Tank Nuked! All Fish Dead

[Gtinnel]

I just want to say sorry for your loss, I unfortunately know how it feels. I had the same thing happen to me when my tank was around 1 year old. All of my fish died within 2 hours and I never found out what caused it. I did the same thing you did and posted about it on R2R and eliminated the same possible reasons that everyone else have already asked.

The only other question that I can think to add is does your skimmer pull in air from outside?

 

[brandon429]

the tank disease never got better since February for the Op

in my opinion that pattern gives the keeper something they can do oppositely next round vs use the same approach

its a direct relay here from the stickies in the fish disease forum…the tank didn’t get better without the preps that forum showing to be required for best chance of success

these are valid prevention details to consider

 

[brandon429]

Also


the folks with shiny reefs who recommend others skip fallow and quarantine and only post pics of their own tanks as the proof are 78% the cause of this loss here.


here’s some tanks building up massive disease but too young to express it yet, check back when the tanks hit eight months

this thread here below is certainly killing fish, it’s just in the prep stages takes a few months to reveal

How to run your new tank without fallow and quarantine, post here for guidance live time, we track your tank out to eight months

So as a part of another post it was suggested that I set up a post for the 'alternate' methods. Gonna tag in @Paul B because he follows this path also and his experience is different from mine. How I 'manage' ... read ignore fish disease. My experience. I will put this out there because I...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[ariellemermaid]

Once again Brandon your posts are not helpful and lack any sense of compassion for a poor guy that just lost all of his fish. This is not a thread about debating QT or not QT. The fish in this case didn’t even show any signs of disease before or after they died.

Also, there’s no need to post 3 times and compulsively edit your posts. If you think you have something helpful to add then collect your thoughts, draft and proofread one message, consider whether it’s even helpful to the question being asked, and then and only then consider posting it. Otherwise it’s just spam and trolling other people’s threads.

 

[brandon429]

I remember when you and I disagreed three months ago, looks like you havent forgot

I have your edits handy from that link, want to see them?


there is no harm in using the lead up to the loss here to help others. He was introduced to the idea of quarantine preps in Feb and right now I have ten cycling tank links about ready to add fish, this is a valid progression to track.



this tank was not nuked in the least, this outcome was preventable


i failed to see that offer on prior posts

let me know if you want to see your edits from our picture request thread, we can link that here. You do plenty of edits.

 

[brandon429]

Cardinal Cloudy Eye

I have a cardinal with one cloudy eye. Hard to take a picture of, but it’s cloudy and when looking at him head-on the cloudy eye is bigger than the other as well. He’s been in QT for over 3 months because of flukes. I just noticed it a few hours after finally transferring it to my DT; my...

www.reef2reef.com

at least you’re not pressing against quarantine in a ten page thread. You’ve read the disease forum and chose what constitutes today’s best science.


what we are doing is tracking choice outcomes as neutral patterning. There were warnings before this loss event, this is for new tank cyclers to read and consider alternatives


this thread didn’t have a strong disease risk component for readers to evaluate, now it does. The initial troubleshooters here are always posting against qt preps, I felt he was being short changed by the omission.


Id rather investigate the preventative angle over the sympathy one, this tank can easily run fallow now and start fresh with quarantined fish. This outcome is what introduces nearly all new keepers to the importance of disease preps.

 

[Cell]

Fish are not grounded. Stray voltage was not the issue. Nor was ammonia as evidenced by the living chromis and inverts.

 

[Sharkbait19]

It does seem possible that there was some sort of internal fish parasite, given the fact that no corals or inverts were affected. It could also have been a fast killing parasite such as velvet or brook, which could've gone unnoticed for a while. So sorry for your loss.

 

[CMMorgan]

Sorry for your loss! I can’t think of anything especially with the Apex confirming many of your tank parameters… Except, what you said in the OP about the puffer. Something, some toxin or disease killed almost every fish in an extremely short period of time. I think you’re right to consider a known source of toxin before venturing into the Terminix or bleach theory. The below post is the first thing I found about the possibility and DaddyFish reports seeing it happen. Reading to the bottom, it sounds like pufferfish can get stressed pretty easily and they don’t have to die to be lethal to other fish.

Two questions in this theory though…. Why did the puffer die? Did he get sick which caused the stress? Could it have been an ammonia spike from the mass die off? It tested zero, sure, but ammonia gets processed quickly in an established reef and you might have just missed it. Could be why he lived the longest though, only dying after the other fish were dead. Second, why weren’t inverts affected? I can’t find anything about them being susceptible to the toxin or not. They have very simple brains but they do have nervous systems that theoretically could be affected by the toxin. But would it kill them? I don’t know. Maybe if the puffer regurgitated, the other fish ate it all and the inverts weren’t even exposed. If there was ammonia I would expect some inverts to be affected but maybe there wasn’t. Maybe one fish just got sick, killed everything else, and then died. And the chromis just didn’t get any of the regurgitated food.

I wonder if @Jay Hemdal has any thoughts on your mass die off?

can saltwater pufferfish poison other fish?

