Help! Fish Dead...

[Walpurgis]

Hello, I just found this great community and am looking forward to reading more of your great comments.

We have an established tank, it's about 3 years old. Yesterday when my husband came home from work, he found that all of our fish had died. The night before they were fine, i was watching them for quite a while. That morning my husband checked them (and the water level) and everything was fine. We just don't know what happened. I checked the water conditions, and even with the fish dying in it, the only things that were off was that the ph was 8.6 and calcium was 600ppm. We try to keep the ph at 8.3 and the calcium at around 460ppm's. The only thing that has changed recently is we put in a new ro filter, but we have checked it several times and the water tests fine.

We are just at a loss, we had about 9 fish in there, with some of the tangs pretty good size. We had 4 tangs, 1 clown, 2 anthais, 1 damsel, 1 golden hamlet. None of the corals are affected and neither are the snails and crabs, they all seem fine. We have been doing water changes about weekly for a while to try to fight nitrates, which are not out of the world but higher than we would like.

Does anyone have any idea what we could have done wrong. We are going to try again and don't want to make the same mistake again.

Thank you and look forward to joining your community,
Mary

 

[Fluff]

Wow, sorry for your loss. I would think some type of contaminant but if your corals are fine, that seems unlikely. I'm sure someone will be by with more ideas.
Welcome to AA

 

[srgetz]

Wow 8O sorry to hear of your losses, that is really awful. I would definately look at contaminants or even possibly an electrical discharge. You may want to get a grounding probe and run the tank to see if it "shorts". I don't know of a biological disease that would cause an overnight total loss with no prior symptoms. Could there have been a power outage or heater stuck on? That shouldn't have done this overnight though. Something severe definately happened, hopefully you will find out what...

 

[NewFishGuy]

So sorry for your loss. The unknown is a terrible part of it.

Welsome to AA....wish it were under better circumstances.

 

[Walpurgis]

Thank you Everyone for the warm welcome's!!

Just a little more info: We do have a grounding probe in the sump, so i don't think that could be it, but and this is a big but - my husband and I both heard one of the power heads made a clicking sound whenever it came on that morning. When my husband called our local fish experts, they said that if it shorted out that it wouldn't hurt the fish, cause they can't be used as a ground. There was also only about a 6 hour window during the day yesterday that anything could have happened, as my husband worked from home for a couple of hours in the morning. If the power had surged or gone out, we had no other signs as the clocks weren't mess up or anything. As for the heater, that was my first question to my husband, as his also, and no the tank was right at 79 degrees. My son had a 55 gal tank that the heater got stuck on and he lost several fish due to this.

I just don't know.....one thought, maybe someone will know if this can happened. Our fish tank is in our family room which the kitchen overlooks. We have an eat-in-kitchen, which is on the opposite side of the room from the fish tank. Sunday, i took the wallpaper down from under the chair rail and painted that area only. It's only about 3 square feet of total space, could that have caused it? My husband and i just can't believe that little amount of paint so far from the tank - it's about 15 feet away, could have caused it but we have never painted in the house before and would it have taken 36 hours...what do y'all think?

 

[Fluff]

Well, I doubt it was the paint. I recently painted my fish room and it didn't have any adverse effects on any of my tanks. :?

 

[NewFishGuy]

Same here. I just painted my entire house and my tank is only 10 gal. The only thing that bothered the fish was moving the tank away from the wall enough to get behind it.

 

[Walpurgis]

Whew!! that's a relief! I have been sick thinking i killed them.....well, still no idea then.

Thanks for your help!!

 

[steve-s]

Do you have a sea cucumber or sea apple in the tank?

Cheers
Steve

 

[melosu58]

Still I would not rule paint fumes out. I think ventilation might have helped. Did you have windows open. Also have you sprayed furniture polish or glass cleaner in this room. Just some ideas. Sorry about the loss.

 

[Walpurgis]

No sea cucumber or sea apple. As far as ventilation, my back door was part way open, of course that is right next to the tank. We did do some cleaning in the family room where the tank is, so furniture polish - yes (but we have done this like a thousand times before) and glass cleaner - no not in that room but yes in the kitchen.

thank you everyone for all your comments / help.

One more question for everyone: What would you suggest we do now. We have several corals that seem to be fine and we have critters still in the tank, should we totally take all the water out of the tank, thus having to find a home for the corals till the tank re-establishes it self or should we do a lot of mini water changes. With not knowing what caused it, we really don't know what to do. Right now it is a mess cause we had to dig around all the rocks to get the dead fish out.
So starting over wouldn't be hard.

thanks again!!

 

[dralarms]

Sorry for your loss. But I also want to welcome you to AA.. I woudl check the stray elec. idea again, it seems to be happening more and more. You said you have your grounding probe in the sump, is that where ALL devices that carry elec. are at or do you have some powerheads, ETC in the main? I think you would need a grounding probe in both.

 

[steve-s]

Water changes and carbon use would eliminate any possible water contaminant. As far as the electric shock, if it was strong enough to kill the fish you would have also lost some corals and the coralline algae on the rock would be bleaching. I doubt that's your cause either.

Cheers
Steve

 

[Walpurgis]

well little did i know that we *did* have a sea cucumber in our tank (we can't find him now and that wasn't what he was called when we got him, but that is what he is). So we think he must have died and released a toxin in the water that killed every one of our fish, or at least that is what the LFS is telling us. We had no idea that he was toxic or we wouldn't have put him in the tank, that is why we didn't have a puffer (as much as i like them, just too risky). So i think the mystery is solved, at least that makes sense. << deep breath>> time to start over again...

Thanks again for everyone's help!