tank issue

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newreefowner

Reefing newb
I have a 40gal breeder tank with about 40 lbs of live rock 1 clown and 1 watchman gobie and a 50 gal cleaner back of snails and crabs. I have lately been having a issue with my fish all of the sudden dying. I have a foxface and a lawnmower blenny, and a black occilaris clown all die in the last month or two. I'm not completely sure what is causing this issue. I live in a area close to highways and have well water. i think that maybe the salt is infecting my water and causing my fish to die. My ammonia has recently lifted up to about .5mg which i kno is stress full but i don't understand why every fish i add is fine until night time and then when i wake up it is dead. If anyone can help plz try to inform me of any ideas of what might be happening.
 
newreefowner said:
I have a 40gal breeder tank with about 40 lbs of live rock 1 clown and 1 watchman gobie and a 50 gal cleaner back of snails and crabs. I have lately been having a issue with my fish all of the sudden dying. I have a foxface and a lawnmower blenny, and a black occilaris clown all die in the last month or two. I'm not completely sure what is causing this issue. I live in a area close to highways and have well water. i think that maybe the salt is infecting my water and causing my fish to die. My ammonia has recently lifted up to about .5mg which i kno is stress full but i don't understand why every fish i add is fine until night time and then when i wake up it is dead. If anyone can help plz try to inform me of any ideas of what might be happening.
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Well the tank is to small for a foxface so that might have been a factor. A 40 gallon tank you max out on fish at the max 5. Should really be one fish for 10 gallons of display tank space. Fish should be added very slowly as well. Maybe one then wait a month or two then another. Until you reach 4 and once everything is well established maybe 5.

Would also be good to know more about the tank. What is the filtration, do you have a skimmer, are you using RO/DI water. What are you testing for? Also how do you acclimate new fish?
 
i have an ehiem filter and i only had about 5 fish and the foxface was doing really well until all of the sudden all of them died within a week. i also have a coral life 65gal skimmer, and a aquaticlife 4 lamp t5 light. i have been testing the ph 8.3 nitrites 0 ammonia .5 nitrates .5 calcium has always been off the charts.alkhalinity is a lil high and i use my well water from my house its not ro\di
 
Ok, the eheim filter I am guessing is a canister filter. In a reef tank those need to be cleaned weekly. A lot of people are against them in salt tanks but if you keep it clean it will work. They do,if not cleaned regularly, become nitrate factories for your tank which is bad for corals. Well water can have all types of bad stuff in it. It isnt bad for people but for a tank can be a major cause of problems. The slightest pesticide that gets leeched into the water will cause unknown/unexpected deaths in a reef tank. I would recommend using ro/di water. Either get a unit for your house with a TDS meter (total dissolved solids) or buy ro/di water from a fish store. You want your clean water to read 0 or close to it before it goes in the tank for top off water or before you mix saltwater. If purchasing a ro/di unit is not feasible and a fish store is to far away you can use either distilled from the grocery store or ro water from one of the machines at walmart. I strongly suggest that you stop using well water for your tank. Currently I buy water at the machine at walmart and it costs me 25 cents a gallon. Or I get ro/di when I go by the fish store 27 cents a gallon.

Its good that you have a skimmer. This size tank you could get away with just a skimmer and powerheads in the tank for filtration. Of course you would still want to do weekly or bi weekly water changes. Your main biological filtration is your live rock in the tank.

Other then changing your water source, I would recommend that you keep your stocking level alone for a while. A few months should be good, if everything remains stable and you have the room in the tank then try another fish. I drip acclimate all my new fish. I think it is the safest and least disturbing way to get the fish use to your water. On a side note once the fish are acclimated catch them in a net and put them into the tank. Do not add the water from the fish store to your display. That is a very quick way to get diseases into your tank.

I know this is fairly long winded, and I hope this helps. I have kept salt tanks for 20+ years and if it could be done wrong I have done it and paid dearly...:twocents:
 
I have 2 750 koahii circulation pumps in the tank also so I could basically remove my filter? I pretty much just use it to store chemi pure which doesn't seem to be doing anything anyhow
 
Good water movement combined with no detectable nitrates or phosphates should help rid you of the cyano, along with changing your source water to distilled or RO/DI and doing weekly water changes (biweekly until you get you nutrients low).
Sorry about your fish losses. There's no telling what could be in that well water though. What are the levels for calcium and alk? Good luck!
 
