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View Full Version : Help, my fish are dying


markth
07/24/2007, 08:56 AM
My tank is 6 months old. I have soft coral and fish. I have 100 lbs. of live rock and an Aqua C skimmer in my 65 gal. tank. Two days ago I set added a refugium. We put the miracle mud in with some bio rock, waited 15 minutes, and turned on the refugium. It ran for 2-3 minutes and we noticed some plumbing problems, sut the system down and worked on them for 20-25 minutes. During that time, some of the mud that was in the refugium, hung in suspension in the main tank. Thr system was turned on, everything ran well and the water clarity cleared. Yesterday morning my flame angel was stressed and laying on the bottom. It died along with a yellow tang, and a diamond goby. Amonia, nitrates, ph, and akalinity are normal. The owner of a LFS also tested my water and got the same results. He thought the oxygen level may have been driven down by the mud hanging in suspension. My smaller fish, (1 damsel, 3 chromis, 1 pseudochromis), all seem to be okay. I put an air stone in the tank and did a partial water change. Does anyone have any ideas on what killed the larger fish?

Grins
07/24/2007, 09:27 AM
What were the actual numbers from the tests run? What are they now?

Sk8r
07/24/2007, 09:31 AM
Wow, that's a poser. I'd have suspected a ph spike, but that's normal, you say. What's your alkalinity?

Two of the fish that died, the tang and the angel, have a very high oxygen requirement. The diamond goby should be less than that, and that's the death that most puzzles me. Are you zero nitrate and you've had 3 dead fish in that tank? Seems to me it should be getting a reading.

Put a big ball of cheato into that refugium and light it 20 hours a day: that will increase oxygenation considerably.

Test your ph again after running that air stone: that can affect PH.

Oxygen or a ph or alkalinity spike would still be my primary guess. THe fish that survived are all the fishy version of extremophiles---they'll take environments that will kill other fish, higher nitrate, a little ammonia [lethal to most things really fast] lower oxygen.

Run some carbon in case there's ammonia involved.

Possibly the very fine mud clogged the fishes' gills and prevented them getting what oxygen there was.

If you have another stir-up of mud, having a cannister filter handy with a one micron filter would clear it to crystal clear in very short order. THis might be a good investment. And meanwhile, in another such incident, yank the fish instantly into quarantine tank with clean water. We now know this can be a lethal situation, if riled.

I feel badly for you: it's very disheartening to try to give your tank the best and to have a blowup like this. We've all been through it in one version or another, and I hope now that you've gotten that settled it will stay settled. Get your qt going: I think you're probably safe to do the prep for replacements.

kevin2000
07/24/2007, 11:02 AM
My 02

No offense intended but you had 7 fish in a 65 gallon tank which is a tight fit and would have likely resulted in high stress levels in your fish. When fish get stressed there immune systems are impaired and it often doesn't take much to put them over the edge .. the combo of fiddling with the tank during the fuge setup and perhaps the "mud" event may have been enough to put them over the edge.