Everything dead apart from CUC, no idea whats happened!

[vetteguy53081]

Also, how did you acclimate/Introduce the fish to the tank ?

 

[ZoWhat]

I agree. I mix my own salt water with distilled water. I’ve never had any issues. You can’t trust your LFS to keep water parameters in check. Also yes, you need a slimmer.

Yeah. Worked at a LFS and we changed the filters every 2 years or so. Basically couldn't even see the filters thru the brown slime

I'm sure TDS was btwn 100-200

 

[attiland]

Also keep in mind you may have small stray voltage readings, and they may be manageable... but what sort of number does it take to kill a bunch of fish that quick? I would think it would be under the event of a surge. I do have surge protection on my tank (the entire house in my case) ....I suggest it for all.

Remind you surge protection is to protect your equipment for current spikes and nothing to do with stray voltage.
stray voltage is results is equipment poor insulation. In terms of effect similar what an electric ray would do. If you are close enough may kill you if you are fare from it you may feel a tingle. If you have a cut on your finger you are more receptive. “You” is interchangeable toy your fish.

 

[ReefBeta]

How can fish be electrocuted in water? Electricity always flow throw the least resistance way. Fish are surrounding by highly conductive saltwater. I can't think of a practical case where the electricity will flow throw the body of a fish other than through the water. Unless the fish body has substantially lower resistance than saltwater?

 

[Garf]

How can fish be electrocuted in water? Electricity always flow throw the least resistance way. Fish are surrounding by highly conductive saltwater. I can't think of a practical case where the electricity will flow throw the body of a fish other than through the water. Unless the fish body has substantially lower resistance than saltwater?

I dropped a live 6 gang 240v extension in my old tank, and nothing got electrocuted. Smoke, fizzin, pops and bangs, but no death. That prompted me into getting the fuse box upgraded.

 

[stolmie94]

Evening,

Sorry you are going thru this. I may be leaning a bit more toward disease than some type of chemical event. If all the CuC is ok, and water is ok I am wondering if there was an underlying condition.

I am just theorizing, normaly you think toxin with these events, but the inverts are ok.

@Jay Hemdal

yes just strange for all of them to drop dead withing 5 minutes of each other if it was a underlying condition? everything had been very happy and active up untill then, was no signs of anything on the fish when i pulled them out but im not sure what id be looking for apart from anything out of the ordanary

 

[attiland]

I dropped a live 6 gang 240v extension in my old tank, and nothing got electrocuted. Smoke, fizzin, pops and bangs, but no death. That prompted me into getting the fuse box upgraded.

You and your fish were lucky. Recommend you to read this;

How do electric eels generate a voltage and why do they not get shocked in the process?

www.scientificamerican.com

 

[stolmie94]

What are you cleaning the glass with? Just plain vinegar and water works and won’t hurt anything. Window cleaner anywhere nearby is playing with fire. Even if you think you where careful, you got some in the tank..

There is a lot going on in this whole situation to be honest. How good is your Lfs on their filter changes for their RODI? I’ve been burnt with that before myself. Never again will I trust water I didn’t make.

checking for stray voltage start with multi-meter on AC at above 120v. Then turn the meter lever down looking for a reading. Make sure to test for DC voltage also.

The window cleaner is a vinegar based cleaner but on reading the safety info online also contains Ethanol 2-Butoxyethanol and Acetic Acid.

i have asked the about the suply they told me every batch of salt water gets checked and tested when they make it, i guess youll never really know tho unless you make it yourself, something ive been putting off due to the time involved and having quite a demanding job.

will be checking the volatge today once i pick up the volltage meter

 

[ReefBeta]

You and your fish were lucky. Recommend you to read this;

How do electric eels generate a voltage and why do they not get shocked in the process?

www.scientificamerican.com

Directly from this article, "Additionally, a large part of the current dissipates into the water through the skin.". It's not luck, it's just physic working as it's intended.


this is the image I got from this video where it study electric eel. It's quite an elaborate setup to focus the current in order to measure it. Even as powerful as electric eel, it can't shock target remotely. It basically need to get close enough to touch the target to shock it.

