Will my fish die

[bmcnicol]

I have a tank at my school and i had it cycled for about a month before winter vacation. The very week before winter break all my snails, and only my snails (3, Astrea) died, and then there was a ammonia spike. I still had 5 heremit crabs, 1 Oclellaries clown, 1 blue chromis, and 1 cleaner shrimp. I was worried about die off over the break because no one had any acces to the tank and the cooling source would be shut off. When I got back to school, to my surprise, nothing died (I checked for everything, even late to class), and there was the most amount of algea I had ever seen on the walls of a tank. I checked over all of my levels and everything was fine exept the nitrate (very low) and ammonia (low). I want to know if my fish just survived out of luck, there was no risk, or I should expect some die off.

 

[luckybaker4]

:eek1:

Did you have an Auto-Top off?

If you didn't I'm suprised evap was not great enought to kill the fish. I would do a big water change to make sure there isn't excess phosphates or any other nutrients that would be causing the algae. I think after you do the waterchange you should be fine.

 

[Nanook]

[welcome]

Perhaps you can have someone let you maintain the tank next time there is a break with supervision?

Dave

 

[Dubbin1]

Re: Will my fish die

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=6410155#post6410155 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by bmcnicol
I checked over all of my levels and everything was fine exept the nitrate (very low) and ammonia (low).

You do know that you want zero readings on both of those dont you?

 

[Amphiprion]

I would bet that the extreme algae growth is most likely what saved the rest of the tank.

 

[avshockey311]

I agree with Amphiprion, I would also say that the algae acted as a filter. The salinity and temp would be my biggest concern if you didnt have any way of controling that.

 

[Rich rodriguez]

i think die off will not happen if you've had set up for a while. chromis, in particularly, can survive just about anything.

 

[dastratt]

It looks from the stock list like you have some tolerant inhabitants.

I've heard of people cycling tanks with clowns - not saying its okay or anything. Probably the shrimp would be the first to go I'd guess, but I could be wrong.

I'd still say you got lucky though, because if one of them had died it could have caused more foul tank water and cause yet more die-off, etc. As it was it probably cycled to a new equilibrium and the livestock could handle it.

Temp and salinity can vary wildly in nature.