Thoughts on unnexplained (and very sad) die-off

[jostafew]

Hello everyone, I'm very sad to say it but it looks like I'm about to lose the last of my 4 fish, some of which I've had for nearly two years. It all started in the summer time, I noticed that I'd lost a couple inverts (cleaner shrimp, tuxedo urchin).

After investigating I found that the SG in my mixed reef had dropped to 1.021. Long period of water changes combined with the assumption that my salt mix was the same potency as previous batches. Over a period of a couple weeks I brought that back up to 1.025 and thought I'd caught it before things got too bad. But, things continued to deteriorate. I lost the other cleaner shrimp, a brittle star, and my bigger pincushion urchin. It was around this time that I was busy and not keeping up with tank maintenance as well as I should have, and missing inverts decomposing (especially that bigger urchin) dumped a pile of nutrients into the water causing a huge algae bloom. A month or two later my Kole tang began swimming eratically, upside down, and a day later died. Very sad day. Somewhere around this time my Fire shrimp died, too. Maybe a couple weeks later my otherwise healthy and hungry Pajama Cardinal appeared dead one morning, no warning signs whatsoever. No external signs of trouble on either of them.

Through all this my treasured Crocea clam was looking strong, and I was happy about that. Fast forward to about two months ago. My clam started to decline. I'd always been concerned that it was receiving insufficient light, so I moved it from the sand-bed up the rock-work. Things stayed the same, continued to slowly decline. About a month ago I noticed that my Black clown had begun looking very thin. I'd always suspected that it had internal parasites as I would sometimes see stringy poop, but it always ate well and looked otherwise healthy. At this point I didn't have much left to lose in my reef so I dosed the system with Prazipro. Followed by a 2nd dose 6 days later. Sometime in the last couple weeks I noticed that my Azure Damsel was breathing heavily, like it would if oxygenation were a problem in the tank. Didn't see how that could be possible though considering I run the DT topless and the temperature was the same 79deg. it always was.

Finally last week during renovations in the house I tore down the old tank and began building the new. The remaining two fish, very sad looking clam, and one larger hermit crab (only remaining livestock aside from the corals) went into a temporary tank while the build happened. They stayed there for three days. During that time the Damsel died and the clown stopped eating, and the clam died.

Now, the new system has been running since Tuesday with live rock, sand, and half of its water from the old system. Livestock consists of coral, a nearly dead hermit crab, and a clown which is still not eating and I expect to die at any moment.

Along the way the only thing I found wrong in the water params were Mag and Calcium reading higher than usual, and Alk low (about 6.2dkh). I started to correct the Alk slowly, but nothing too crazy.

So, very hard to see all those creatures die under my care, especially considering that I don't know what happened... The damsel and the clown I've had for nearly two years, the Tang I'd had for about 6 months, and the pajama cardinal I had for probably two or three. It was the last thing into the tank, but it was quarantined and showed no signs of illness during QT or after being introduced to the DT. Most of the inverts were a year or two old as well. The invert die off I'm attributing to the intial low SG and a cascade effect of dieoff and poor water quality, but the fish are hardly delicate species and seem to be dying from some illness with no visible symptoms and does not respond to prazipro.

At this point the tank will stay fishless for a good two months. If there was some disease in there I want to give it time to dissipate before re-introducing any fish. I did plan to try a couple new cleaner shrimp just for some movement now that the params are stable though... Any thoughts on what might have happened and/or best way to proceed so as to avoid a recurrence?

[gregzz4]

Sorry to read about your losses

Sounds like a cascade effect
Low Sg starts killing inverts and other sensitive life, ammo levels start to rise, bacteria starts to die off faster, more ammo, fish who are OK fighting off whatever is present in good water start to succumb to things their lowered immune systems can no longer deal with
Add the Prazipro and possibly this was the final straw

Prazipro can raise pH. Ammonia from die-off combined with higher pH can be lethal at much lower levels than our target pH would normally allow us to get away with

Just my thoughts

As far as proceeding goes, have you been testing for a cycle ?

