Tank Crashing!?!

[kylexarbor]

so, I am new to reef keeping and have had a heck of a time. It started with diatoms to green algae then dinos and Cyanobacteria. I made the big mistake of not using ro/di water, which I’ve now remedied, but I think that’s where it all started. 

 

I have a Biocube 29 with the RapidLED upgrade on the lights. A DIY media rack with floss and Chemi Pure Elite in the second chamber along with a newly added hydor slim skim nano. The third chamber has Purigen and my return pump. 

 

Water parameters are: API tests

 

Temp 80 F

SG 1.025

pH 8.4

ammonia 0

nitrite 0

nitrate 0 

kH 10

calcium 440

 

-getting a phosphate test this week

 

The tank is 4 months old and when all was well life-wise I had 2 ocellaris clowns, 1 bangaii cardinalfish, 1 Chromis, 1 pincushion urchin, emerald crab, coral banded shrimp, 2 turbo snails and 5 red legged hermit crabs. For corals I have a zoanthid, frogspawn, Kenya tree coral and a goniopora.  In the past week I’ve come to find the cardinalfish dead, then the Chromis, followed by my urchin losing all of its spines and dying 2 days ago and one of my clowns was gone this morning. I haven’t had any major shifts other than I recently added the rodi system and skimmer in the past 5-6 days. My readings are stable and I check them often and perform a ~30% water change every week. My nitrates almost always read 0. It’s been tough keeping positive about this hobby so far but I’m still here and want to figure this out. The money loss is no fun, but I hate seeing these friends of mine swim away. Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated. Let me know if I left any info out. 

 

Thanks.

 

 

[4Swanson2Reefer0N00b]

How are the corals looking?  How are the inverts?  This is a dumb question but are you feeding the fish? What are you feeding them?  What did their poop look like?  Was their appearance odd or swimming odd?  How long were you putting non-rodi water and what was it?  Tap?  Distilled?  That seems like a lot of creatures for a tank only four months old.  Need some more info but happy to try and help. 

[kylexarbor]

The corals all look happy and the inverts are good as well. Crab and shrimp have moulted twice each and are active. I feed marine flakes abkut every 3rd feeding and mysis the other days. Poop I’m not too sure. The fish were swimming like they were drunk. I was running straight tap water that I never tested and I’ve been running rodi for only 2 water changes. But, yeah I agree that I went overboard with stocking. I just got excited and ahead of myself. I learned my lesson there. But my parameters have always been stable, which is why I felt it okay to add. 

[kylexarbor]

I did treat my tap water with chlorine/chloramine cleanser or whatever, but still tap water. 

[sam_the_reefer]

Do you use air freshener or bug spray? If yes, your new skimmer is now diffusing that into your tank water. Or maybe it could be that the cardinal was sick to begin with and released bacteria when it died.

[sam_the_reefer]

Also, chromis are prone to uronema. Did the dead fish have red lesions?

[kylexarbor]

As far as chemicals in my atmosphere, candles maybe, but no I don’t spray air fresheners or bug spray. I’m pretty good about being conscious of anything dangerous getting into the tank. For the fish, no they all looked happy and healthy until all of a sudden they weren’t. About the cardinal, come to think of it, I didn’t see it eat really. I had it for maybe a month. It never went for food. I saw it eat one mysis shrimp one time. It swam around regularly though, up until the last day when it swam around all drunk-like (in circles and upside down, all over the place). Same thing with the Chromis and clown. The urchin seemed out of nowhere aswell. I didn’t see any signs of stress or illness until their final hours. 

[banasophia]

Sorry to hear about these challenges with your tank, and the loss of your fish and urchin. 😞

 

I always think it’s helpful to post pictures when trying to figure out what may be going on so we can see if there are any visual clues we can pick up on... if you can post pics that would be great. 

[Clown79]

If you added a fish a month ago without quarantine, its very possible that it brought in a disease.

 

Quarantining fish for 4 weeks even for observation and not treating prevents the spread of disease.

 

Was there any rapid breathing, anything on the fishes bodies before death?

 

The urchins death may be a separate issue. The system is fairly new for an urchin, some urchins only eat certain types of algae and then starve to death.

 

Are you purchasing the rodi water, if so from where and have you tested it?

 

 

 

 

 

[kylexarbor]

I didn’t quarantine the fish. Unfortunately I don’t have a separate setup for that. The clown was always breathing heavily. My other one sever has any issue like that. Nothing on their bodies that I could see. I fed the urchin nori which they seemed to take to. And the rodi water is from my own system. It’s a RO buddy 100 gpd that comes from my home tap source. It tests fine after treatment but I still need a phosphate test kit. So I’m unsure of that parameters.

[OPtasia]

The rapid respiration is suggestive of ammonia spikes, but if your nitrates are zero across the board, it could also be a gill parasite causing swollen, mucous covered gills. Those fish die from lack of oxygen. 

[banasophia]

So it sounds like you just added the RODI and skimmer within the past week, and that’s when the fish started dying. With your new RODI, did you discard the first water you made with it? I just checked the manual and only saw something about a 30 minute flush of the resin, though I didn’t read it super carefully... with the model I had bought (same brand I think, Aquatic Life) the manual had said to discard the first 30 gallons of RODI water made due to needing to flush out the preservative:

 

[kylexarbor]

I followed my instructions which were to run the 2 cartridges without the membrane for 5 minutes, then to install the membrane and run it for 30 minutes. Once that was done, hook up the di cartridge and it’s good to go. I’ll have to double check that it said run the membrane for 30 MINUTES and not GALLONS. That could be the issue right there. Because even when I used tap water the fish seemed very happy, I just had a bunch of algae problems. 

