to the bottom of the tank though and suddenly I realized it had to be killing fish.

I think things "seemed" to be going so swell, I pushed it. Then when I had a disaster, I didn't realize it wasn't safe to add new fish.

I'm broke now so even if I wanted to, I have to wait. How long until I might try a couple new ones? A couple weeks? a month?

I'm leaving things as is for now. My firefish is good and my little high finned banded goby is still ok, he just came out to eat.
Click to expand...

In your original post you mention adding Vibrant. Now you mention changing the carbon. By pause I mean completely stop doing everything beyond feeding. I'm not trying to come across with a harsh tone.

Also in this post you seem eager to replace lost livestock. I get it. We all get that way in this hobby. You just have to learn that your tank and parameters will determine when additional livestock can be added to the environment.

Literally stop all additions and changes to the tank beyond feeding. If you want to feel like you are doing something (tinkering is a bad habit) carefully check for any other dead critters in the tank. It's gonna be tough, but try to find other things to do for a couple of weeks while things stabilize.
 
When you add so much stuff at once it messes with the cycle of the tank.
So adding all of those fish and their poop and the food that is needed just adds too much to the system.

It can also cause massive amounts of stress in the fish. Ammonia isnt the only thing that can kill fish, most of the stuff fish die from you cant test for and just need to use observations etc.

Now I personally dont QT fish, but this is the whole thought behind doing that. Observation of the fish and seeing if anything arises in the first weeks of having them.

I like to add at most 1 fish every two weeks. It takes that long for the fish to get used to the tank and whats going on. Honestly Ive had my Tang for about 3 months now and he is just getting used to me walking by the tank and my kid being close to the tank.
 
I didn't think about changing the carbon until you asked about my filter. I won't add/do anything other than feed for now. No chemicals, I'll only feed.

I was just testing the ammonia so often b/c it had spiked so fast last time after I thought I had it cleared up.

I know I've pulled everything dead, I check on my fish daily. Oh and now that i'm sitting here watching the tank, I'm seeing my tiger pistol shrimp that i got for my goby and wasn't sure it was still alive! So that's a happy moment. I've never seen it since I put it in and didn't know if it was even alive. (sorry, I was tickled to see it so I had to throw that in).

I wish I could rewind to last week and not have killed those fish.

So, I'm just gonna sit on hold. Then slow. I'll have to just bite the bullet and go slow with the fish. The reason I get more is because I have to drive an hour or pay shipping so I try and get what I can while I'm there. Not worth it in the long run apparently.

thanks everyone.
 
I'm sure no one likes looking at empty tanks or going slow. You need to have patience and I get that it is costly to have just one or two fish shipped or taking a drive that is an hour away. I have the same problem where I live. If you think about the big picture and not having anything die or having to replace what has died which means more money. Then you'll see it's not so bad.

When tanks cycle the bacteria population explodes and more or less overloads. It will drop back down sharply to normal levels. Each fish adds more load and the bacteria have to play catch up again. So if you add 3,4,5 fish at a time you can see things can get out of hand quickly and in a smaller tank even more so. 1-2 fish is usually okay with smaller tanks. Then you can add more in 2-4 weeks. I know it sounds painful but so are fish dying and the cost to replace what you lost.

Rome wasn't built in a day and the perfect reef tank won't be either.
 
You're getting great advise here and it sounds like you're learning.

I can understand not wanting to look at an empty tank. Imagine my 3yo and 6yo for the first month we had a tank with nothing but rock in it! Also imagine their horror when the first things I added were 10 little snails.
 
This morning my husband said he'd take me for new fish and I had to say not right now.

I just thought that since I had the same amount of fish in there before something happened, I could replace them since the tank has been up and running. Maybe I just have too much new water. I guess I'll never know the exact cause but they sure died fast.

I'm also not sure what's killed the birdsnest so fast, it's the only coral affected. I've read they can die quick like that but it's too bad because it was a beautiful, large piece I got from LA.
 
