HELP!! ALL of my fish suddenly died!

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Ferdy

Aquarium Advice Newbie
Joined
Dec 1, 2013
Messages
7
I sincerely hope someone can help me figure out what has happened to my tank. I have a 75 gallon with a Fluval 406 canister filter and a Coralife skimmer. Last Sunday (a week ago today), I noticed that all of my fish went VERY suddenly lethargic, staying in one spot near the bottom and not acting normally. They were all fine earlier that same day, eating, grazing on the rocks and their normal happy selves. I immediately knew SOMETHING was wrong, so I ran a full test of the water, suspecting that some parameter was amiss. To my surprise, all tests came back completely normal...SG 1.024, 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 5 or less nitrates, pH 8.2, Kh 10, phosphates near zero, calcium 440. But just to try to be safe, I put fresh carbon in the filter, added a couple of bags of Purigen, and changed 10% of the water and went to bed hoping the fish would be OK. But it was not to be...the next morning they looked even worse, so I changed the carbon again, did a 40% water change, checked water chemistry again with the same good results. No improvement by the end of the day, but hoped for the best the next morning. This time, several of the fish had died during the night, and ALL of the rest of them were dead by the end of the day. An examination of the fish showed nothing unusual...with the possible exception of maybe a bit of "mistiness" on a couple of them...

I lost a yellow tang, flame angel, purple firefish goby, a 6 line wrasse, a clown and my beautiful mandarin goby...everything.

Here is the strange thing, however...I have about 50 lbs of live rock, 2 inches of Bahama live sand, a curly anemone, 2 cleaner shrimp, 1 red fire shrimp, an arrow and emerald crab, a sand sifting starfish and some softie corals...ALL of which were unaffected by this disaster...very peculiar to me, because the inverts are usually the first to go when something goes wrong, but they are all alive and thriving here a week later.

On Friday, I visited the LFS with a water sample and hopefully for some advice as to what could possibly have happened in such a short period of time...I even brought the deceased fish with me (I had frozen them for inspection), and the LFS owner could not detect anything at all wrong with the fish OR the water. At this point the tank had been barren of fish for 3 days, so he suggested to try a couple of tough damsels to see if they would get sick and die as well. So they were added to the tank Friday...one died today with the exact same symptoms and I expect the other to be dead by morning.

What could possibly be wrong with my tank? Why would ALL of the fish die and NONE of the corals or inverts? And even scarier, whatever is causing this is still there, but can't be identified?

I PRAY someone can help...please ask any questions that would be pertinent to helping me solve this mystery. I am sick to death and totally depressed over losing all of my fish and no answers as to why :(
 
I know this may sound amateur, I hear these tragic stories time and time again and all I can think is it has has to be some outside pollution, whether it be a cleaning product, insecticide on a w/c hose or some contaminate in the air. Think outside the box, literally..
 
If the inverts and coral are doing fine, then it was more likely a disease or parasite, but went pretty quick...more likely they were sick for awhile.
 
I know this may sound amateur, I hear these tragic stories time and time again and all I can think is it has has to be some outside pollution, whether it be a cleaning product, insecticide on a w/c hose or some contaminate in the air. Think outside the box, literally..

The LFS guy asked the same question...especially about air fresheners, which I don't use. But what really puzzled him is how the super sensitive inverts could survive whatever is in there and not the fish :(
 
If the inverts and coral are doing fine, then it was more likely a disease or parasite, but went pretty quick...more likely they were sick for awhile.

I wonder how long I should let the tank be barren of fish before I try again? Or should I treat it with something like Pimafix or Melafix in the meantime?
 
I wish I had an answer for you, best if luck! I hope to hear good news soon:)
 
I know with Ich it's 6 weeks.

Yes, thank you. But I'm certain it's not Ich...there were no signs of spots on the fish..and these 2 new damsels either...I don't think if it were Ich that it would kill them in less than 2 days anyway, right?
 
It could of been marine velvet. I know it can kill a tank very quickly.
 
I think bribo may be right, marine velvet is theonly thing I can think of that can kill so quickly. I think I mayhave had it a few years ago when I lost everything in my tank as well. It also left a hie to the fish, almost a milky or shiny sheen.

Really sorry for your losses, I know how you feel. :-(

I would look into velvet and see what the timeframe is for restocking and/or treatment/
 
It could of been marine velvet. I know it can kill a tank very quickly.

Thank you for that possibility. I have Googled marine velvet, and looked at some of the photos of infected fish...and I think you have found the answer. Soon after I introduced the damsels Friday, Saturday (yesterday) the blue damsel appeared to be coated in a film much like the photos show. That would explain the "mistiness" that I described in my OP. I further read that the only known treatment is copper, which is out of the question because of my inverts. Now I just need to find out the life cycle of the organism to determine how long to leave the tank barren of fish to eliminate it. Any suggestions? A week? 2 weeks? A month? (or longer?)
 
I am now CERTAIN that is was marine velvet that wiped out my tank. I looked up microscopic images of the parasite, and that is exactly what is in my tank. My only option is to leave the tank "fallow" of fish, from the best information I can find, for 6 to 8 weeks. But one question remains...and I have Googled, Binged, Yahooed, and any other search engine you can name...that question being...can my inverts (shrimp, crabs, snails and anemone) harbor the parasite? I have not found a definitive answer to that question anywhere. Perhaps, I'm HOPING and PRAYING, that someone might know the answer to this question...if the answer is yes they can, I will have to go to a LOT of trouble and expense to move and save them and rid my DT of the parasite with copper or a complete bleaching....:(:nono:
 
If the inverts and coral are doing fine, then it was more likely a disease or parasite, but went pretty quick...more likely they were sick for awhile.

My only issue with the marine velvet diagnosis is that it killed new fish within a day. I've never experienced velvet first hand but that seems like an insanely fast mortality rate for a healthy fish that was just introduced to a tank.

However the inverts and coral aren't hosts to velvet so a long fallow period should work for you. I might even be inclined to wait as long as 9 weeks just to be absolutely sure that none remains left behind.
 
I had the same issue with velvet. took out every fish I had within 24 hours. The yellow tang and pink spotted goby were the only survivors. Its a nasty fast acting disease. Thats the only thing that could have killed all my fish in such a short amount of time, I have wondered on and off over the last couple years if velvet was the culprit and it most likely was.

I left inverts in that tank and they were fine. I let my tank sit for about 2 months before I added anything again and havent had any similar issues since.
 
Yes, from studying articles about it, it is an insidious and fast acting disease...and even if you notice and diagnose it in time, from what I've read it's already too late. Plus it's nearly impossible to treat it if there are inverts present. So just about your only choice is to wait it out without fish....Thank you!
 
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