Tank is crashing

[ledford1]

I'm not sure what to think of it.

My Mimic Tang died last night. I was unsure what happened to her, but didn't see this coming. I woke this morning to find my Blue Tang lying sideways, clinging to life. My Dogface Puffer is QTed now but barely hanging on. My cleaner shrimp is dead, but I see snails still moving about. I have 2 gobies still in the tank that have been difficult to catch, but will try to QT as well.

My wife got off work early today and took a water sample to the trusted LFS for a full diagnostic - the levels turned out fine ( I don't know the specifics b/c I wasn't there though).

It's a FOWLR setup mostly, but I have added a few 'shrooms. I have Christmas Tree Worms and a Hawaiian Feather Duster - none have yet to show any ill effects.

Any ideas on a culprit? It's tough to go through something like this when you don't know what's going on or how to better help your tank.

[Sk8r]

Oxygen deprivation, possibly. What is your setup? Describe equipment.

Tangs often go fast with no oxygen.

Get the snails out, catch gobies, everything to qt.

Do you have any refugium, cheato? Skimmer? all those are oxygen sources.
Which tank is it?

[demonsp]

LOL. Add 1 coral and its a reef tank. And all reef safe fish accept the puffer. Do you know your water readings? And do you feed the tangs nori and or flake?

[stuccodude]

when you find out could you post why, sorry about your loss, im curious why if your set up is 5 years old.

[ledford1]

Originally posted by Sk8r
Oxygen deprivation, possibly. What is your setup? Describe equipment.

Tangs often go fast with no oxygen.

Get the snails out, catch gobies, everything to qt.

Do you have any refugium, cheato? Skimmer? all those are oxygen sources.
Which tank is it?

This is my 90g. I have an HOB AquaFuge with macro and LR, a Coralife CSS220 for skimming, UV sterilizer, a pair of Tunze Streams for flow, and 80-90 lbs of LR.

This was my first tank, the once going since '03 (so about 4.5 years). I have moved it twice, the last time about 18 months ago.

Originally posted by demonsp
LOL. Add 1 coral and its a reef tank. And all reef safe fish accept the puffer. Do you know your water readings? And do you feed the tangs nori and or flake?

Sure, technically it's a reef with my 5 mushrooms, but it's more the spirit of a FOWLR.

I don't feed flake often. I have lots of nori (brown, red, green, purple, and brown) and I feed pellets often (Formula 2, Spectrum TheraA+, Spectrumax). I also often add VitaChem or garlic juice to soak the food.

Honestly, the only parameter I know is 1.024. The only test kit I have on hand is water hardness/dKH. That's why my wife ran over to the LFS to get everything tested. I was in a groove with my husbandry. For a good time, I did regular parameter checks on everything, but never had any real issues. I guess I believed that I developed a groove with the tank as it matured, but now something has reared its head.

[stuccodude]

could there be a short curcuit in a wire, just a thought

[iwishtofish]

Any possibility of a problem with temperature? Electrical current? Any unusual cleaning or extermination in the house?

[Sk8r]

Leaking current. Crack in heater.
Cucumber.
sea hare, other uncommon toxin. List inverts. Toxins will not show in ordinary water quality tests.
Agree with question re cleaning/bug spray, Windex, Pledge, painting.

[demonsp]

Nori is a dried seaweed that you feed the tangs.Most use a clip and is a very imprtant part of the tangs diet and without will only become weaker and valrible.
FOWLR tanks in most are aggresive non reef safe fish .Puffer eat the CUC. I dont want to come of wrong as typing doesnt show alot of emotion but you need to take a few steps back. You need to test the water regularly. To avoid major mistakes and catch problems early.
I think the tangs may have starved. Nad if coral are fine then a dought tanks crashing as fish can live in pretty bad consitions but coral will die off fast and with no coral deaths then it acnt be that bad. Besides cant even guess on crashing without water readings to back it up
You in hear asking so you care but it will take more then 1 thread to fix all your wrongs.

[ledford1]

Originally posted by demonsp
Nori is a dried seaweed that you feed the tangs.Most use a clip and is a very imprtant part of the tangs diet and without will only become weaker and valrible.

I said we feed several varieties of seaweed regularly.

Originally posted by demonsp
You need to test the water regularly. To avoid major mistakes and catch problems early.

Regular testing is a great idea, of course. But this is something that isn't showing up on water test kits.

Originally posted by Sk8r
Leaking current. Crack in heater.
Cucumber.
sea hare, other uncommon toxin. List inverts. Toxins will not show in ordinary water quality tests.
Agree with question re cleaning/bug spray, Windex, Pledge, painting.