So even a live wire drop to the tank, it won't electrocute fish unless it happen to swim between the two probes. The human is at a lot more dangerous in that situation though.

 

[Thaxxx]

If you follow the time line of how this occurred you can eliminate the stray voltage theories. You made a 25% water change. Ten minutes later you have dead fish. You never mention the size of your tank. If its a smaller tank, any contamination will have a huge affect.


It's obviously the water you used. Follow the evidence. Since you can't test the water for contamination right now, it would be just a guess at this point what is in that water.
The only strange part is that your cuc animals weren't effected.


In the future, I would buy distilled water and mix my own water until, when and if you get a proper RODI unit.

 

[Fezbearer]

Was the scented candle lit whole this was going on?

 

[attiland]

If you follow the time line of how this occurred you can eliminate the stray voltage theories. You made a 25% water change. Ten minutes later you have dead fish. You never mention the size of your tank. If its a smaller tank, any contamination will have a huge affect.


It's obviously the water you used. Follow the evidence. Since you can't test the water for contamination right now, it would be just a guess at this point what is in that water.
The only strange part is that your cuc animals weren't effected.


In the future, I would buy distilled water and mix my own water until, when and if you get a proper RODI unit.

You might be right. This is a guessing.

25% is the same effect in 10g and 2000g

Not sure what poison it could kill that fast.
OP mentioned 30 sec to kill the new fish. In that timeframe we can illuminate a few things could effect.
Op said store use the same water. if true the only poison could come from the container leaching something but no known material does this in the timeframe you come home from a shop and put it in the tank even if it was next day.
as long as the container is only used for aquatic processes I can’t see this is the reason

glass cleaner is mainly alcohol and vinegar or other acid but again I doubt he has cleaned the internal parts of the aquarium with it so the volume of contamination would be less than a drop in the whole tank of which 90 or so% is safe otherwise dosed by many as their process.

Scented candle would not have this fast effect IMO not to the extent of killing in 30 sec. It is recorded scented candles can have I’ll effect but this would be slow especially because water change was in the process which would further demote the contamination.

Most chemicals would show in PH at least and that makes me think the problem is not likely poisoned water .

Stray voltage however can do this in the timeframe (30sec) he had ill effect.

 

[Biokabe]

Yeah, it's a bizarre situation for sure. Usually it's the other way around, where the fish are fine but the inverts are dead. I can't think of any contaminant off the top of my head that would impact fish but not the other way around.

Of course, there is another possibility:

Some type of disease takes out the original fish (brook, velvet, etc.). Fish were already infected, but underlying stress was low enough that they were able to keep it at bay. OP does his 25% water change, which contains some contaminant that stresses the fish and, with the additional stress of their underlying infection, they all succumb in fast order. The inverts, not carrying the same disease as the fish, only deal with the stress of the contaminant and survive.

That all is... a little far-fetched, but at least plausible. Then we have the new fish, which dies within minutes of introduction. How does that fit in?

It doesn't. The new fish may have been a damsel, but it was in fact a red herring. New fish was injured while being netted at the store (or had been beaten up by other fish in the store, or didn't react well to OP's acclimation procedure) and was already dying. The fact that it expires so quickly when put into the tank is a coincidence.

Not everything is connected all the time.

Note that I don't necessarily think that this is what happened... just that it's an explanation that fits with the facts as presented.

 

[lstmysock11]

Sorry you lost all your fish. Once you think you found the cause and want to try again. You could get an Oscar for about 3 dollars. Yes i Know it is a freshwater fish but they can and will thrive in a saltwater tank and will tell you if it is safe to add more expensive fish.

I know someone else who lost all their fish from velvet and once they where sure it was gone they added the oscar and it is still happy as ever in a reef tank.

 

[Doctorgori]

I betcha a dollar-a-donut your dissolved oxygen was gobbled up by the diatom leaving the fish to suffocate

Possible anyone used your container for something else? For things to die that rapidly, I would say voltage or something was in the water/container.