[jostafew]

Thanks for the feedback gregzz, I've done a couple ammonia tests before and during the transition but they've always come up with nothing. I've also got one of those ammonia monitor things in the tank now to watch for any remaining issues but it has always read zero as well. To be honest I don't expect to see a cycle in the new system as it's 50% new water, all of the rock and sand was from a mature system, and all of the LR was scrubbed pretty vigorously (in tankwater) to remove any of the pest algae that had previously developed. But I have nitrite and nitrate test kits as well and will do a few tests here and there to watch for any changes over the next week or so.

[kien]

Sorry to hear if your loss. The hobby is hard enough as it is but to loose your tank inhabitants like that is a real kick to the nads :-(. Been there.. :-(

When you treated your tank with prazi pro did you turn off your skimmer like the bottle suggests? If I recall correctly the instructions say that you should turn off your skimmer. This is likely due to the fact that your skimmer could skim out the meds making it less effective. HOWEVER, I personally would not recommend doing this as turning off your skimmer for a period of time can dramatically reduce the oxygen in your tank. Mind you, if you don't have a skimmer then this is a non issue.

My recommendation when using meds with a skimmer is always to take off the skimmer cup and let it overflow into your sump during the treatment period. Assuming you have a sump of course.

[howdy20012002]

sorry for your losses..it always sucks when you lose things unexpectedly or for no apparent reason.
to be honest, I don't think that the SG at 1.021 would have killed the inverts if it had been a gradual reduction.
I would look elsewhere for the cause personally.
I am not sure what to suggest beyond that.
good luck
Neal

[Madreefer]

sorry for your losses..it always sucks when you lose things unexpectedly or for no apparent reason.
to be honest, I don't think that the SG at 1.021 would have killed the inverts if it had been a gradual reduction.
I would look elsewhere for the cause personally.
I am not sure what to suggest beyond that.
good luck
Neal

I totally agree with you and hoping someone else would respond first. I had a debate with another member about SG last week. Most stores keep their sg at 1.021.

[jostafew]

Thanks for the feedback guys. Neal, that's a good suggestion about keeping the skimmer running but taking out the cup. I did turn it off for the 12 days during treatment as recomended, but you're right I could have left it running (though not functioning) for oxygenation.

As for the SG decrease, yes it would have been very gradual, over the course of several months.

[albert_dao]

So... Were you using Reef Crystals?

[jostafew]

Nope, was using IO. Same as I had been since day one. Odd thing though, this batch had a much finer consistency than the previous buckets and I learned the hard way that it mixes up with a lower SG than usual.

[gregzz4]

I had a debate with another member about SG
Me :smile:
I only mentioned the Sg possibility as the OP stated he lost inverts first, and I'll agree a gradual drop most likely was not the cause

I'm sure there's something out there, but I'm not aware of an infection that kills both fish and inverts. Maybe someone else knows ?
I say this as it still sounds to me like some kind of exposure or contamination

Do you remember using anything last summer that you'd not previously used ?

[howdy20012002]

I don't think it is a disease personally.
I don't know of any disease or parasite that can kill both fish and inverts.
IME typically inverts are fairly resilent to disease.
I think it must be something with the conditions of the tank
perhaps a contamination?
are your corals doing okay? what kind of corals do you have?
did you add any rock recently and did you test for copper if you did.
LR can hold copper and it will leech slowly back into your system.
I would definitely add carbon to see if you can contain any contaminents.
although the copper wouldn't affect the fish, it would definitely kill your inverts..and alot of other things such as bristle worms, amipods etc...
do you still see the critters swimming around your tank when the lights are off? see bristle worms when you feed? or any snails or crabs still alive?
if not, then I would definitely suspect copper...(although if your corals are doing fine..probably not copper either)
this die off could certainly cause the conditions of your tank to go south..which in turn would make your fish more prone to disease that they had previously been able to fight off.
however, diseases aren't something that linger around in your tank without being noticed...most diseases will either become noticeable or not.
so if you haven't noticed any disease symptoms within the last 3 months, not really sure what could be killing beyond something in your tank.

[jostafew]

I'm trying to think back to see if there were any new dosing etc. around that time, but nothing comes to mind. I started dosing kalk in Oct 2011, but that was way before this all started.

