Thoughts on unnexplained (and very sad) die-off

[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]

Originally Posted by 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

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]

Originally Posted by Madreefer

I had a debate with another member about SG

Me
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.