It will take a while once you have changed off the well water but your tank will love you for it in the end. Right now every time you add water you are adding nutrients that problem algae and cyano live off of. The chem pure probably just cant keep up.
 
How long are the fish living before they die? I'm not clear from your posts whether these are fish you had for several months/year that suddenly started dieing, or whether you have them for a few days/weeks and then they die. And when they die, do you just wake up and find them dead, or are you seeing signs beforehand like rapid breathing, listing to one side, loss of appetite? When you find then dead, how do they look - do they have injuries on them, do they just disappear, do they have spots, etc? Have you added any new rocks or corals or anything else recently before you started losing fish, or has this been an ongoing problem since you set up the tank? Any additional info you can tell us would be great!
 
+1 Everyone...like Fishy, I, too, am confused about how long you had your fish. That's an important thing to clarify. If you JUST got them and they die overnight, it could be fish that were already sick at the LFS, or you did not acclimate them properly, or your well water is not safe. So if that's the case, make sure your fish eats before you pick them from the LFS. Also drip acclimate for 2-3 hours (I've set it for as long as 4 hours before).

If you've had them for a while, did you notice any change in behavior or appearance? Spots? Scratching on the rocks? Not eating? etc

Either way, I think Ted might have a good point about chemicals somehow leeching into the well water.

I recently read this, and it's a coincidence you're having problems:

Rossen Reports: Family discovers their tap water is flammable - TODAY News

Turns out, there's highly-flammable methane gas in their well water.
Click to expand...

It's your neighbors in Ohio, but it can happen anywhere!
 
wontonflip said:
+1 Everyone...like Fishy, I, too, am confused about how long you had your fish. That's an important thing to clarify. If you JUST got them and they die overnight, it could be fish that were already sick at the LFS, or you did not acclimate them properly, or your well water is not safe. So if that's the case, make sure your fish eats before you pick them from the LFS. Also drip acclimate for 2-3 hours (I've set it for as long as 4 hours before).

If you've had them for a while, did you notice any change in behavior or appearance? Spots? Scratching on the rocks? Not eating? etc

Either way, I think Ted might have a good point about chemicals somehow leeching into the well water.

I recently read this, and it's a coincidence you're having problems:

Rossen Reports: Family discovers their tap water is flammable - TODAY News



It's your neighbors in Ohio, but it can happen anywhere!
Click to expand...

Yeah, I was also wondering about the possibility of a predator that hitchhiked in if they were fish that had been there awhile and seemed fine and then were just dead the next morning - that's why I was wondering about how long they had been in the tank, behavior the night before the death, condition of the body, and anything newly introduced.

And wow, that's scary about methane in well water!!
 
The fish that I had listed were all in the tank for I've 6 months and the were all healthy no weird behavior and the clown and gobie I still have were there too but they have survived and seem fine it's just every time I add a fish now they die either that night or the following morning
 
newreefowner said:
The fish that I had listed were all in the tank for I've 6 months and the were all healthy no weird behavior and the clown and gobie I still have were there too but they have survived and seem fine it's just every time I add a fish now they die either that night or the following morning
Click to expand...

So if I'm understanding you correctly, you had 5ish fish for about 6 months in your tank (including the clown and goby) and all were doing well, then started dying with no observable behavior changes or signs of disease. Your clown and goby have continued to be fine. And now any time you try to add a new fish it doesn't make it through the night. Is this right?

If so, when did you start losing the fish? Did you make any changes to the tank around that time (additions, etc?)

What are your parameters (ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH, salinity) and how are you testing your water?

How many new fish are you trying to add at once and how are you acclimating them? Have you bought all of them from the same place?
 
Think you've had any temperature swings? I would be inclined to believe that something happened with you well water. I would get distilled or some rodi water.
 
+1 on using different water. If you are not running carbon in your system I think that you should. I just cant shake the feeling that the fish that lived just got acclimated to whatever is in the water, new additions never get the chance. :twocents:
 

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