I've often wondered if I've got a copper problem in the system somehow. I've always struggled to keep snails, and while I did have a healthy population of pods for the first half of the tank's life, it's been greately reduced lately. I've tested for copper multiple times, and even went so far as to run some cuprisorb in a reactor for an extended period of time, but there was no color change whatsoever. Last copper test was Nov 2011. Will test again just for fun.

I've got a mixed reef, some easy SPS (birdsnest, red digi, green monti cap that's never been green, bird of paradise), couple LPS, branching hammer & trumpet, a big GSP colony. Certain SPS I've struggled with, pretty much anything except what I've got now so I've given up on it for the moment. Tried some green stag, yellow digi etc. but no success. The LPS has always grown quickly, but for the past year I've found it does not expand nearly as much as it used to, which is a shame as LPS is probably my favorite. I'd love to pick up a nice torch but I'm not going to bother until my current colonies start expanding like they used to.

I usually do run carbon in a reactor. Got a little lazy with changing it lately, but it does get refreshed maybe once every month or two.

I appreciate all the feedback and discussion, I would love to get to the bottom of this. While I'm somewhat green in terms of experience (only been reefing for about 2-1/2 yrs), I'd like to think of myself as being pretty well read and it's frustrating to struggle with simple things while I see others making huge mistakes and keeping all sorts of corals etc. that I've never been able to. Now to think that I can't even keep fish and hardy inverts, not very good. Thanks again.

[jostafew]

Just did a copper test on the new system, I thought I saw a reaction (color change) at the beginning of the test but giving the test time to develop yielded no measurable result. Nonetheless I've done some reading on copper and heavy metal poisoning and I think I'll go pick up a poly filter to run just as a preventative measure. The symptoms sure seem to fit.

Also, I discovered that I was breaking a bunch of rules of copper; wasn't waiting for kalk mixture to settle before allowing ATO to pump it into the system, and was not considering copper sneaking in with alk and calc additive dosing (was only concerned with preventing large chemistry swings).

[Xadieu]

What your skimmer leeching micro bubbles into the tank? Our tank at work was doing that and almost everything died, well that and the combination of ich. Also do you have any toxic inverts/fish that could release toxin into the tank? such things could cause a whole tank crash.

[jostafew]

Not sure how to answer the microbubbles question. When the ATO resevoir would emptly (and I didn't notice) and the return chamber got to a certain point then yes the return pump would shoot micro bubbles into the system. I wouldn't call that an ongoing problem though. I beleive the loc-line return pipes did leach a little bit of air into the system and blow a very small amount of micro bubbles into the system too, but pretty minimal and no more than were present back when the system was stable.

Currently I do have a micro bubble problem on ver 2.0 of the system, but I have a few things yet to do to resolve that issue.

As for toxins, I don't think there was anything exotic in terms of livestock that would emit toxins while alive, but perhaps after death? There are a few zoa & paly colonies in the tank which we know are toxic if damaged, but no major trauma to those. On the list of inverts that died and decomposed in the tank include a large pincushion urchin, smaller tuxedo urchin, two small red starfish, brittle star, numerous snails and hermit crabs. There were only four fish listed in previous posts.

Dosing is pretty minimal; IO salt, BRS Kalk (not using anymore), occasional Seachem Calcium and Reef Builder Alk supplements. Was experimenting with dosing iron and Lugol's a while back, but it had been quite a while since the last dose of those.

[howdy20012002]

I personally don't see how micro bubbles would kill anything

[Xadieu]

I personally don't see how micro bubbles would kill anything

Don't quote me on this cause I'm no expert but I believe the micro bubbles can get trapped in the fish gills and cause respiratory problems, there's a disease called bubble disease in fish. Also if the micro bubbles comes from the protein skimmer the bubbles carries the protein trapped on the bubbles and when it gets built up it could cause problems.

[howdy20012002]

Xadieu, I didn't mean to sound rude..sorry if it came across that way
I have microbubbles from my skimmers entering into my systems from all my systems...so I don't know how prone fish would be developing problems.
I think it would have to be very extreme to be problematic.
as well, it doesn't really explain the invert die-off.

