4 day span, all fish dead! What happened?

[cmoore1167]

Had a cycled 45 gal tank around 2 months old with 4 hermits, 1 turbo snail, 2 banggai cardinals, and a cleaner shrimp.

Everything was healthy and added a pink spotted watchman goby, 6 line wrasse, and frogspawn coral. 2 weeks go by and everyone is eating and no signs of stress. nitrates were up to 10 to 20 ppm. had a refugium with small chaetomorpha but not growing due to light used.

Changed light, chaeto started growing, nitrates down to 0 along with ammonia and nitrite, ppH- 8.2 to 8.4, calcium 830, alk a little low at just under 7, mag at 1300, temp at 79.

Day later wrasse died with out much warning. day after that goby stopped eating, started hiding, slow deep breaths, loss of color, no white spots. day later, one cardinal dies that was healthy and just ate. day later next cardinal dies same thing. same day goby dies. coral, crabs, shrimp, snail all perfect.

What happened? what do I do next?

 

[Denisk]

Usually death that quickly I would think made some of the fish got aggressive and a fish broke out in velvet. I know you didn’t see any signs of it but not always is it so quick to appear on a fish.

Did you quarantine the fish?

 

[Christoph]

started hiding, slow deep breaths

Sorry for your losses! I once had a very mysterious fish killer in my tank, and "slow deep breaths" reminds me very much of it. - This is very untypical for parasitic disease such as velvet where usually fast breathing is observed. In my case i think it was due to Pyrethroid poisoning, an insecticide common in many bug sprays. I had plants treated with pyrethroid in the same room as the fish tank. The plants were treated weeks before they were moved into the fish room. After removing the plants no more mysterious deaths occured. Maybe this helps.

All the best,
Christoph

 

[cmoore1167]

There had been a few stink bugs and lady bugs getting inside here and there. maybe they introduced some type of pesticide. if so though I'd imagine all inhabitants would be affected especially the coral.

reading up a little on marine velvet and that does sound like a possibility. they state that it a lot of times dies not show outside symptoms, can spread through entire tank, and affect the gills of fish.

 

[cmoore1167]

Oh and no I did not quarantine... fish appeared pretty healthy. rookie mistake I guess lesson learned the hard way. article even said it could take a couple weeks to set in