Box Fish released poison and killed all my fish

[oneilwiz]

Today is a very sad day for my wife and I , we lost all our we had for over 2 yrs ( blue hippo tang, yellow tang, one clown fish, royal gramma and box fish). I am not sure if the wrasse is dead but only one fish left. I just came back from Miami only to turn my lights on and see disaster. I checked on them last night and they seemed fine as I have a webcam. I should have taken more pre cautions against Box Fish, but no one to blame but my self.

[Nina51]

how awful for you guys! so sorry to read this. :(

[slief]

I'm very sorry to hear this. How big is your tank and how long have you had your box? How big was he? I did a search on your threads and if your tank is a 75G, I'd be really surprised if you box fish is the cause of this. The only way I could see this happening is if he got caught in a powerhead. It's not like you have a bunch of aggressive fish that would stress it and give it reason to release it's toxins. That would only happen if it is really stressed and cases of box fish nuking tanks are very rare. One thing I will note is that a 75G tank is border line on being too small for a box fish.


Having said that, I've kept cowfish for years which are toxic just like the boxfish. I've never once had an issue with them poisoning any of my tanks. Even when they perished, I had no issues. As such, I would be less inclined to point fingers at your box fish so quickly and would be looking at other potential sources such as a heater malfunction, chiller failure, electrical issue, power outage, O2 issue, crash etc. I could be wrong but like I said, cases like yours are very rare if in fact the box is the culprit.

[AcroporAddict]

I have an Aussie sea apple in my smaller reef, so I try to monitor it to make sure it doesn't deteriorate and poison my tank as well. Sorry for your loss.

[oneilwiz]

@slief thanks for your reply it's definitely the boxer fish I replayed my webcam and it showed he died last night, I just got back from working on a IT project in Miami my tank is a 75G every parameter in the tank is ok, how I know the fish release toxic poison is that my skin was acting crazy with lots of skim

[oneilwiz]

https://vimeo.com/112246003.

My tank last week

[slief]

https://vimeo.com/112246003.

My tank last week

That's a real bummer. That said, that is a rather large boxfish for your tank size. Boxfish only release their toxin when they are really stressed as a defense mechanism. You don't have any aggressive fish in there and something had to really stress him for him to do that or he died first and released the toxin as a result which in turn caused the issue. Really sorry you had to go through that. Your case is a very rare one but then again, when a fish like that dies in a smaller system, the rules of statistics no longer apply. How long did you have him? I assume you have done some large water changes since the casualties?

Again, I'm sorry for your losses.

[oneilwiz]

I did a partial water change last night as well as replaced my chemi pure with new chemi pure blue