Double death - any ideas?

[miniwhinny]

My son has two young Lions - a Radiata and a Fuzzy. Yesterday am he fed them both a coupe of ghost shrimp each (he's training them to frozen) and left for the day. When he got home last night BOTH Lions were dead! Other fish are fine, corals and inverts are all fine, tank params are all where they should be.

Apart from the ghost shrimp being exposed to something toxic before he got them I can't think why two previously healthy lionfish would both die at the same time while everything else is happy and healthy?

Any ideas?

[ginger7286]

Where did he catch the shrimp? Toxicity could be the problem. Just out of curiousity what are the H2O params? Getting things out of the Ocean (unless you go further out) can be hazardous. Fuel, and other contaminents sometimes wash to the shore where nature skims them out. The closer to shore you get things including the water the more risk you take.

[Daniel Reef]

You may want to post more info like, how long has he had them, did he QT, what are the actual parameters, what are the tank mates, lighting, etc. That way RC folks can help.

[SecretiveFish]

First off, I am very sorry about your fish.

What was the appearance of the bodies? Did they look 'healthy' or was there some visible maladies? How long have you had the fish? Where did you get them from? What was the source you got the lion fish from feeding them (i.e. feeding them goldfish?) How has your son been feeding the ghost shrimp? For instance, I suspect that I gave my angler fish ick from pouring (!) a bag of ghost shrimp from Petsmart in his tank with all of the water.

[miniwhinny]

I'll try to answer all of the questions.

He's had the Radiata for about 3 months (it's baby about 2 inches long) and the fuzzy dwarf for one month. He purchased them from the same source (his local LFS) who quarantines for 2 weeks.

He purchased the ghost shrimp from the same LFS.

In the tank along with the lions are a chromis, 2 emerald crabs, a pom pom crab, various snails and hermits. Acans, frogspwan, GSP, zoas, galaxia...not sure what else.

I can't tell you what he params are except when he called me last night he said ran tests on everything and things were normal.

The previous day and yesterday morning both lions were active, full finned and hungry.

It seems so odd that both ate ghost shrimp that morning and both fish died while eveything else in the tank is fine.

I'm not sure what size his tank is (he's at college) but lighting is a combo of T5's and LED's. He runs carbon and filter floss and does regular maintenance each weekend.

I felt really bad for him - he is a volunteer diver at the Oregon Aquarium and said after spending the day cleaning 20,000 gallon shark tanks he was looking forward to coming home to his little box of water - he really loves these fish :(