Help, im at a loss. 5 fish dead in less than 1 week

[Hightower]

Ok. I cant figure this out. (90gal)

In the past week I have lost my hippo tang, kole tang, 2 clowns, and a green chromis. A bangai cardinal has a massive eye on one side but not dead- yet.

Hippo tang got ick, and couldnt fight it off. ( no I dont have an extra aquarium for quarantine) Im sure he gave my kole tang ich even though he was healthy and eating lots including garlic, he didnt make it either.

Next my two clowns died within days of each other. LFS thinks it may have been clownfish disease. And in between all that, my blue green chomis who was eating voraciously, died. Go figure that one. the easiest fish to keep.

Parameters: Ammonia, Nitrite, =0 Nitrate= 2.5
Ph=8.0 temp 79, salinity=1.024 Phosphate= .1

History:
tank is 5weeks old, however, there is 100lbs of live rock cured and established from a 1.5yr old tank transported within 5 min. I monitored levels during those weeks, there was barely any detection. So not much of a cycle to go through.

I stocked the tank with 1, maybe 2 fish /week. still no rise in levels.

A 20% water change was done 1 week before they all died, with RO/DI water. TDS =0

With my T4 pump, im getting about 1000-1100 gph, along with my ASM G2 skimmer.

Still cant figure out what im doing wrong. Is this "beginners luck"?
This is not great for a wife who was skeptical, and now sees this, especially after sinking all this money into it.

The only thing I have noticed in the last few days, is a rise in brown "dusty" algae. But phosphates remain at .1

That maybe a tad high, but a rowaphos sleeve is in there.

Any help would be appreciated.

[Willow]

what test kit are you using to determine that your nitrates are 2.5?

my obvious guess is your tank is still cycling or was and you are adding stock way to fast. the dust your seeing is diatoms, they are one of the first stages of the algae cycle.

[Hightower]

All test kits are saliferts, and I did them twice to ensure they were correct.

The brown dusty algae is on the glass. the sand bed has some red, and green algae on it too.

[Aquattro]

PO4 and NO3 won't kill fish, within reason. It sounds like some sort of contamination. Maybe something like a cucumber was in the rock and died during transport? Cleaners get in the tank?
Was this used rock from someone else? Maybe there was a problem with it? Did it have fish in that tank?
Are you running carbon?

[Hightower]

no carbon. yes it was used rock from another healthy tank. He never had a problem with it to my knowledge.
Im not sure of die off during transport as it was less than 10min and remained wet.

If a cucumber was in the rock or something else and it died and caused that much poison, should there not have been an ammonia spike?

[Beverly]

Ich was introduced into your tank by one of your fish, that you know of. Could be they all caught it.

Did you buy all your fish from the same store? If so, they could all have had ich and you could not see it on some fish if the ich was in the gills.

[muck]

Ammonia = ?? :confused:

[mr_alberta]

Parameters: Ammonia, Nitrite, =0 Nitrate= 2.5
Ph=8.0 temp 79, salinity=1.024 Phosphate= .1


Did your clowns show any symptoms before they died?

[Hightower]

Clowns were breathing shallow, but had a dusty white appearence rather than the ich spots that were on the tangs.

[danny zubot]

When fish have been transported they become stressed and their slime coat is thinned. This will make them vulnerable to ich and other marine ailments. On top of this they have been added to a new tank with conditions that could add to their existing stress. I think it was the ich that got them.

Sorry about your losses.

[Hightower]

What about that product "stress coat." Does that help?

[trilinearmipmap]

IMO the answer is not to be found in a commercial product.

If it were me I would ask someone to double-check my levels with their test kit, also double-check salinity, pH etc with someone else's monitors.

When it is time to re-stock I would go slow and easy with the hardiest creatures first.

[sumpfinfishe]

6 fish in 5 weeks :exclaim: :eek:
slow down man, reefs arn't built overnight in the wild or at home

[G1GY]

What about that product "stress coat." Does that help?

I don't know if it will help your fish, but it will sure make your skimmer into a fountain in a hurry! I would not add this if your using a skimmer.

[jws444]

IMO, there are many things happening in your tank that we cant measure, and require time to stabilize through. It's redundant to the other posts, but patience is the only key sometimes. Even though your tank has 'cycled' according to the basic tests, at 5 weeks, your water is far from being mature enough to handle so much livestock. Live rock is not the answer to filtration. It's just a part of it. Live rock is a type of bioload in itself and the water must adjust to it. Anenomes would be another expample. It's generally not recommended that anenomes be kept in 'young' tanks regardless of how many zeros you have on your test kits. I've noticed that the slower you go in the beginning, the more 'bulletproof' your tank will become in taking any chemical spikes. I think at week #5, I was adding my first back of rock which was 20-30 pounds worth. Just my 2 cents...

[Hightower]

JWS, thanks for your reply.

Makes sense, but I am one to find out the source of the problem not second guess. If my system was unable to handle the load, and fish produce waste as ammonia, and it was not able to break down, I should be measuring good amounts of ammonia, nitrite, let alone trace amounts.

The fact that two more chromis are missing and decomposing somewhere should send my ammonia through the roof, and ive been testing 2-3 X /day for the past few days, and still nothing.

The live rock came from a heavily stocked tank, and I would think that there is a healthy population of bacteria breaking down this ammonia.

Yes going slow is my next step, but I still would like to know WHY they died.

[Beverly]

I still think the cause of death is ich. If I am right, do not put any new fish in the tank for at least six weeks, with eight weeks being better. This length of time will ensure that any ich present in your tank will go through their life cycles. With no fish in the tank when the ich gets to the "attach to the fish" stage, they will simply die and there will be no more ich in your tank.

[jws444]

I totally understand where you're coming from Hightower in trying to find out what's killing your fish. It's just part of the learning so that you can make sure it doesn't happen to you again. For me, I found that my patience is directly linked to the stability of the tank and I'm ok with knowing that there are intangibles in our hobby. Plus I really hated chemistry class too. lol. I think the best example I can come up with is the one where people have their tanks wiped out just from changing salt brands in their water changes. From a chemical testing point of view, all the parameters are fine and there should be no reason for this crash, but it happens to a lot of people.

[Willow]

maybe when you add more fish you should consider adding some uv.

[BCOrchidGuy]

It's hard not to get carried away when you've got a tank, you want it to look like Jamie Cross's tank. You didn't mention a QT tank and that's the first step to a healthy reef with fish. All fish should be in QT before they go into the reef tank. A lot of people skip this step and I'm guilty of it as well and I lost all my fish at one point. If you set up a QT tank and you have a fish in there and 3 weeks later you add another fish that you just HAVE to have, the QT process should start over again for the first fish. You need that time to evaluate them, if anything does go wrong you can medicate or alter the water asap with out having to stress them with catching them in a reef etc. Stress Coat etc all have their place but I agree with trilinearmipmap, a commercial product isn't the solution. Proper QT, prevention and if you need it treatment are the proper steps.

Doug