Fish Dying, Coral doing Great?? 55gal :confused:

[ssublime1]

2 weeks ago I had a power failure that resulted in a nasty algae outbreak. Since then my fish that eat algae started dying very quickly leading me to believe there may be some type of poisonous growth in there. I've lost one baby unicorn fish, 2 sailfin tangs and a lawnmower blenny in rapid succession. I bought the lawnmower and sailfins at the same time. The tangs were dead within 4 days and the blenny the next day. I also have one six line and a coris wrasse along with a frogfish and 2 skunk cleaner shrimp. The wrasses are so far doing fine and showing nothing out of the ordinary, however I just lost the frog this morning. I noticed him sitting on the bottom looking like he was breathing harder than normal, then he was dead next time I checked.

The tank is mainly a SPS setup with a few fish and inverts, 55 gal with maybe a 10 gal actual volume sump. I test nitrate, phosphate, and DKH regularly and nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. I also run a salinity and PH monitor, it gets down to about 7.9 at night and tops out at 8.2, salinity stays from 52.5 to 53. Dosing 2 part b-ionic at about 10-15ml a day (dkh 7-8) along with .2 mil of vodka and weak vinegar mix daily. I'm using 1-2 drops of KZ spongepower every day or two along with reef chili. I have stopped doing the Reef chili the past 2 weeks because of this algae. I also use KZ coral snow to help clean up the water. I've dosed small amounts of K, K-iodide weekly and once I used an iron supplement (another possible contributing factor). Running GFO (switched to zeovit rocks today) and a vertex in-70 skimmer. Nova extreme pro 6 bulb fixture with 2 month old non coralife bulbs.

The algae that is growing is a mix of normal filamentous green and some other paler stuff that could be a version of cyano or blue green algae. This is the stuff I'm more worried about as it grows very quickly and is starting to coat some rocks. It will also grow on the glass quickly if I don't clean it off. Very fine looking when it starts, the water movement makes it move in waves. Apart from looking like a$$ this is really starting to worry me due to the fish loss.

My hypothesis is this: the GFO is getting a bit old and due to be changed, this combined with the power outage and no circulation for a few hours caused whatever was in the tank already to explode. Contained in this growth is one or more noxious species resulting in the death of herbivores. I just lost a small crab this morning, and perhaps a snail or two the past week. A few others seem to be doing fine. The corals as well are growing like crazy and seem to have not suffered. One thing I did notice is an airstone I was using in the sump has a wire running in the tube to make it easier to put where you want it. This was starting to get a bit rusty perhaps adding more iron into the system.

Taking most of the rocks out to manually scrub isn't possible due to the coral growth. I'm kind of at a loss, should I wait it out, continue scraping and changing the filter sock daily, get algaefix or.....?

[spamreefnew]

i am no expert for sure,but you might want to do the 3 days lights out thing to kill that algae,,and if it was me i would run the heak out of my diatom d1 filter with carbon and diatomus earth as i scrubbed that algae off with a toothbrush. to much $ at stake....good luck:)

[noahm]

Corals doing fine, fish dying, sounds like maybe you had a low Oxygen event. Could have been due to the PF, bacterial bloom etc. Keep an eye on parameters and do the lights out to knock the cyano back. Other than that, watch the feeding and try not to put any more tangs in there. I have a 125 and still can't bring myself to do it even though they are so small and cute when they are small and cute. Either that, or use it as an excuse to upgrade :).

[Aquarist007]

2 weeks ago I had a power failure that resulted in a nasty algae outbreak. Since then my fish that eat algae started dying very quickly leading me to believe there may be some type of poisonous growth in there. I've lost one baby unicorn fish, 2 sailfin tangs and a lawnmower blenny in rapid succession. I bought the lawnmower and sailfins at the same time. The tangs were dead within 4 days and the blenny the next day. I also have one six line and a coris wrasse along with a frogfish and 2 skunk cleaner shrimp. The wrasses are so far doing fine and showing nothing out of the ordinary, however I just lost the frog this morning. I noticed him sitting on the bottom looking like he was breathing harder than normal, then he was dead next time I checked.

The tank is mainly a SPS setup with a few fish and inverts, 55 gal with maybe a 10 gal actual volume sump. I test nitrate, phosphate, and DKH regularly and nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. I also run a salinity and PH monitor, it gets down to about 7.9 at night and tops out at 8.2, salinity stays from 52.5 to 53. Dosing 2 part b-ionic at about 10-15ml a day (dkh 7-8) along with .2 mil of vodka and weak vinegar mix daily. I'm using 1-2 drops of KZ spongepower every day or two along with reef chili. I have stopped doing the Reef chili the past 2 weeks because of this algae. I also use KZ coral snow to help clean up the water. I've dosed small amounts of K, K-iodide weekly and once I used an iron supplement (another possible contributing factor). Running GFO (switched to zeovit rocks today) and a vertex in-70 skimmer. Nova extreme pro 6 bulb fixture with 2 month old non coralife bulbs.

