All fish added are dead within 16 hours! Mysterious.

[Oldtimer]

Looking for some input here. For details about my system, read the following thread which discusses a suspected Redox issue which was initially suspected to possibly be causing my SPS to bleach and lose tissue in some cases. Long story short - I believe the probe is defective as I've compared it to a Hanna meter which shows 320mv.

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1924125

So, my corals seemed to have been suffering from lack of nutrients since my fuge/DSB and skimmer are so efficient and I wasn't feeding much. Corals are beginning to perk up after a few days of feeding Aminos and Zooplanktos-L. I had to frag a few, but hoping for the best. With that intro out of the way, here is my fish issue...

I had a power outage the other day that only lasted a couple hours, but started with massive surging which caused the lights to pulsate like lightning. Hence, my chromis and Sailfin tang freaked out and were breathing heavily. They all ended up dead the next day. I double checked parameters and all were in check. NH3, N02, N03, P04 all read zero. pH has been 8.2-8.4. Alk is in the 9's and Ca around 420+. Mg in the 1300 range. Temp is always within 25.4 to 26.4 C. Salinity around 34-35ppt. I have double/triple checked many of these params with different test kits and probes so there should be no false readings.

So, I figured my tank was fine and picked up a few fish yesterday from my trusted LFS... 4 chromis, 1 yellow watchman goby, 1 chalk basslet. I acclimated as usual... float 15-20 min bag unopened, open bag and add about 1/2 cup or less of water from the tank along with a couple drops of prime and then continue adding ~1/2 cup water every 5 minutes for about 30 minutes or less. Then empty the bag into a bowl with a colander, remove the colander with the fish and place into the tank so they can swim out. Everyone seemed OK at first although a little stressed. The watchman started swimming up and down the corner of the tank and that caught my eye. I then noticed one of the chromis started to hover a bit and appear to be rapid breathing. This was happening within a couple hours of adding them. 2 chromis disappeared within 4-5 hours. The 3rd expired overnight and the 4th hung on until late morning. The chalk basslet was breathing rapidly and sitting on the sand all night. He was dead in the morning. The watchman was good until late morning and then laid on his side - didn't appear to be breathing rapidly but perhaps a but heavy.

Now, what the heck is going on here? I have kept many fish in my years and never seen this happen. I have checked for stray voltage and found only 1.5V which I dealt with by adding a Titanium ground probe. Even so, 1.5V AC with no current is nothing. I visually checked my heater for cracks, etc and found none. I have not used any chemicals around the tank - our house is chemical free - we don't even have bleach around here. Vinegar cleans just about everything. I have no metal objects in the tank. My many crabs and snails are doing just fine.

The only thing I can think of is possibly the surging during the power outage opened up a small suction side hole on the sump return pump plumbing and caused some sort of supersaturation to occur. I've only heard that this can lead to death, but never before witnessed it. Thoughts? Other input? I'm really at a loss here.

By the way, I went back to my LFS and checked their tanks salinity, pH, ORP and temp with my refractometer and Hanna probe and found it all to be very close to mine so I don't feel it had anything to do with shock during acclimation. Also, I highly doubt this is parasite related. Prior to the power outage, my Sailfin and chromis were perfectly healthy and showing zero signs of stress or disease.

[Akrite]

My first guess was that there was some electricity in your tank some were and still might be. I've heard of equipment failing after power outages or power surges and shock fish. The 1.5V AC leads me to believe faulty equipment is the culprit.

I don't believe the deaths are parasite related but I must say "You Got To Quarantine Your Fish", especially with a large system. Since you no longer have any fish in your tank you should take the time to setup a QT and treat every new fish with Cupramine for 4-6 weeks and leave your tank fish-less for 8-10 weeks. This will also give you time to find your faulty equipment, my money is on your heater.

Your acclimation process is great but your fish should go into your QT not your DT. Good Luck!

