All Fish dead within 48hrs

[KrisReef]

All LPS and one Acropora and one T. Derasa clam.

I feed live and dead phytoplankton and other liquid foods to keep coral and clams well fed.
I have started target feeding LPS since I also have zero fish in my reef. It’s a bit easier to keep nutrients in check than with fish in the tank.

 

[slingfox]

Thanks Nano! I will now look into a small quarantine setup from my local Petco. You and the others have been a big help! I will not lie though. While I will absolutely wait 60+ days before adding any fish, but I'm already researching appropriate nano tank fish and feel some level of excitement. What a hobby!

If you have room then you may want to get a 10g quarantine tank since it is only a little bit more expensive than a 5g tank. My setup is as follows:

-10g tank from Petco
-Tidal 55 for filtration: I purposely bought oversized since It provides great flow and aeration. The higher water turnover keeps the tank clean. The larger sized unit also has a lot of room to stuff full of aquarium sponge which is helpful for biofiltration.
- Layers of black aquarium foam sponge cut to size is what I fill the Tidal 55 filter chamber eith. Bought from Amazon or local Petco I can't remember.
-Cheap heater from Amazon
-Cheap small powerhead from Amazon that blows along bottom of aquarium to ensure no food sits there
-Cheap auto feeder
- For lid I bought some clear acrylic sheets on Amazon and cut some openings for the equipment using a box cutter.

Put the layers of aquarium sponge in your display tank for several weeks to get it seeded with biofilm/beneficial bacteria.

When the QT tank is not in use I have the sponge sitting in a small 1 gallon bucket in my garage with seran wrap on top to prevent evaporation. The bacteria lives like that just fine it seems---I have taken my QT tank offline and online 4 times in the last 9 months without issue.

During quarantine, I do a large water change when every few days or at least once a week depending on bioload and how the water looks. I use an Ammonia Alert badge to help monitor ammonia levels during quarantine.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

You should not need to do anything with ammonia, etc. In the absence of ammonia autotrophs can 'go dormant'. In any case, Any feeding you would do for the corals will be enough. I would NOT add ammonia. If your testing shows that your PO4 or nitrates are dropping, that can be added - however, you should not need to do that. What kind of corals do you have?

I agree whole heartedly! Nitrifiers can live for weeks/months without external feeding, and then come right back once a nitrogen source (within reason) is returned to the system.

For new systems, I will sometimes advocate for "ghost feeding" while a tank is fishless, but in most cases, that isn't required.

 

[dochoot]

I let my new water

Thank you, thank you. I will look to my local stores first and also search out online vendors. Question: fellow reefer Formulator mentioned the possibility of something toxic got into my tank. Would a Triton ICP test be something to consider? Besides a few frags I recently added to the tank, I did start dosing Kalkwasser to elevate my pH. Maybe I accidentally made it too concentrated. But that seems unlikely given my water parameters are decent. One more thing worth mentioning is that right before the fish all died, I performed a 20% water change using a brand new batch of Tropic Marin Pro Reef. Could I have a contaminated batch? Then there's Velvet, which Jay mentioned. It's frustrating not knowing the cause. I even checked the tank components for errant electrical current.

Lastly, I do not have a quarantine tank. It would probably be another big expense, but it certainly would be prudent and handy.

Thanks again for all the help I've received.

Fairly certain, I killed some fish as I did not mix new water thoroughly.