[banasophia]

17 minutes ago, kylexarbor said:

I followed my instructions which were to run the 2 cartridges without the membrane for 5 minutes, then to install the membrane and run it for 30 minutes. Once that was done, hook up the di cartridge and it’s good to go. I’ll have to double check that it said run the membrane for 30 MINUTES and not GALLONS. That could be the issue right there. Because even when I used tap water the fish seemed very happy, I just had a bunch of algae problems. 

Yes, what you described is what I saw when I skimmed through the manual for yours... so maybe you’re fine with that, but good to double check just in case, especially since they are the same brand. 👍

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

50 minutes ago, banasophia said:

So it sounds like you just added the RODI and skimmer within the past week, and that’s when the fish started dying. With your new RODI, did you discard the first water you made with it? I just checked the manual and only saw something about a 30 minute flush of the resin, though I didn’t read it super carefully... with the model I had bought (same brand I think, Aquatic Life) the manual had said to discard the first 30 gallons of RODI water made due to needing to flush out the preservative:

 

I have the same ro unit and yeah you have to get rid of all that water before use. Took me like 3 days lol

[banasophia]

2 minutes ago, DSFIRSTSLTWATER said:

I have the same ro unit and yeah you have to get rid of all that water before use. Took me like 3 days lol

Good for you for sticking it out haha. I got rid of it because of that. I was already alarmed by the amount of waste water created to produce one gallon of RODI, and when I saw you had to discard the first 30 gallons that seemed so extreme since I only needed two gallons of water per week at that time. I switched to using distilled water from the grocery store instead. 

[DSFIRSTSLTWATER]

Just now, banasophia said:

Good for you for sticking it out haha. I got rid of it because of that. I was already alarmed by the amount of waste water created to produce one gallon of RODI, and when I saw you had to discard the first 30 gallons that seemed so extreme since I only needed two gallons of water per week at that time. I switched to using distilled water from the grocery store instead. 

lol I thought I was doing something wrong when I hooked it up. I had to google the waste water but its something like 4 gallons of waste per gallon of clean water. I still use it I only make about 6-8 gallons a week. I may upgrade once the 75 is up and I need to make a butt load more water. Its set up in my laundry room and so it was pretty easy to do the 30 gallons. It comes out clean though so I can't really complain 

[kylexarbor]

Well I just got home from work and can see that I’m about to lose my last clown fish and the last fish in the tank. I also have a massive outbreak of dinoflagellates which I don’t understand. I’m about to do a 30% water change and clean as much dinos out as I can and go lights out for a day. Hoping something good happens soon.

 

Thanks for all the advice. 

[banasophia]

1 minute ago, kylexarbor said:

Well I just got home from work and can see that I’m about to lose my last clown fish and the last fish in the tank. I also have a massive outbreak of dinoflagellates which I don’t understand. I’m about to do a 30% water change and clean as much dinos out as I can and go lights out for a day. Hoping something good happens soon.

 

Thanks for all the advice. 

Oh no. 😢 I suggest taking pics/video of the fish if it’s not too late, I think it will be good to try to figure out what happened if at all possible. 

[Lula_Mae]

21 minutes ago, kylexarbor said:

Well I just got home from work and can see that I’m about to lose my last clown fish and the last fish in the tank. I also have a massive outbreak of dinoflagellates which I don’t understand. I’m about to do a 30% water change and clean as much dinos out as I can and go lights out for a day. Hoping something good happens soon.

 

Thanks for all the advice. 

With dinos you might want to try a total blackout for at least 3 days - meaning tank is totally covered from light getting in. One day of lights out likely won't do that much. 

[Clown79]

Dino's are difficult to get rid of. I would do a lot of research on the various methods.

 

Lights out - 3 days (low success rate with dino's)

No waterchanges

3 % peroxide dosing

Vibrant cleaner

Bacteria dosing

 

 

 

[vegasgundog]

Sucks you are having such a rough go. I lost all my first fish from not doing quarantine. As far as the dino issue, I also had them in my bio cube. The only thing that worked was a full 10 day black out. It is a last resort really. I tried multiple 3 day, then a 7 ....and finally the 10. Not only did the dinos starve, but so did my urchin. But I never had dinos again . Good luck,  keep fighting. 

[Clown79]

11 minutes ago, vegasgundog said:

Sucks you are having such a rough go. I lost all my first fish from not doing quarantine. As far as the dino issue, I also had them in my bio cube. The only thing that worked was a full 10 day black out. It is a last resort really. I tried multiple 3 day, then a 7 ....and finally the 10. Not only did the dinos starve, but so did my urchin. But I never had dinos again . Good luck,  keep fighting. 

It does suck.

 

Some hobbyists get off to a rough start. 

 

But never give up. There are ways to turn things around.

 

I now use a 3.5g as a qt for observation of new fish. It's small but it's what I have.  

 

Even a 5g bucket with a hob filter will work.

 

I like to now monitor fish for 4 weeks, if anything arises, then I can treat them. I've lost a few fish prior to this practice.

[kylexarbor]

48 minutes ago, vegasgundog said:

Sucks you are having such a rough go. I lost all my first fish from not doing quarantine. As far as the dino issue, I also had them in my bio cube. The only thing that worked was a full 10 day black out. It is a last resort really. I tried multiple 3 day, then a 7 ....and finally the 10. Not only did the dinos starve, but so did my urchin. But I never had dinos again . Good luck,  keep fighting. 

Will a long lights out period negatively effect my corals?

[Clown79]

20 minutes ago, kylexarbor said:

Will a long lights out period negatively effect my corals?

It may. 72hrs is not long but longer than that you may have issues.