You didn't QT so there very well could have been a disease, could have been stress from travel, could be your tank still wasn't done going through its cycle from the crash. New water certainly had nothing to do with it, if you're thinking not enough bacteria, it lives on the rocks not in the water.
 
hi Schnebbles,sometimes this is the worst hobby to start initially,often,because,there are few people who do everything( adequately) right off the in the beginning.There is a bit of a learning curve,that eventually develops ,but often , not without failure,initially.It's very frustrating to see a new specimen die,and then discover ,it is because your chemistry is out of whack.
The best advice is to go slow and learn from these issues and build on your experience.Continue to monitor your parameters.I see you are showing a small amount of nitrates after your water changes.I have two bits of advice for you.Check for nitrites in the future as you seem to have an issue with your water going through a cycle.Nitrites will kill quickly.Even though you show nitrates you still may have a trace of nitrites .What happens ,before a crash,with newly cycled stocked aquariums is that a new cycle starts if your relatively new set up is unable to keep up with the bio load.You may still have a noticeable nitrite reading even though you have nitrates.During a cycle nitrates develope after nitrites reach 5 ppm.As the nitrite declines and your nitrate reading shows there is the presence of both,as one declines the other grows.It may take nitrites a few days to go to 0 after hitting 5 ppm.So in a new set up things are a bit fragile until,it matures,or as they say in the hobby,GETS ESTABLISHED. Sometimes an aquarium gets more stable after a year.My LFS won't sell an anenome unless your set up is a year old,for that reason.
Also check your source of fresh water for top ups and mixing salt for ammonia and nitrites.You may be adding them to your aquarium accidentally.Use only RO water and RODI is better...good luck.Just 2weeks ago, I discovered I added 20 gallons ofwater to my display aquarium from my 20 gallon storage bucket,that when I tested it,afterward,had a trace of ammonia.This is the first time that ever happened,and I have used it for 3 years.My aquarium ended up going through another cycle.My nitrites hit 5ppm ,before they declined. If I didn't do regular water tests I would not have caught this potentially deadly hazard,until after the damage was done.Once I discovered the problem I changed 50 percent of the water ,right away,and checked the parameters daily.Despite the water changes,it still took 8 days for the cycle to end.I didn't lose any stock,as well,because I also used a Sea Chem product called PRIME.It is a fairly safe product that will help detoxify the effect of ammonia,nitrites,nitrates etc. I don't like adding anything to my water but I new PRIME would benefit my fish,on this occassion.I had to drive 2 hours to the nearest LFS ,because I don't normally use it.
Hope this helps.
 
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Thank you - I did not test nitrites. I will do that and just see where they are.

I Usually use distilled to top off.

I never should have gotten that nem. It's cost too many fish lives all because I was stupid and didn't listen.
 
how much live rock and sand do you have in this tank..

It does sound for sure like a ammonia spike due to Overloading your bio filtration. This being the Bacteria to break fish waste down preventing Ammonia spike..

This is why its so important to add fish slowly.. and over a period of time not stock the whole tank... That only works on Reality tv.....


I AGREE WITH THE others slow down step back and read all the stickies and the newbie post of i killed my fish my tank crashed.. when i mess up something i go to the advanced forums to see what others done differently then me. i usually find a link to my issue...


GOOD Luck and happy reefing
 
I guess I just didn't realize that after the crash, it's unstable. Even after I added the fish and they died immediately, I never saw another spike in anything. I always have slight nitrates unless I was using the No4Po3 stuff

What's weird to me as well is that I didn't lose one invert. I thought they would be more sensitive than the fish. My brittle star, shrimp, urchin, and 2 fish. It's all strange to me yet. It's weird how I lost so many fish that I already had plus the new ones yet 2 old ones and the CUC all made it.

I have 40# of sand and probably more than 40# of rock which should all be live by now. I bought all of the sand live, and most of the rock was live but it's all been running long enough it should all be live now. I had added biospira when I started and also was using up some seachem stability to keep things going well when I started it up.

The reason I am wondering about my water needing to age is my mom has a tank and her shop in Florida keeps saying she needs OLD water, so i thought maybe changing out 30g in a few days out of 40g totally messed it up.

Are starry blennies typically hardy? I fell in love with the one I had for a day and I definitely want another one. That fish had to be the cutest thing ever and watching him die made me just sick.

I just don't know how to know when it's ok, you know? Everything is good on paper but like I told my mom, fish don't live on paper so I can't tell! i'm terrified at the thought of killing anything else.
 
Changing "too much" of the water is not the issue.

You can change out almost 100% of the water at one time and not have any ill effect; in fact, it's often recommended after a cycle completes.

The nitrifying bacteria needed to process the ammonia and nitrites is not free floating in the water column. It's established in the live rock/sand, so simply changing water does not yield any negative effect on the stability of the tank (assuming the temp/gravity is not hugely different to what is being replaced).
 
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schnebbles said:
I wish I could rewind to last week and not have killed those fish.
Click to expand...


I think many of have been there. I've been looking at my empty tank for a month now. You have to put it out of your mind and let nature take it's course. I put in a CUC, pods and a few tiny frags that I was able to salvage out of the disaster.
 
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