[Xadieu]

Xadieu, I didn't mean to sound rude..sorry if it came across that way
I have microbubbles from my skimmers entering into my systems from all my systems...so I don't know how prone fish would be developing problems.
I think it would have to be very extreme to be problematic.
as well, it doesn't really explain the invert die-off.

Hehe no worries I was not offended by it. But I cannot explain how the invert dies except for copper level and rapid change in salinity.

[jostafew]

So it would seem that whatever was affecting the livestock is still present. Last night I picked up two cleaner shrimp that were to provide some life in the tank for the next 2-3 months. This morning I found them both dead, pretty much un-moved since they were introduced to the tank last night.

Now either something went very wrong during acclimation, or there's some kind of mystery death in my system which I can't pinpoint. I've acclimated many an invert before, always succesfull. I'll go over things from this time though, maybe something will stand out:

Shrimp spent about 1/2 hour in the bag on the way home from the LFS, mix of sitting on the seat and in my lap to maintain temp.

Got them home and into a bucket with a thermometer, started a slow drip from the DT. When they went into the bucket, their water temp was 74 something. Using my standard method of warming the bit of water (glass full of warm water placed into the existing water), I slowly brought the temp back up to about 78 deg.

Two hours later, temp sitting steady at 78, time to go into the tank (which was at about 80deg.). Scooped up one shrimp and gently into the tank, where it clung onto my fingers for quite a while. Finally convinced it to let go when it sank (not swam) down to the bottom. Same thing for the 2nd one. They looked stunned, the odd cleaning of antennae, but no big movements.

There they stayed overnight, this morning, and now at lunchtime I happend to be home and checked them again, at which point they were both dead.

Now I'm really getting puzzled with this whole thing, it's like there's some mystery poison in the tank that's killed ALL of my fish and inverts, and putting a hurt on my corals. My LPS open up to feed at night, but have absolutely no extension during the day. All are completely deflated.

Ran a few measurements again last night, SG was down a little (1.024) so I slowly added the necessary salt to bring it back up. Alk was still down (6.7)despite my last dose a few weeks back, so I added 1/3 of the necessary dose to bring that back up as well. Other than that, no ammonia, no excessive nutrients (very little algae groth), skimmer's long settled down after the move. Running carbon in a TLF 150 reactor, and a poly filter. Baffled....

[jostafew]

SOLVED!!!

Had a good chat with the LFS eliminating a bunch of possibilites and finally we settled on the theory that I had a bad batch of salt. Timeline fits, slow decline starting in the summer time getting the worst around the end of the year. Started using that bucket (which had a noticeably different texture) in the spring of 2012 and just finished it when the new tank went up in Jan which coincided with the loss of my last few animals.

As a verification I set up the QT tank at work with new water and moved all existing live rock (and corals that had encrusted) into that tank for holding. I then completely drained the main tank, and got rid of the existing sand. Iin went brand new water, new sand (live) and a couple pieces of new rock. A couple quick adjustments to Calc and Alk and my levels were spot on target.

After allowing it to cook for a little while the corals in there were looking noticeably better. Confident that the tank was more habitable I tried a couple cleaner shrimp which have been doing great for a few weeks now. That told me that my hardware was good, no toxins leaching from the tank setup.

Next step was new sand and new water in the nano but kept the LR that was pulled from the big tank back in November. After some time to stabilize, in went some test critters, which again are doing great. So as of late 2012 the live rock was not toxic.

Last confirmation was to place a canary (peppermint shrimp) in the QT along with the live rock and see what happens. This would be the highest concentration of rock to water, so if there was something toxic leaching from the rock it would show here for sure.

I'm happy to say that the shrimp is still looking good, so the rock is safe and come home finally!

So problem confirmed, I had a bad batch of salt that spiked my Calc and Mag and who knows what else. Lesson learned; measure the first couple buckets coming from a new batch of salt before going into the tank. Pretty scarry though, I never would have thought something like this could happen. And of course when things start going badly what's the first thing to do.... water changes.... In my case just making the problem worse.

I'm not going to name the salt brand as I'd used it for a couple years before hand and I know tons of people who use it without problem, but to the knowledge of the LFS I am the 2nd person this has happened to so it does happen.

Hope this helps someone to find the cause of their problem before they lose all their beloved livestock like I did.

Happy reefing!