Recently, I've been thinking about getting a saltwater puffer, so I started doing research. However, a web site called reefapp.com, which seems to give overall good info, said that they all (with the exception of the narrow-lined puffer) are capable of releasing a toxin out of their skin when...

www.reef2reef.com

But this was a Valentini Puffer. It has no spines and it doesn't spit venom. For another fish to be poisoned by the Valentini, it would have had to have bitten it. The toxin is in it's flesh. That is also assuming that the predator was still interested after the puffer "puffed". If he died first and the CUC had ripped it to shreds, sending little Valentini snacks all over the tank, I could support the theory.
I would guess that he lasted the longest because these fish are good at evading predators.

Can't blame the stray voltage either.

As @WVNed said ... heat spike, algae bloom, lack of oxygen.... all more likely. Poor immunity to disease, possibly.

No matter what the cause, this is a suck way to come home. I'd have been in tears. My heart hurts for you right now @SurfTrack .

Hang in there.

 

[brandon429]

I did not know that about Valentini puffers nice tidbit there.

 

[CMMorgan]

I did not know that about Valentini puffers nice tidbit there.

Great little fish.

 

[zalick]

Sorry for your losses. Looking back on your posts to December 2019, it looks like you’d been encountering quite a few issues with your fish, gem tang, yellow tang, clown, firefish. The whole picture strongly suggest parasite/bacteria/disease IMO.

can you summarize the issues you’ve had with all the fish that died? And also roughly when they were added?

 

[ariellemermaid]

I would guess that he lasted the longest because these fish are good at evading predators.

Interesting points. I guess if it’s true that their regurgitated food definitely contains no toxin then that theory is out. In terms of the last line though what are you referring to? Did you mean parasites? Because he definitely didn’t have any predators.

 

[sksouthpaw]

The only things that can kill a diverse group like that are poisons added to the tank or an extreme environment change.
I guess you Apex would have noticed a heater burn. That will do it.

Pest control. Do you rent. I could guess all day.

Something happened you are not aware of.
The fish do not look thin to me. Discoloration and missing parts mean almost nothing once they have been dead a while. Many fish pass and even bits are never found because CUCs are so efficient.

I am not a doctor of fish by any means but I second this post. This IMO would be too rapid for a disease course. Plausible for one fish especially if immunocompromised, but for all seven within two days, that to me says toxin of some nature. I cant imagine any disease wiping out an entire population in 2 days, as the disease courses generally takes some time.
So sorry for your losses =(

 

[brandon429]

But he was battling disease since Feb and stated he doesn’t quarantine

how does that factor here (not at all)


notice how outside the disease forum, even with direct disease vectors stated on this tank for months, it’s not disease


make a post about this tank in Jays forum I wont post in it. We can watch it unfold in different forums.


Miami reef, September


that’s not being mean, it’s a prediction for you to track see if it’s wildly off base. We will know by September…


I have concerns about accuracy of troubleshooting when no one factors or clicks on the post history for the tank, they’re drawing causatives out of the air


the causatives came stuck to the fish, from the pet store.


this thread is like getting mad at a dentist for admonishing someone to floss and brush, then when teeth are falling out we are mad at the dentist for having warned. I can’t possibly relay how important it is to floss in reef tank preparation, but that depends on what forum we do troubleshoots in.

if this was in the chemistry forum, a param killed only his fish. Dont believe me? Run an api ammonia test and report back

 

[zalick]

I am not a doctor of fish by any means but I second this post. This IMO would be too rapid for a disease course. Plausible for one fish especially if immunocompromised, but for all seven within two days, that to me says toxin of some nature. I cant imagine any disease wiping out an entire population in 2 days, as the disease courses generally takes some time.
So sorry for your losses =(

They’ve been having disease like symptoms for nearly 18 months.

 

[CMMorgan]

Interesting points. I guess if it’s true that their regurgitated food definitely contains no toxin then that theory is out. In terms of the last line though what are you referring to? Did you mean parasites? Because he definitely didn’t have any predators.

No, I meant that if something would have ripped the little guy to shreds - which was not the case here.

 

[BostonReefer300]

Fish are not grounded. Stray voltage was not the issue. Nor was ammonia as evidenced by the living chromis and inverts.

Although it's doubtful that electricity is to blame in this instance, I get concerned when I see many in this forum say that fish aren't affected by current in the water because they're "not grounded" and the like. A person floating in a pond struck by lighting can get electrocuted. A person floating in saltwater can also get electrocuted, although everything else being equal, it will be less severe than freshwater because saltwater has much greater conductivity than fresh and most of the electricity will follow the path of least resistance. Our tanks are not completely isolated from ground like a bubble in space. Sources of electrical current in a tank will find their way to ground---and some portion of that current will flow through tank inhabitants. A malfunctioning Cobalt heater (NEVER buy those horrible things!) killed a handful of my fish several years ago. It was leaking a lot of current in the water which I discovered when I stuck my hand in the tank to get the dead fish. I was wearing heavy insulated boots at the time and got zapped pretty badly. I confirmed the current issue with a meter. That experience is why I always keep grounding probes in my setups now.

 

[sksouthpaw]

They’ve been having disease like symptoms for nearly 18 months.

Ah, well in that case certainly an option

 

[zalick]

The fish in this case didn’t even show any signs of disease before or after they died.

These fish have been showing signs of illness (disease/parasite/bacteria/etc) going back to at least December 2019. I did not read further back in the OP posts to see if illness symptoms were present longer than that.

Was this the cause of this mass death? Unknown, but it’s certainly high on the suspect list, if not the #1 suspect. It’s the only potential cause that has factual historical data to support it.