I’ve had this happen before, just tossing in a theory but IME sudden death sounds like a dissolved gas issue. Sometimes fish get the “bends” from nitrogen or lack thereof.... situations with the pipes, water temp out the tap, et et et,,,,
I’ve never seen chlorine from tap kill real fast, but chloramines? I dunno.
also FWIW stray volts is a REAL possibility; I killed a whole tank of fish from a poorly sealed UV

 

[mvbrandt]

It's interesting reading the thread, and some of the more left field theories that fly in the face of the evidence, but the evidence adds up in a few cases for looking at:

Contaminant that is still in the water, so it doesn't gas off easily.
Kills fish in ten minutes or as little as thirty seconds (Chromis).
Doesn't harm hard shelled invertebrates.
Does negatively affect corals.
Isn't related to the sudden chemistry change from prior to new, for the simple reason it killed a new occupant as well.

You did a water change, but you know the water itself was safe, based on the LFS not having mass complaints and their own dead fish.

Stray voltage doesn't insta-gank fish, and if it did somehow because of the severity of it, you'd have been shocked at least.

It's not stray voltage, it's not the water itself. It's not a disease, that's just silly, doesn't explain the Chromis death.

When you put a bunch of new water into a tank, you heavily agitate the water in the tank and the water going in. Heavy agitation like that will facilitate substantial gas exchange (in fact, would have also gotten rid of some chlorine if there even was any, and would have heavily oxygenated the water, ruling out CO2).

You had a scented candle working in the room. You had a cleaner with some nasty bits in it used at some point on the glass. My bet is you had something innocuous to people but explicitly deadly for fish in the air of the room (looking at the candle) at the same time as you heavily agitated all the water. The same process that oxygenates the water via gasex with the ambient air will also exchange whatever else is in the air into the water column.

Maybe an ICP test will give you the peace of mind, but my money is on the heavy agitation from the water change itself causing something noxious to dissolve into the water column from the air in the room, which is still in there. The key for me is the rapid death of the Chromis - that fact rules out a TON of variables were we only seeing the death of long-resident occupants.

My $.02

 

[lstmysock11]

How fast everything happened I would think something got contaminated with the water you added in that big change. The new water was preheated to the temp of the tank? Putting in 20 percent cold water could give the fish a heck of a shock.

Does not really seem like infection with everything going from fine to dead that quick.

 

[ariellemermaid]

Are you certain fish and corals were acting 100% healthy prior to WC? No weird little behaviors, spots, or polyp retraction you might have dismissed at the time?

I do think it’s important to consider all the possibilities beyond the water change, but it does sound like that was the thing that created an uninhabitable tank. Fish survived before, and now the tank is deadly to all fish. Stray voltage for instance; why would that suddenly crop up at the exact same time you did a WC unless you also messed with/cleaned them? It’s possible, but wouldn’t be number 1 on my most likely list.

There are a lot of far flung theories here and they should all be considered. But some require like 3 or 4 different tank problems at the same time. I think that reasoning is probably heading in the wrong direction. Something between Occam’s razor and Einstein’s “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler” comes to mind.

I can’t offer any theories on what could be wrong with the water beyond what’s been said here. I’m a relatively new Reefer myself although also a scientist. I think in your position I would use one of my test kit vials to take a full, capped sample until I could order an ICP test to transfer it to. Then I would consider adding a dechlorinator and attempting another cheap saltwater fish just to rule that out. A Molly is an option but you’d have to acclimate to full salinity first and that introduces too many new variables.

 

[ScottB]

The water must have a poison in it. Hydrogen Sulfide anyone? Pretty young tank for that, but...

 

[lstmysock11]

I would test for voltage if nothing showing up then. I would move your CUC to a QT tank and empty your DT and clean everything out and start over. I would suspect some kind of poison with the water you added. More so with the last fish you tried died so quick. But that is just my .02 cents