HELP ME! No one seems to know what is killing my fish!

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Salty_Hobby

I do run a skimmer and a filter (including carbon), my hermit crabs and snails are smaller than nickles so I don't want to give the wrong impression that I have lots of bioMASS, all my fish are relatively small except the tang.

I have been doing water changes twice a week of no more than 25% (as I didn't want to remove beneficial bacteria)

What type of skimmer are you using? What type of filter? How often do you change the media and carbon?

Considering you only have 10 lbs of live rock, and good quality live rock is a better filter than most protein skimmers can claim your bioload IS fairly significant. Don't fool yourself.

FYI, you won't remove any significant amount of bacteria doing water changes. The beneficial bacteria mostly colonize the live rock and sand. You could (in theory) do a 100% water change, and not remove any significant amount of nitrifying bacteria.