Dr. Randy (and anyone else) --dosing and fish death

beaslbob · Nov 19, 2015

Dr. Randy:

Wife's tank (60g) just had a yellow tang die. Tank has been setup for about 3-4 month. Small amount of very slow growing chaeto with skimmer upstream of the chaeto. Tang died with its mouth open.
A month ago we added 3 RBTA's gave two away and now have 4 LOL. Tank has had cloudy issues which does lessen with no lights but never cleared up. It did clear up with a vortex diatom xl filter in a few hours. ( I know I know old school. LOL)
ammonia is 0 on seachem ammonia dot ph 8.1, calcium 400, alk 9dkh, mag 1400.
cleaner shrimp just molted.

about a week before the tang's death the wife started dosing nopox which I understand is a methanol/acetic acid mixture. capful per day or two.

IMHO we have several things going on with this new tank all of which are related to the wife's desire to not use "unproven experimental" beaslbob methods.

I was curious if that type of dosing would reduce the amount of oxygen?

TIA

Randy Holmes-Farley · Nov 19, 2015

Yes, organic carbon dosing can reduce O2, but many people do it and I've never seen anyone attribute a fish death to it.
How much did you dose to what size tank?

zzzdiver · Nov 20, 2015

Who much NOPOX? ml ? I dose this in my 100 gal and the max I've ever use in 24 hrs use 5 ml the caps are huge

zzzdiver · Nov 20, 2015

Couple things, NOPOX has proved to work very well in my system with holding no3 @ zero (red sea pro test)and po4 (.02) Hanna checker. Other then live rock and skimming I use nothing else to help keep those numbers in check. If your going to continue to use carbon dosing start off in 1/4 to 1/2 the recommended dose and move up slowly over weeks and even month till you get the no3 and po4 where you want it. My system is feed heavily with dry/ frozen foods for the fish (youngest one is three years old) along with lps/sps, zoa and mushrooms and one big rainbow bubble tip, if you would like tell us more about your set up we can help with the cloudy issues.

beaslbob · Nov 20, 2015

Randy Holmes-Farley said:
Yes, organic carbon dosing can reduce O2, but many people do it and I've never seen anyone attribute a fish death to it.
How much did you dose to what size tank?

Thanks

it was a capful (per day) for a 60g tank. Wife had dosed 2-4 days or so.

beaslbob · Nov 20, 2015

and again thanks Dr. Randy.

I suspect that wife added too many fish too soon and that is the overriding problem

She also didn't trust the unproven and experimental beaslbob methods, so has live rock, live sand, skimmer, 20g tank sump with very very little marco (chaeto) which is taking a month to grow 50%.

At my suggestion she (with my help acclimating) put in 5 male mollies kinda as canaries in the coal mine to see what happens. It's the first day for the mollies and one died overnight.

I think we basically have to let things balance out and mature.