The algae that is growing is a mix of normal filamentous green and some other paler stuff that could be a version of cyano or blue green algae. This is the stuff I'm more worried about as it grows very quickly and is starting to coat some rocks. It will also grow on the glass quickly if I don't clean it off. Very fine looking when it starts, the water movement makes it move in waves. Apart from looking like a$$ this is really starting to worry me due to the fish loss.

My hypothesis is this: the GFO is getting a bit old and due to be changed, this combined with the power outage and no circulation for a few hours caused whatever was in the tank already to explode. Contained in this growth is one or more noxious species resulting in the death of herbivores. I just lost a small crab this morning, and perhaps a snail or two the past week. A few others seem to be doing fine. The corals as well are growing like crazy and seem to have not suffered. One thing I did notice is an airstone I was using in the sump has a wire running in the tube to make it easier to put where you want it. This was starting to get a bit rusty perhaps adding more iron into the system.

Taking most of the rocks out to manually scrub isn't possible due to the coral growth. I'm kind of at a loss, should I wait it out, continue scraping and changing the filter sock daily, get algaefix or.....?

IMO you are dosing far too many things into your tank and it is overstocked--three tangs in a 55 gal is way over stocked--being cramped a host of internal stress things can be going on with those tangs causing there demise

If you are dosing vodka and vinegar are you keeping track of the nitrates. If nitrates are not a problem then IMO you do not need to dose with vodka--it can cause more problems then it is worth to do so.

Did you do a 30 per cent water change after the incident and run carbon.
Its the oldest trick in the book but probably your best defense.

since you have lost that many fish in that tank then I would recommend two 30 per cent water changes--dump the phosban out of the reactor and run carbon in there in its place.

[ssublime1]

Sorry I should have clarified. The 3 tangs were never in there at once. The unicorn was in there basically since the tank was started. It was relatively small and the plan was to release it back into the ocean when it started getting a bit bigger. There's no way I could keep even a half grown one in there. It was the first to die, this was before the power outage. A few days later I added 2 small sailfins and the blenny to help with the algae the unicorn had previously taken care of. The highest stocking level has been 6 small fish.

I agree the sailfins could have easily succumbed to any number of things, They were doing well until the power outage, then quickly became covered in ick or fungus the next day. A couple days later they were making sweet love to the power head intakes. I found and removed them not long after they died. 2 days after that the blenny was toast. I would think if water quality was the sole reason, the wrasses would be done and the corals would show signs of distress also(?)

Reading through the last post, I do believe dosing too many things is probably a part of it. However I used very small doses for the most part and observed the effects for a week before adding anything new. I did up the dose of vodka recently which in hindsight was not a wise decision since I was already at low levels of Nitrate and PO4. I never went over .6ml a day. I usually did .2 -.4 ml.

I keep constant track of the parameters, testing a few times a week. I just tested about an hour ago.
Nitrates - 0
Phosphates undetectable (but using API test so who knows, at least it didn't show any color change)
DKH - 8
PH - 8.04 presently
Salinity - 52.7

-So plan of attack:
-Stop dosing anything
-Run carbon
-Maybe lights out for 3 days. When doing this does it need to be covered as well? Detrimental to the coral which is my main focus of the tank?
Will running only 2 actinics achieve results? Or complete blackout?
-When and if the algae dies off, presuming wrasses are still alive, try adding another herbivore to see if it croaks quickly.

Also thank you for the replies. It goes a long was towards helping the situation out.

[nikon187]

Never, EVER , release things from your tank into the oceans. Our tanks can contain things that can destroy our oceans not to mention our fish won't stand a chance when compared to things that have HAD to survive or get eaten by other predators. Think of the lionfish problem in Flordia or the Calupura problem in California.

[ssublime1]

The unicorn was collected from a tide pool in front of my house and was going back to the same spot once it grew a bit. I never see them in the low tide pools but somehow he got stuck in a quickly evaporating puddle, in bad shape when I found him. Nursed him back to health and was doing very well in the tank which makes it more annoying to lose him. I would never release anything not native to the area as I am from Florida and have seen what introduced species do to native wildlife.

I live on a small tropical island surrounded by reefs. Makes it easy to see what the fish and coral are supposed to look like. ;)