I'm losing all my livestock quickly.

[MaterDei]

Hey guys,

I don't think at this point I can do anything to save my livestock but I'd still like to know what the heck happened.

About 48 hours ago I started noticing that my water was turning cloudy. Not real noticable just a little cloudy looking. Last night it became real easy to see and I woke up to this this morning.



I can't see a thing in there. I had 3 fish; a domino damsel, a blue tang and a mandarin. The damsel is dead but I can't find the other two fish. I'm sure they died as well.

I don't have another saltwater tank to move my livestock to.

I'm doing water changes as quick as I can make the water but I'm pretty sure I'm too late to save anything.

What happened?

This is my sump. I never had bubbles before.

[PoukieBear]

OMG!

I've never had that hapen, actually I don't think i've ever seen that happen to anyone else...

Do you have any corals in your tank? what are the tank params?? did you change anything??

we need all the info we can get to help you out.

[MaterDei]

In addition to the fish I have some beginner type inverts. 3 Green mushrooms, some polyps (don't know the type), a skunk shrimp, a bunch (approx 40 of each) of hermits and snails, a lettuce nudibranch and a serpant star. That's it. My bio load is relatively light. The tank is several years old and about 14 months ago I started slowly transitioning it from a FOWLR to what it is today (or was yesterday at least).

The tank is 80 gallons with a ~12 gallon sump.

Changes? Nothing in the last month. About a month ago I did buy 25# of live sand for the sump and when I placed it in there I removed the wet dry with bio balls that was there because I was having a real problem keeping my nitrates in check and as a result had a dickens of a time controlling my hair algae. I thought some extra live sand coupled with my ~70# of live rock and ~1" sand bed should suffice.

Other than the nitrates running about 10 - 20, all my other tests were fine. Zero ammonia and nitrites, calcium fine, phosphates OK, ph OK. Since I've had such a large kill overnight I don't see much point in checking parameters again unless somebody disagrees and would like me to check something. I have lots of dead snails that I can see. I know I need to get them out of there but at this point I'm guessing that I should totally drain the tank and make sure whatever is in there dies.

Do you agree?

This is very upsetting I'll have you know. I've been patient and careful. I don't do water changes as often as I should (about 5 gallons per month) and don't check my parameters but a few times a month. In the year+ that I've owned this tank that seemed to be enough to give me a decent looking tank without too much time investment.

I don't run a skimmer.

[szwab]

could be that your snails spawned and clouded the water. It's happened in my tank before. It clears up in a day though. from reading your post the only thing confirmed that you lost was the one fish is that correct?

I would test the water to find out if anything has changed since last month. I would do a 50% water change and see if that helps. Having a skimmer would help clear things up. Would also help with the algae situation. How often do you feed? Is it possible something got added to the ank you were unaware of? Or that something died and you were unaware of it for a while?

[mystikdragon7]

From what you said it sounds like that is the problem. Not doing regular water changes and changing only 5gal a month is not enough IMO, for an 80gal tank. Not running a skimmer is adding a whole lot more to the problem. If you had a really good skimmer you could get away with not doing that many water changes. I change about 50gal a month on my 60gal tank with a skimmer. Getting all of those bubbles in your sump comes from not having a skimmer to take out all of the excess junk from your tank. Is it possible that something died in your tank and caused some kind of chain reaction? I would do 50% water change and then test your water again. IMHO I would get a skimmer for the tank they do an awesome job at getting it clean. You can also try running carbon in your tank if you don't already.

[MaterDei]

I realize that I don't do water changes as often as recommended. Nevertheless, I've been doing them the same for over a year and all of the sudden, BOOM?

[WarDaddy]

do you have a child? I have know of children that wanted to help "Clean" a tank and put soap in the tank. Those almose look like soap bubbles.

[szwab]

Originally posted by MaterDei
I realize that I don't do water changes as often as recommended. Nevertheless, I've been doing them the same for over a year and all of the sudden, BOOM?

It's very possible for things to go "boom" if things have been building up then for example something dies and pushes things over the edge.

I know people who don't do water changes at all..that said the "life support" hooked to the tank (as I call it) is incredible.

[mystikdragon7]

Originally posted by szwab
It's very possible for things to go "boom" if things have been building up then for example something dies and pushes things over the edge.

Thats what I was thinking to.

[MaterDei]

Originally posted by szwab
It's very possible for things to go "boom" if things have been building up then for example something dies and pushes things over the edge.

I know people who don't do water changes at all..that said the "life support" hooked to the tank (as I call it) is incredible.

Let's assume your correct. Then what is this? Algae? I don't get it. Once things got pushed 'over the edge', what happened? Any ideas? Is something that a massive water change will fix? One day I have happy fish and inverts, and the next they are ALL dying?

I'm not saying anybody is wrong, only that I need more advise on what course of action I should take.

Thanks.

[Moreta]

First things first, I'd do 50% water changes, run activated carbon on the tank and run your skimmer as wet as possible. Keep testing for ammonia, etc.

Materdei do you have any Caulerpa-type macro algae that could have gone sexual?

