Fish Dying

[newreef1]

Hey guys, I’m back to share my turmoil and maybe get some support again from you all. My tank was doing great after my last post regarding treating my tank with copper and raising salinity. I had done a few water changes after my copper treatment and copper was down low to a 0.69 ppm. All the fish were great and eating well, healthy etc. I was so busy with work I couldn’t do a water change for around 5 weeks. The fish were eating and swimming fine but my tank didn’t look very good. So on Friday I did a normal water change (40 gallons), my RedSea wavemakers were reallly dirty with low flow so decided to follow the Citric acid method and clean all my powerheads including mp40s. I kept them in clean water overnight and also rinsed well. Suddenly my naso tang wasn’t looking right and died the next day. Within the span of a few days I’ve lost several fish. I removed the wavemakers and rinsed again thinking there might have been Risidue on them and did another 50 gallon water change last night. My tests were all normal for my tank, no ammonia, nitrites, nitrates around 40 which has always been my case. I could not figure out what was causing my fish to die suddenly until I read about disturbing sand bed as if it’s not moved weekly can store toxic gases and toxic nutrients? I did see some bubbles on the side of my tank with the red and green algae on the bottom corners of tank but I cleaned and scrubbed to remove them. I removed all my live rock, and moved my sand bed to evenly distribute the sand, for some reason my sand moves all over the place leaving some spots that show the tank floor. Is wit possible for the sand bed to kill so many fish. I don’t have any sand sifting fish so the sand is only moved by the pumps. I found two fish stuck to my mp40s not sure if they were weak or just got pulled in? Any suggestions or any information is greatly appreciated? Should I move my sand around weekly? Get a goby? On my LFS guys insistence I retreated the tank with copper currently reading 1.98 ppm with copper power he believed the sand could have released some ich eggs or something I don’t believe so because the fish that died was so fast and none of them were sick of showing any signs of prolonged illness. I added the copper in hopes of a remedy before I read about the sand beds. Please help me find what’s going on. Thank you.

 

[Rmckoy]

A few things catch my attention
1) disturbing the sand could cause bacteria bloom , most times the water will go very cloudy and have a odd smell

adding copper to the display tank will make this tank never able to be a reef as any invert or coral will not survive ( copper will always leach from the rocks giving higher than acceptable level

I have read multiple threads claiming citric acid was presumed to be the cause of fish deaths but later proved to be another action but can’t be ruled out as not just one thing was done more like a series of events that led to the end result .

if this display tank and rocks in it are always going to be a fish only or even a quarantine system i would think it should be ok but
If you want to make it a reef I would remove the sand and rocks and replace it as it will absorb copper and potentially leach out over time .

@vetteguy53081 @Jay Hemdal
Should we also tag the sand rinse professionals ?

 

[JC1977]

Hey guys, I’m back to share my turmoil and maybe get some support again from you all. My tank was doing great after my last post regarding treating my tank with copper and raising salinity. I had done a few water changes after my copper treatment and copper was down low to a 0.69 ppm. All the fish were great and eating well, healthy etc. I was so busy with work I couldn’t do a water change for around 5 weeks. The fish were eating and swimming fine but my tank didn’t look very good. So on Friday I did a normal water change (40 gallons), my RedSea wavemakers were reallly dirty with low flow so decided to follow the Citric acid method and clean all my powerheads including mp40s. I kept them in clean water overnight and also rinsed well. Suddenly my naso tang wasn’t looking right and died the next day. Within the span of a few days I’ve lost several fish. I removed the wavemakers and rinsed again thinking there might have been Risidue on them and did another 50 gallon water change last night. My tests were all normal for my tank, no ammonia, nitrites, nitrates around 40 which has always been my case. I could not figure out what was causing my fish to die suddenly until I read about disturbing sand bed as if it’s not moved weekly can store toxic gases and toxic nutrients? I did see some bubbles on the side of my tank with the red and green algae on the bottom corners of tank but I cleaned and scrubbed to remove them. I removed all my live rock, and moved my sand bed to evenly distribute the sand, for some reason my sand moves all over the place leaving some spots that show the tank floor. Is wit possible for the sand bed to kill so many fish. I don’t have any sand sifting fish so the sand is only moved by the pumps. I found two fish stuck to my mp40s not sure if they were weak or just got pulled in? Any suggestions or any information is greatly appreciated? Should I move my sand around weekly? Get a goby? On my LFS guys insistence I retreated the tank with copper currently reading 1.98 ppm with copper power he believed the sand could have released some ich eggs or something I don’t believe so because the fish that died was so fast and none of them were sick of showing any signs of prolonged illness. I added the copper in hopes of a remedy before I read about the sand beds. Please help me find what’s going on. Thank you.

