HELP; Tang Crashing

[mateysp]

Hi All,

 

I woke up this morning to twp dead fish with the rest of them looking not far behind.

 

I did a water change last night, about 8 gallons out of a 29Biocube - the salinity was perfect, and the temperature was at least in the ballpark. (The my finger says it close test)

 

When I woke up this morning I had a dead six line warres, and a royal gramma.

 

My water parameters now:

Salinty: 1.025

Ph: 8.0

Nitrite: 0

Nitrate: 0-5.0

Temp: 78

 

The water looks very cloudy now, and my pair of false percs, coral banded shrimp, and blue green chromis don't look good.

 

I just changed the regular filter for the biocube(yes I know many people don't like these)

 

The tank has been established about 3 months.

 

I have one piece of zoo that was open in the store and sense I have had it, it never opened up. (it was open in the store)

 

Any help would be appreciated!!

[Dmarmontello]

Hi All,

 

I woke up this morning to twp dead fish with the rest of them looking not far behind.

 

I did a water change last night, about 8 gallons out of a 29Biocube - the salinity was perfect, and the temperature was at least in the ballpark. (The my finger says it close test)

 

When I woke up this morning I had a dead six line warres, and a royal gramma.

 

My water parameters now:

Salinty: 1.025

Ph: 8.0

Nitrite: 0

Nitrate: 0-5.0

Temp: 78

 

The water looks very cloudy now, and my pair of false percs, coral banded shrimp, and blue green chromis don't look good.

 

I just changed the regular filter for the biocube(yes I know many people don't like these)

 

The tank has been established about 3 months.

 

I have one piece of zoo that was open in the store and sense I have had it, it never opened up. (it was open in the store)

 

Any help would be appreciated!!

 

 

did you let your tank fully cycle? That seems like a lot of fish for a 3 month old tank.

[mateysp]

I meant 3 months after I added my first fish after cycling.

[Dmarmontello]

I meant 3 months after I added my first fish after cycling.

 

I'm not sure both your 6-line and royal gramma died but I can speak from my experience that a lot of times those species don't get along well in small tank. I lost my Gramma due to being bullied by a 6 line.

 

I'm not saying that is what occurred because that doesn't explain why both of them died.

[trong]

you have your nitrate at 5.0? that might be the problem

[mateysp]

I think it has to do more with something going on with the water. It was just sudden, water looked good, did a water change - everything looked fine afterwords, and then this morning everything looks really bad.

 

you have your nitrate at 5.0? that might be the problem

 

I have the API Saltwater master kit.

 

It has readings for Nitrate 0 being the lowest and 5.0 being the second lowest. The reading was somewhere in between. I didn't think hat was too high.

[doppelganger]

nitrate at 5 ppm won't do anything to fish.

 

did you let the water mix overnight?

[Cryophilous]

Can you test for ammonia? Also, what corals do you have in there(if any)? Have you made any other recent changes to the tank at all? Have you recently added anything to the tank? How deep is your sand bed, and did you recently stir it up a lot?

 

An 8 gallon change on a biocube 29(The capacity completely empty is 22 gallons) is pretty significant. Depending on how much sand/rock you have in there, that could be a 50% or even more change. How often do you normally do water changes, and how much do you normally change?

[mateysp]

I let it mix for several hours. I have done it the same way every time with no problems up until now. I have to do admit I do use tap water, but I always add Kordon- NovAqua Plus (which says make taps water safe for fish)

 

I know this is not ideal, but it's what I have chosen to do.

 

Can you test for ammonia? Also, what corals do you have in there(if any)? Have you made any other recent changes to the tank at all? Have you recently adding anything to the tank? How deep is your sand bed, and did you recently stir it up a lot?

 

An 8 gallon change on a biocube 29(The capacity completely empty is 22 gallons) is pretty significant. Depending on how much sand/rock you have in there, that could be a 50% or even more change. How often do you normally do water changes, and how much do you normally change?

 

 

I forgot to put ammonia in my first post, it was 0.25. I said I had one piece of Zoo which has never done well in my tank. I added a the Oceanic Biocube Protein skimmer a couple weeks ago. Otherwise no changes. I normally do a 4 gallon change once a week, I missed a week so did 8.

 

I also did stir up the sand bed to help clean it up when I did the water change. IT is about 2 inches.

[Cryophilous]

The ammonia is pretty high for a cycled tank. You really shouldn't see a spike in ammonia unless you recently added to the bioload of the tank, or if you have something that's rotting in there.

 

A bunch of people are probably going to say the using tap water is the reason for the crash, and that may be, but it could also have little or nothing to do with it. The tap water could be why the zoos aren't happy. They are generally really hardy, so if they aren't happy it usually means the water quality is off or they really don't like the lights- and the stock lights in your tank should make them more than happy.

 

The only time I would do an 8 gallon change on a tank your size would be if your parameters are way off, ex: high nitrates or ammonia.

 

All that said, with everything happening overnight like that, I would say it almost has to be something in the water. Maybe your tap had an unusually high TDS that day for some reason. The only other thing I can think of is that all your fish could have got really stressed out during the change. It could even be a combination of the two.

 

For now, I would start mixing more water, and do several 2-3 gallon changes a couple times a day to see if that helps. Not sure what else you can do at this point.

 

Edit: Just saw that you said you did stir up the sand bed. That very well may be the cause. If you have never stirred/siphoned it before, all kinds of junk can get trapped in the bed and really mess up your water when it gets stirred up. Your spike on ammonia is probably due to that. It is best to either clean your sand bed with every water change with a siphon, or to just let it be and never disturb it at all.

 

I would start mixing water ASAP and do 2 4 gallon changes today, and maybe tomorrow as well to try and get rid of as much as you can.

[mateysp]

So you would recommend I do a couple 2-3 gallon changes today?

[Cryophilous]

So you would recommend I do a couple 2-3 gallon changes today?

 

That's what I would do. Someone else with more experience than myself may have some other advice, but for now I would start mixing water and keep checking the post to see if anyone else has some insight.

[brandon429]

Animals can die a natural death or death from x factor we won't know without a necropsy. So that leaves ammonia in the tank, which can kill others, then they emit ammonia etc. two or three 50% changes in a row is all that will save the rest of the tank. Make it 80%

 

The ammonia in the system burning the remaining crew is worse than the water change.

 

All you do is match temp and specific gravity

 

It doesn't matter if that sounds harsh, ammonia is harsher, a full water switch out should have been done it may be too late for higher animals.

 

I agree about nitrates being ok, tap water being bad, and not disturbing the sandbed without a huge water change cycle follow up

 

 

 

Your tank is like a kidney failure patient at this point with a spiked blood urea nitrogen reading and we are running dialysis at 1/4 rate out of fear of disturbing the body which is currently in an imbalanced state.

 

Every minute ammonia remains in the system is more chain reaction loss and more ammonia

[MikeTR]

Key things here... stirred sand bed... cloudy water following, then fish death. Provided your pumps, etc.. aren't covered in a white film from precipitate, it's likely a bacteria bloom occurred and used up all the oxygen. Large water changes at this point 80%ish.