So I've had a tank that's had a massive ammonia spike and killed 3 fish. Its a frag tank that I've had running for about 6 months.
At first I had a scooter blenny I'm the tank and a couple cleanup crew it's only about 10g so didn't keep much in it.
The lid I had on the tank got broke one day and during the couple days I didn't have a lid the blenny jumped.
This is where I think my problem started.
A week went by and I didn't feed the tank and noticed my nitrates bottom out so quickly went and got 2 banghai cardinals put them in and fed them regularly and watched the nitrates come back up.
Ive noticed this tank has a low ph around 7.8
One of the fish didn't make it but I presumed I had 2 males and didn't think much of it. The other had been fine eating well. All corals looked fine.
The only thing I thought was an issue in the tank was a small patch of cyano in the front corner of the tank but it was black in colour which was odd to me.
Time went by and I had purchased a wheelers goby for one of my other tanks and decided to place it in this small tank just to watch it for a month to make sure it doesn't get sick etc before adding it to my bigger system.
Had it about 3 weeks and it went from being very active to dead in the space of a couple hours. When a fish dies in a tank I have always got it out soon as I see it then done a nice 50% water change so that's what I did. 3 days later the last banghai died.
Now I know I should have tested before but it wasn't until the banghai died did I test for ammonia and there was a small amount.
That was yesterday. I removed all my CUC and moved it to one of my other systems.
I did another 25% water change and also added a large rock from my oldest system so should have been filled with good bacteria but today the ammonia is off the scale high.
I have removed all corals so it's just rock sand and water now I've started adding bacteria.
Could the low ph have been killing my bacteria and when I didn't feed the tank for a week also killed the bacteria off. I've never had a tank just spike ammonia really high without having something be dead In the tank and the ammonia is still rising without anything in the tank so I'm guessing the ammonia increasing is the bacteria dying.
At first I had a scooter blenny I'm the tank and a couple cleanup crew it's only about 10g so didn't keep much in it.
The lid I had on the tank got broke one day and during the couple days I didn't have a lid the blenny jumped.
This is where I think my problem started.
A week went by and I didn't feed the tank and noticed my nitrates bottom out so quickly went and got 2 banghai cardinals put them in and fed them regularly and watched the nitrates come back up.
Ive noticed this tank has a low ph around 7.8
One of the fish didn't make it but I presumed I had 2 males and didn't think much of it. The other had been fine eating well. All corals looked fine.
The only thing I thought was an issue in the tank was a small patch of cyano in the front corner of the tank but it was black in colour which was odd to me.
Time went by and I had purchased a wheelers goby for one of my other tanks and decided to place it in this small tank just to watch it for a month to make sure it doesn't get sick etc before adding it to my bigger system.
Had it about 3 weeks and it went from being very active to dead in the space of a couple hours. When a fish dies in a tank I have always got it out soon as I see it then done a nice 50% water change so that's what I did. 3 days later the last banghai died.
Now I know I should have tested before but it wasn't until the banghai died did I test for ammonia and there was a small amount.
That was yesterday. I removed all my CUC and moved it to one of my other systems.
I did another 25% water change and also added a large rock from my oldest system so should have been filled with good bacteria but today the ammonia is off the scale high.
I have removed all corals so it's just rock sand and water now I've started adding bacteria.
Could the low ph have been killing my bacteria and when I didn't feed the tank for a week also killed the bacteria off. I've never had a tank just spike ammonia really high without having something be dead In the tank and the ammonia is still rising without anything in the tank so I'm guessing the ammonia increasing is the bacteria dying.