As for inverts: skunk cleaner shrimp, conch, feather duster, Christmas tree worms, and a good number of cerith, nassarius, bumblebee, and nerite snails.

The shrimp has died and so have a few snails, but most snails seem to still be alive and crawling around.

The mushrooms are still fully open.

My Dragon Goby and Neon Goby seemed to be doing fine in the tank, but they're in QT now. My Puffer seems to be improving slightly.

The electrical current may be a possibility. I don't notice anything when my hands are in the tank, and I don't have anything to test for current.

While most of the ball of macro is cheato, there is some caulerpa mixed in. That is another potential in my mind.

My heater is titanium, so cracking shouldn't be an issue. The temp is independently verified by two digital thermometers at 79 degrees.

A parasite could explain the fish deaths, but not really the handful of inverts, and the fish deaths happened so close together. I have some Cupramine that I could dose to be safe though.

I have a 2" SSB of Southdown. I don't believe the sandbed could have turned against me.



Guys, I appreciate the help and the ideas you have brought to the table. Thanks. Feel free to keep 'em coming.

I just wish I could determine with certainty what has done this.

[madreefer14]

Could it possibly be toxins from the Puffer. All puffers produce a nerotoxin (some more deadly than others) and when stressed they tend to release this toxin. Are you running any carbon?

[madreefer14]

hows the puffer?

[demonsp]

Funny , your aking but ignoring. Water readings would help eliminate the water as the problem.

Nori may come in all these colors but ive only seen the regular green and red. None of my omnivores will touch the red one. But whene i put out some of the green dried nori on a clip evey couple days my tangs go nuts and eat it up while the other nori lovers eat the floaters.

I hear lots of guessing but without water readings from ammonia to Alk to phosphate ,ect..its impossible to narrow it down. But if you insiste on mixing FO stock with reef safe fish and coral that like proper water conditiones then the answer your looking for isnt here. You need to decide what you want from your tank then go from there. There could be lots of reasons from low flow,overfeeding , inproper feeding to high ammonia to ect.. You need to start narrowing it down rather then hopeing for a homerun guess.

[tanked3333]

He said he fed Nori and had the water tested..He is not answering you demon b/c you 1st used LOL as his tank is crashing..then he said he fed seaweed and you kept on the subject. I would ignore you also.

[Jocephus]

Originally posted by demonsp
Funny , your aking but ignoring. Water readings would help eliminate the water as the problem.

Nori may come in all these colors but ive only seen the regular green and red. None of my omnivores will touch the red one. But whene i put out some of the green dried nori on a clip evey couple days my tangs go nuts and eat it up while the other nori lovers eat the floaters.

I hear lots of guessing but without water readings from ammonia to Alk to phosphate ,ect..its impossible to narrow it down. But if you insiste on mixing FO stock with reef safe fish and coral that like proper water conditiones then the answer your looking for isnt here. You need to decide what you want from your tank then go from there. There could be lots of reasons from low flow,overfeeding , inproper feeding to high ammonia to ect.. You need to start narrowing it down rather then hopeing for a homerun guess.

Did this guy do something wrong? It seems to me he is doing what he should be, fuge, feeding nori, CUC, etc... I think you're being a little harsh.

To the problem, I think I would check for current as well. Do you use tap water?

[Jocephus]

BTW, regarding stray current. I recently had a heater break, it was leaking stray electricity into the tank. My brother and I were fragging some corals, and everytime he touched the water he'd get shocked. I had my hands in the water and felt nothing. The heater was in the sump, and the only place you could feel the electrical current was in the stream of the return pump. That one had me scratching my head for a while. Anyway, get a voltmeter and check for stray current. I can't believe that your both tangs and your cleaner shrimp starved on the same day.

[Swanwillow]

mixing FO fish with reef fish has NOTHING to do with sudden deaths of fish-the only REAL difference between 'FO' fish and 'reef' fish is that usually FO fish eat corals and inverts. Keeping a puffer with other fish isn't going to kill them.

okay, lets go over the habitats of the fish, and see what the difference is between the high-moving tangs and the low gobies, to the puffer.

The gobies and the puffer. Lower movement fish. The tank for some reason hit a low that reacted badly with high movement, high activity fish. The puffer was second hit, the gobies couldn't care less.

This sucks. Badly for you, I'm sorry it happened. Now, I am 100% sure it wasn't a parasite, or something predating on the fish.

I think people are asking for numbers, not just 'params were good' but I also know that your WIFE did the tests at the LFS, not you, so no numbers.

[dstall]

My tank started to crash over Christmas and all water paramiters checked out. starting losing fish and corals were all sliming.( could not think of a better word) Between myself and LFS we could not figure it out, so just started doing large water changes over 3 day period. Probably changed out 75% of water and everythign stablized and back to normal after a couple of days. STill do not know hwy it happend. NO changes to tank and no additives good or bad to tank.