The sand bed could be a possibility. How deep is it and how long had it sat without being disturbed before you stirred it up ? This is one big reason I always go bare bottom.

 

[brandon429]

let's see a picture of the setup pls/looking for signs of advanced aging in the sandbed, dark pockets etc/green and red pigments in the cross section picture of the sand/small details like that

 

[Rmckoy]

let's see a picture of the setup pls/looking for signs of advanced aging in the sandbed, dark pockets etc

I want to assume the tank isn’t old or been running for a long time .

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Hey guys, I’m back to share my turmoil and maybe get some support again from you all. My tank was doing great after my last post regarding treating my tank with copper and raising salinity. I had done a few water changes after my copper treatment and copper was down low to a 0.69 ppm. All the fish were great and eating well, healthy etc. I was so busy with work I couldn’t do a water change for around 5 weeks. The fish were eating and swimming fine but my tank didn’t look very good. So on Friday I did a normal water change (40 gallons), my RedSea wavemakers were reallly dirty with low flow so decided to follow the Citric acid method and clean all my powerheads including mp40s. I kept them in clean water overnight and also rinsed well. Suddenly my naso tang wasn’t looking right and died the next day. Within the span of a few days I’ve lost several fish. I removed the wavemakers and rinsed again thinking there might have been Risidue on them and did another 50 gallon water change last night. My tests were all normal for my tank, no ammonia, nitrites, nitrates around 40 which has always been my case. I could not figure out what was causing my fish to die suddenly until I read about disturbing sand bed as if it’s not moved weekly can store toxic gases and toxic nutrients? I did see some bubbles on the side of my tank with the red and green algae on the bottom corners of tank but I cleaned and scrubbed to remove them. I removed all my live rock, and moved my sand bed to evenly distribute the sand, for some reason my sand moves all over the place leaving some spots that show the tank floor. Is wit possible for the sand bed to kill so many fish. I don’t have any sand sifting fish so the sand is only moved by the pumps. I found two fish stuck to my mp40s not sure if they were weak or just got pulled in? Any suggestions or any information is greatly appreciated? Should I move my sand around weekly? Get a goby? On my LFS guys insistence I retreated the tank with copper currently reading 1.98 ppm with copper power he believed the sand could have released some ich eggs or something I don’t believe so because the fish that died was so fast and none of them were sick of showing any signs of prolonged illness. I added the copper in hopes of a remedy before I read about the sand beds. Please help me find what’s going on. Thank you.

For a fish to die from ich, it has to be covered in spots, that doesn’t happen in a day and is hard to miss.
Sand releasing hydrogen sulfide is rare, but could happen with really deep sand beds - you would smell the rotten eggs though.
Did you test the pH of the water?
Jay

 

[Sebastiancrab]

I would run an airstone and add some Poly Filter. Are your remaining fish exhibiting any symptoms? If so, pictures taken in white light, preferably video are needed. Your water parameters need to be noted here also.

Poly Filter Aquarium Filter

The POLY-FILTER is for filtering and purifying both fresh and salt water aquariums. It is a formulation of a special patented material bonded to a synthetic matrix. By means of a unique proprietary process, the POLY-FILTER is made impervious to salt and is also organic loving to certain...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

 

[C4ctus99]

What are the fishes symptoms? Are they lying flat on the bottom and breathing heavy?

