Mass Death, Help!!

[Kenny Suttles]

Yesterday I mysteriously lost 4 fish within 12 hours of each other:

• fox face
• Blue tang
• Yellow tang
• Coral beauty

The tank:

• 180 gallons
• Established 1 year ago
• Has various sps and a red bubble tip anemone
• Fish that survived: purple tang, flame hawk, engineer goby, 8 blue springer damsels, 2 clowns, 4 shrimp and 2 star fish
• Sump setup with a Refugium and carbon reactor, 2 maxspect gyres
• Reef octopus skimmer
• 3 ai hydra 26 Lights

The situation:


Everything was completely normal until Saturday morning when I found Fox face dead. No apparent reason. Blue tang was hiding in some rocks and didn’t look good. A couple hours later he turned up dead. Other fish looked fine. Couple hours later coral beauty croaks, followed a few hours later by yellow tang. All these fish were FINE the night before.


Recent Activity:

• 1 week prior I added hakari discus cubes to my hikari mega marine algae and brine shrimp cubes. I feed a total of 3 cubes once per day and half a sheet of algae
• 1 week prior, and at the suggestion of my tank cleaner guy from LFS, I setup my carbon reactor and got it going again... I hadn’t been using it for a while. He said corals looked stressed so he suggested the carbon.

Things ruled out:

• I took the water to the LFS the day of the event and everything tested fine
• Heater didn’t break and fry the fish
• I used a multimeter to test for an electric current in the tank... nothing.
• All the filtration and pumps have been running fine the whole time.

Crazy thoughts:

• My wife left the back door open a day or two before the event and a lot of bugs (gnats, flies, mosquitoes) flew in. They are always drawn to the fish tank lights and end up in the canopy. Could some toxic bug have fallen in and been eaten?
• Could the fish food have been bad? Spoiled, infected with something?
• My tank cleaner guy added a bunch of alkalinity booster a week before... could that have killed them?

I’m really stumped and worried the mass die-off isn’t over. Would greatly appreciate any help figuring this thing out.

 

[Swoody]

Oh my God, that is a terrible situation and I cannot even imagine that happening to me. Those fish are all large gregarious type of fish and if all were as healthy as stated the night before then you have to rule out a bug being eaten or anything like that. I would be more drawn to some sort of outside chemical being introduced into the water system of the tank. You said that you had your Ella fast test your water? I would think that an 180 gallon tank with them type of fish that you would have every kind of test are known to mankind in your arsenal. But different strokes and I may be wrong maybe you do and just took it to them for a second opinion. I think you need to dig deeper and I certainly wouldn’t think that any kind of mosquito net fly bug or anything would do any damage to your tank matter fact I’d like to see my fish eat some kind of bug flew in there by mistake. I hope you can figure this out and do not lose any more your stock as the remaining fish that you have are also a great selection of fish. Honestly I cannot give you any experienced advice on what more to look for but I do think you have to look deeper into what could’ve caused this and hopefully the rest your fish are healthy and remain so.

 

[Humblefish]

Could be something environmental (like a toxin in the water), or a fast killing disease such as velvet: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/velvet-amyloodinium-ocellatum.217570/

Was the carbon reactor still online when all the deaths occurred? Carbon should have pulled any toxins out of the water. Also, your corals/inverts should have been negatively impacted as well if it were a toxin.

Observe your surviving fish closely for these key behavioral symptoms of velvet:

• Heavy breathing, scratching, flashing, head twitching, yawning, erratic swimming behavior (unfortunately velvet shares all these same symptoms with ich & gill flukes.)
• Swimming into the flow of a powerhead (unique to velvet).
• Acting reclusive (velvet causes fish to be sensitive to light).

 

[Kenny Suttles]

Could be something environmental (like a toxin in the water), or a fast killing disease such as velvet: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/velvet-amyloodinium-ocellatum.217570/

Was the carbon reactor still online when all the deaths occurred? Carbon should have pulled any toxins out of the water. Also, your corals/inverts should have been negatively impacted as well if it were a toxin.

Observe your surviving fish closely for these key behavioral symptoms of velvet:

• Heavy breathing, scratching, flashing, head twitching, yawning, erratic swimming behavior (unfortunately velvet shares all these same symptoms with ich & gill flukes.)
• Swimming into the flow of a powerhead (unique to velvet).
• Acting reclusive (velvet causes fish to be sensitive to light).

I’ve examined each dead fish closely and none of them have had any white spots at all. Sincere thanks for the response but the evidence doesn’t support velvet or ich, unless it killed before becoming visibly apparent. Also, wouldn’t one of those diseases be highly improbable given there have been no new animals introduced, other than snails, in many months?

 

[Kenny Suttles]

Could be something environmental (like a toxin in the water), or a fast killing disease such as velvet: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/velvet-amyloodinium-ocellatum.217570/

Was the carbon reactor still online when all the deaths occurred? Carbon should have pulled any toxins out of the water. Also, your corals/inverts should have been negatively impacted as well if it were a toxin.

Observe your surviving fish closely for these key behavioral symptoms of velvet:

• Heavy breathing, scratching, flashing, head twitching, yawning, erratic swimming behavior (unfortunately velvet shares all these same symptoms with ich & gill flukes.)
• Swimming into the flow of a powerhead (unique to velvet).
• Acting reclusive (velvet causes fish to be sensitive to light).

Oh, and yes the carbon reactor was on during this whole event

 

[HotRocks]

I’ve examined each dead fish closely and none of them have had any white spots at all. Sincere thanks for the response but the evidence doesn’t support velvet or ich, unless it killed before becoming visibly apparent. Also, wouldn’t one of those diseases be highly improbable given there have been no new animals introduced, other than snails, in many months?

How recently were the snails added? If they came from an "infected" system it's very possibly the culprit.

Velvet is known to Wipeout an entire tank before any visual symptoms are noticed.

I am sorry you are dealing with this.

 

[Kenny Suttles]

How recently were the snails added? If they came from an "infected" system it's very possibly the culprit.

Velvet is known to Wipeout an entire tank before any visual symptoms are noticed.

I am sorry you are dealing with this.

Tank cleaner guy added more snails about 10 days prior to the die off. Could it have taken that long for the infectious disease to activate and then kill 4 fish in such a short window of time?

 

[HotRocks]

If there were tomonts encysted upon the snails shells they could have started releasing free swimmers as soon as they hit your tank.

 

[HB AL]

It's possible but you would have at least seen some visible signs on the fish of velvet if it had progressed to the point of killing all those fish. Is it possible you really didn't look at the fish all that much a few days leading up to there deaths? I would look closely at all the remaining fish and see if you spot something, no pun intended.