[JHemdal]

Oldtimer,

Air leaks on the suction side of a pump will certainly kill fish fast. You can almost always determine if this was the cause of death by looking at them with a dissecting microscope, or maybe even a magnifying glass. Look for air bubbles in the gills, or thin "silver lines" along the clear portions of the fish's fins. The symptoms are similar to what you noted - rapid breathing, hiding, and sitting on the bottom. Fish tend to go low during these events, because the partial pressure of the gasses is lower near the bottom of the tank. I once had a single fish survive a supersat event by hiding beneath a clam shell.
This is a fairly rare problem though, and I have no experience to tell you how invertebrates react to supersaturation - my normal advice is: if all the fish die, and the invertebrates are fine, it is a fish disease. That said, there is no fish disease that will kill fish in less than 24 hours, unless they were very ill when you bought them. I just don't know if supersaturation would also affect inverts....

Jay

[Oldtimer]

My first guess was that there was some electricity in your tank some were and still might be. I've heard of equipment failing after power outages or power surges and shock fish. The 1.5V AC leads me to believe faulty equipment is the culprit.

I don't believe the deaths are parasite related but I must say "You Got To Quarantine Your Fish", especially with a large system. Since you no longer have any fish in your tank you should take the time to setup a QT and treat every new fish with Cupramine for 4-6 weeks and leave your tank fish-less for 8-10 weeks. This will also give you time to find your faulty equipment, my money is on your heater.

Your acclimation process is great but your fish should go into your QT not your DT. Good Luck!

Thanks for the feedback. I do normally QT, but since I had nothing to lose, I added the last few without QT'ing because I wanted to get some fish poop into my tank, quite frankly. I have a 65 gallon tank in series with my system that I can isolate by closing a ball valve and I keep a sponge filter seeded in my sump at all times so I can simply transfer it to the 65 and then QT. Based on my low nutrient level, I decided fish poop was very much in need and since I had no fish in the system, I skipped the QT. However, now I'm just feeding my clean-up crew and corals.

As for the heater, I don't believe it's to blame. Here's why. The power outage happened around 6pm or so which is when my tank temp peaks (at 26.4 C) and the fan kicks on. It has to drop down to 25.9 before the heater will be switched on. Since I log data through my controller, I can confirm that the tank was in the 26.3 to 26.4 range at the time of the power outage. So, the socket that the heater is plugged into should not have been switched on at that time which means there would be no way for voltage to leak into the system. In any case, I have a spare 400W heater that I will swap in just to eliminate one more potential.

[Oldtimer]

Double post

[Oldtimer]

Oldtimer,

Air leaks on the suction side of a pump will certainly kill fish fast. You can almost always determine if this was the cause of death by looking at them with a dissecting microscope, or maybe even a magnifying glass. Look for air bubbles in the gills, or thin "silver lines" along the clear portions of the fish's fins. The symptoms are similar to what you noted - rapid breathing, hiding, and sitting on the bottom. Fish tend to go low during these events, because the partial pressure of the gasses is lower near the bottom of the tank. I once had a single fish survive a supersat event by hiding beneath a clam shell.
This is a fairly rare problem though, and I have no experience to tell you how invertebrates react to supersaturation - my normal advice is: if all the fish die, and the invertebrates are fine, it is a fish disease. That said, there is no fish disease that will kill fish in less than 24 hours, unless they were very ill when you bought them. I just don't know if supersaturation would also affect inverts....

Jay

Thanks for the reply Jay.

I'm starting to seriously give suspersaturation some serious thought. Here's why: I'm currently watching microbubbles coming out of my return. I had an issue with this when I first set my tank up early this year. It dissapeared over time, but I did put some petroleum jelly around the PVC connections on the inlet side of the return pump (Sequence Dart Gold). This can help seal microleaks. I'm not sure where they are coming from exactly, but I'm going to give this some attention now. It's possible that the power outage caused some cycling of the pump which opened up a small microleak on the suction side.

Inverts are still foraging and looking healthy so I agree that this does not seem to be disease related especially considering the fish died so quickly.

Andy