[BeesGoneWild]

Originally posted by WarDaddy
do you have a child? I have know of children that wanted to help "Clean" a tank and put soap in the tank. Those almose look like soap bubbles.

I would almost go with this... Looks as though they are soap bubbles.

[szwab]

the water change and activated carbon are to dilute whatever the cause is. your first steps should be to make the conditions livable for whatever still/may be alive. IMO the bubbles in the sump are basically skimmate just not going up into a collection cup via a skimmer. I think that things went past a breaking point and have cascaded into the resulting in what you see now. It has probably been getting progressivly worse just without viable signs. Without knowing the finer sdetails of the tank this is my opinion.
Will the 50% water change solve your problem probably not but it will make things better.

[amorpnai]

yup.. sorry. It does look like soap bubbles, or death really caused a lot of pollution to cause all that bubbling.

[GovtCheese]

[MaterDei]

Well guys, there is very little sign of life left. I have a few hermits still kicking but after emptying 75% of the water I have removed all of my livestock (deadstock would be more appropriate). All dead, like I said, with the exception of a few hermits.

I really appreciate all of the feedback.

szwab - Your hypothesis involves putting the blame on myself, so that ones out. Truly, you may be right but I can't fathom how a seemingly happy and healthy tank can literally totally die overnight. I'm no chemist so I won't say no way but somebody would have to come up with something more than just a hunch.

Moreta, I do have some macro algae but I don't know what kind it is and I don't know whether it has hit puberty either. It is in my sump. It is very dark green, almost black and tightly wound together kind of like one of those plastic dish scrubbers. I bought it because it had lots of timy creatures hiding in it in the sump at my LFS and I wanted to make sure that my Mandarin had plenty of food to eat. Also, since I removed the bio balls I thought that it would be a good nitrate processor that is why I moved it to the sump after shaking out all of the critters in the main tank.

GovtCheese, I've thought long and hard about your comment and have come to the conclusion that I agree. I would only add and

Regarding the soap theory. I did have a lot of children at the house yesterday. My 6 plus two other families, one with 4 children and the other with 9. I suppose it is possible that one of them did something but I very much doubt it. My tank is in-wall in the living room and had any of the children gotten into the fish room it would have been noticed. I haven't mentioned this earlier because I figured everybody would eliminate other ideas and assumed that one of the kids was the culprit. Besides, as I mentioned at the beginning of my post I started noticing what I thought was some cloudiness before the party started.

Any other theories? Anybody else seen anything like this?

Thanks.

[dhnguyen]

Could be a bacteria bloom? In which case it would explain the livestock dying. Basically when that happens, your fish could suffocate to death.



D.

[dhnguyen]

Get a plastic tub from Walmart and put some fresh saltwater into it and salvage what you can of your remaining livestock.

I would do a 100% water change at this point.

D.

[bkbkid]

I would agree with the majority that somebody added something to the tank that they weren't supposed to. There should be no reason why all of a sudden you wake up to your fish dead and your water cloudy and bubbles in your sump which have never happened before and you had the setup running over a year!!! I'm sorry but there is some foul play their. I recommend the following, replace all sand with new, do a complete water change, clean everything thoroughly, and start over. Finally get yourself an ASM G series, you'll be glad you did. Sorry about that we all experience things like tank crashes, no big deal, just learn from your mistakes and move on...good luck

[Agu]

Originally posted by dhnguyen
Could be a bacteria bloom? In which case it would explain the livestock dying. Basically when that happens, your fish could suffocate to death.

I'd go with that theory also, pic looks a lot like tanks that have had kids/friends overfeed the fish tank. Basically you have a buildup of nutrients in your tank and your biological filter is barely able to keep up. One day it crashes. Sometimes the reason is obvious. Temp got too hot, powerhead slipped and disturbed a dsb, fish died and went unnoticed. Sometimes there's no apparent triggering event.

Test the water for ammonia and nitrite. If they're elevated that's probably the cause.

I'd also feel and smell those bubbles to rule out something having been added to the tank (soap).

[dhnguyen]

Originally posted by bkbkid
I would agree with the majority that somebody added something to the tank that they weren't supposed to. There should be no reason why all of a sudden you wake up to your fish dead and your water cloudy and bubbles in your sump which have never happened before and you had the setup running over a year!!! I'm sorry but there is some foul play...

That's not neccessarily true bkbkid. I have seen bacteria blooms that wiped out an entire tank overnight.

http://w3page.com/fishline/troubleshooting.php

Basically the bacteria consumed all the oxygen so quick that your critters would die from suffocation.

The excessive foaming in the sump is disturbing though.
But then since he's running skimmerless, where would the crude get exported to as it would just build up over time.


D.

[Sindjin]

Wow. Im very sorry to see that happen to you. Good Luck with the regeneration.

[LTJGAlex]

I'm wondering about the soap theory too. I did that to my nice goldfish tank when I was about 4. Except for one thing: you'd smell it if that tank were full of soap.

[gallivanmk]

Did you just remove the bioballs all at one time? Removing all that biological filtration at one time can cause a crash easily. Also, adding the live sand to an established tank probably caused a spike in ammonia which could kill your livestock easily. It would have been better to add dead sand and seed it with established livesand.