Massive Death

jetzbird

Reefing newb
Hi,

My family and I have just joined living reefs. We have a 55 gallon saltwater tank with quite a few corals - xenia, brain, torch,mushroom and star polyps. Now we only have a clown, potter's angelfish and a few damsels. My son has a 10 gallon tank with a gobie, a clown, a pom pom and a cleaner shrimp. He's hoping to propagate some coral. We have the 55 in our kitchen and everyone really enjoys the tropical scene.

The other night the lights on the fish tank turned off as usual around 8 pm. We noticed, in the residual light, that the tank seemed quite cloudy. Didn't pay too much attenetion as sometimes the blue damsel gets excited and stirs up the sand. Wish we had turned the lights back on. The next morning we woke to find our rabbit fox race, 2 bangaii cardinals and our mandarin goby all dead. We tested the water but nothing really showed up and then did a partial water change twice but now we have also lost our conch, porcelain crab and tuxedo sea urchin. Does anyone have any idea what happened? The fish that are left seem healthy and happy. It seems as if there must have been a sudden massive ammonia spike but how and why. Would be great if someone could give us their views.

Thanks,
jjetzbird
 
Sea cucumbers do. Have you seen your sea cucumber lately? Any chance it's dead? Sea cucumbers release a toxin when they die, which can cause tanks to crash.
 
Hello and welcome to the site..I agree with Biff, cucumbers can be very toxic when they die or become very scared...also, have you added/dosed anything to it lately...or what I was thinking, you say that the tank is in the kitchen, maybe some sort of unk chemical found it's way into the tank thru the air.
 
Also, how much live rock do you have and what type of filtration? If you have insufficient filtration or not enough rock, all it can take is one fish dying to start a chain reaction.
 
Also, how much live rock do you have and what type of filtration? If you have insufficient filtration or not enough rock, all it can take is one fish dying to start a chain reaction.
We have about50 lbs of live rock and a protein skimmer but the tank has been very stable for about a year. This was quite a shock.
 
I'll bet you did not test for ALL chems. You need to test for everything immediately.

PH
Alkalinity
Ammonia (deadly)
Nitrites (deadly)
Nitrates
Phophates
Calcium
Magnesium (unlikely culprit but test anyway)
 
Last edited:
sorry for your loss. and welcome

we do need more info

as sen mentioned I would also be interested to know the salinity and temp of your tank?

What type of filteration?

xenia if stressed could cause a tank crash alone. what type of cucumber was it, they can also cause some issues. But I am gonna guess at this point that it was not the cause.
 
Back
Top