[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....