[Sk8r]

Did you use Christmas candles, room freshener, Carpet Fresh, volatile cleaner like Pledge, etc? Even Windex? No holiday cocktail party where a drunken guest might have dropped something in your tank?

If you suspect these, run big dose of carbon and possibly a strip of polyfilter to see if you get a color change. [Polyfilter actually removes odd chemicals and metals, but is very expensive: I recommend running a small snip for diagnosis before wasting an entire sheet of polyfilter: if no color change in the test piece, there's nothing it can take out.]

[Icefire]

Forget the cupramine in the tank as you'll kill all coral/inverts.

Look if your macro algae is white, that could explain it.

[ledford1]

Again, I appreciate all your perspectives. I've read numerous stories of crashes, but now it's personal.

I'll run to get more carbon today. I had some stored in the garage, but looking at the shape of it, I don't really trust it.

Water changes are also planned. I use RO/DI (a Typhoon III) and have a 44g Brute container to store water.

The electricity is also on my mind. I'll see if I can pick up a voltmeter today. In the meantime, I have my two Streams and the heater for basic tank operation, turning off the skimmer and other smaller pumps.

I suppose you could even combine the toxin and electricity ideas. If some stray current found its way into the tank, perhaps it agitated the puffer to where toxins had been released. I'm not sure how probable that is.

No cleaners (lysol, windex, etc) that I can think of used near the tank recently. If we do some major cleaning like that, we'll throw towels over the tank until we feel it's safe again.

In the tank, I see a good number of snails moving about. My mushrooms and Christmas Tree worms are behaving normally.

In the QT, my Dogface seems to have recovered, but did come out of the experience with a cut on his head (and I'm not sure how that happened). The gobies also seem to doing fine in QT. Without sand, it's not the best situation, but I placed a few smaller pieces of LR to give them some shelter.

The tank has morphed in its setup over the years. When first getting into the hobby in 2003, the 90 had my Dogface, a Volitan, a Heniochus, and a Snowflake Eel. Over the years and through the moves, all but the Dogface were lost. With the predators gone, we started to venture into more reef fish. I got the 180 and opened up another world. Some fish were also given to me when a neighbor was forced to tear down her tank, adding to the mix of fish. But in our last move, not knowing what our longer range plans were, we made the tough decision to leave the 180 in storage. Some fish had to go and some stayed. We had to keep our Dogface - with his personality and the fact that he's been with us all along.

I guess you're supposed to look for the silver lining. In this type of situation, it's a chance to rebuild. I'm ready to ditch the Soutdown because it blows around everywhere. Plus, my Dogface loves to blow around in it searching for food - and there are plenty of little bristleworms for him to find - but that puts more sand in the water column than I'd like. There are a number of reef-safe wrasses that we enjoy, and we'll probably look at adding some in the future.

As I think about going forward with the tank, I'll likely come up with a couple of tweaks I'd like to make to my setup. But now I'm happy I've managed to save what I did, and will continue looking to find what did this.

I can't thank you enough for pointing me in a couple of directions. RC has always been a great help over the years.

[ledford1]

Originally posted by Icefire
Forget the cupramine in the tank as you'll kill all coral/inverts.

Look if your macro algae is white, that could explain it.

I'm not dosing the cupramine yet because of the inverts, but I have it just in case I see something with the fish.

The macro seems to be healthy, but it does have a nice dusting of sand now after I moved out all the rock and disturbing the sand last night to catch those crazy gobies.

[iwishtofish]

Originally posted by ledford1
I'm not dosing the cupramine yet because of the inverts, but I have it just in case I see something with the fish.

[Edited from original post:]

I'm still not convinced - you know that adding copper (cupramine) will kill your inverts, mushrooms, and ruin your tank forever for anything but fish, right?! Fish to a separate hospital tank for that...

[Swanwillow]

will people stop being mean? The fish are in QT, his corals are fine. There are very strange and degrading things being written. Noone is there, and why would he treat the system? Why are you not convinced?

The fish are in QT, and the copper hasn't touched the water, as far as he's posted the fish are actually recuperating in the QT tank.

Even if he DID dose the tank, its not a lost cause. Poly filters would do a world of help in dosing a tank, you may have to replace the LR, sand, and any inverts-but not the tank.

[iwishtofish]

I am not trying to be mean, and I'm sorry if anyone (especially ledford1) interpreted my post that way. I am just trying to be helpful.

I may have, of course, misinterpreted ledford1's intentions just as easily as you have misinterpreted my post.

Swanwillow, thank you for prompting me to write my first truly defensive post!