What killed my green wrasse?

[timbo227]

I just inherited a 29 gal biocube from a friend who was unable to care for it due to shitty life circumstances. So I now have a 3 year old established tank and am trying to learn as quickly as I can - your patience and help is much appreciate! Anyway, I moved the tank, and everything was going fine for the first couple days, then we go away overnight for xmas and come back to find my green wrasse is dead.

Just tested:

Ph - 8
Nitrite - ~.005 to .01
Nitrate - 2
Alkalinity - 3

Octospawn - looking pretty retracted
Mushroom coral colony - never looked happier
Frogspawn - looks pretty extended
Flowerpot - also happy

Also in tank are a cleaner shrimp, emerald crab, and clean up crew. Tried to introduce new snails but 2 margarita and 1 nassarius snail got murdered and eaten during the night. I followed directions from the internet and fed the wrasse 2 times in the 4 days I had him (dry fish pellets)... he was picking at the inverts before I left... Now I am feeling guilty that I starved him to death. There is a little brown film (diatoms?) on the rocks and in a dead zone in the tanks flow.

2 questions:
1) Any idea what may have killed my wrasse?
2) I know my parameters are off. How worried should I be, and what should I do?

[bertoni]

Did you check the ammonia level? I suspect it was zero, but ammonia is toxic. The other levels are safe, assuming that alkalinity is in meq/L. The fish won't care about alkalinity much, in any case, though. Nitrite and nitrate are fine for fish even at higher levels. Lots of fish-only tanks run over 100 ppm nitrate. Nitrite will be toxic at much lower levels, but still significantly higher than the level you report.

I doubt that the animal starved to death. That's very unlikely. Fish in captivity generally get a lot more food than they do in nature, and two meals in four days would be plenty, most likely. I have no idea what killed the animal. There might have been some stress from the move, or something in the live rock might have created an ammonia spike, although that'd be more likely if the timing were closer to the move date.

[timbo227]

Thanks for the feedback. Just checked Ammonia and it is zero. The wrasse did bury himself every night to sleep... Do you think this plus the move might have cause a spike?

Nitrite will be toxic at much lower levels, but still significantly higher than the level you report.

Should I be worried about the nitrate/nitrite levels with my LPS?

[bertoni]

The corals should be safe with that level of nitrite and nitrate, but they might get a bit brown, depending on a lot of factors. I wouldn't worry.

If the nitrite drops back to zero in a day or so, I would guess that there was an ammonia spike. Whether that was due to the dead fish or the ammonia came from something else, I can't do more than guess.