My bad sandbed experience: I had a sand bed approximately 1” deep for about 6-8 weeks (weeks). Got some new rocks and a springeri damsel and rearranged the rocks multiple times kicking up a small amount of dust before putting in the damsel. Then the next day I rearranged all the rockwork kicking up significantly more and the damsel started exhibiting the same signs as several other people mentioned after disturbing sand beds like lying flat on the sand, breathing heavy, and some other stuff I don’t remember but found looking into it (Brandon may know the threads with this info) the damsel was dead the next morning.

could’ve been stress or something else, but I know there are several threads about fishing lying on their sides on the bottom breathing hard and oftentimes dying after

 

[vetteguy53081]

Hey guys, I’m back to share my turmoil and maybe get some support again from you all. My tank was doing great after my last post regarding treating my tank with copper and raising salinity. I had done a few water changes after my copper treatment and copper was down low to a 0.69 ppm. All the fish were great and eating well, healthy etc. I was so busy with work I couldn’t do a water change for around 5 weeks. The fish were eating and swimming fine but my tank didn’t look very good. So on Friday I did a normal water change (40 gallons), my RedSea wavemakers were reallly dirty with low flow so decided to follow the Citric acid method and clean all my powerheads including mp40s. I kept them in clean water overnight and also rinsed well. Suddenly my naso tang wasn’t looking right and died the next day. Within the span of a few days I’ve lost several fish. I removed the wavemakers and rinsed again thinking there might have been Risidue on them and did another 50 gallon water change last night. My tests were all normal for my tank, no ammonia, nitrites, nitrates around 40 which has always been my case. I could not figure out what was causing my fish to die suddenly until I read about disturbing sand bed as if it’s not moved weekly can store toxic gases and toxic nutrients? I did see some bubbles on the side of my tank with the red and green algae on the bottom corners of tank but I cleaned and scrubbed to remove them. I removed all my live rock, and moved my sand bed to evenly distribute the sand, for some reason my sand moves all over the place leaving some spots that show the tank floor. Is wit possible for the sand bed to kill so many fish. I don’t have any sand sifting fish so the sand is only moved by the pumps. I found two fish stuck to my mp40s not sure if they were weak or just got pulled in? Any suggestions or any information is greatly appreciated? Should I move my sand around weekly? Get a goby? On my LFS guys insistence I retreated the tank with copper currently reading 1.98 ppm with copper power he believed the sand could have released some ich eggs or something I don’t believe so because the fish that died was so fast and none of them were sick of showing any signs of prolonged illness. I added the copper in hopes of a remedy before I read about the sand beds. Please help me find what’s going on. Thank you.

Im not sure what sand has to do with this. The obvious answer was given- You treated the tank with copper which dropped to a very low level and in essence, you broke the treatment cycle and temporally removed water flow with pump cleaning, and it appears oxygen may have dropped when flow was interrupted.
Fish stuck to the power head is a sign of weakness likely from disease. The red/green algae likely from lack of water movement and maintenance and appears to be cyano.
For tthe copper, if you are going to treat with copper, You can't have it hover at 1.98 but get to therapeutic level 2.25-2.5 now. . . ramping it is as bad as not adding any. how are you testing Copper level?
Also, after all this , you mentioned ammonia and nitrate are Zero - How are you testing these levels?
The treatment regimen is:
Treat with Coppersafe or Copper Power at therapeutic level 2.25-2.5 For a FULL 30 days (do not interrupt this 30 day period) monitored by a reliable Copper Test kit such as Hanna Brand- No API brand. Also monitor Ammonia levels while in quarantine with a reliable test kit and add aeration during treatment using an air stone.
The display tank will have to be kept fishless (FALLOW) for 6-8 weeks to assure the existing parasites go through their life cycle without a host fish and die off

 

[newreef1]

Hey guys, I’m back to share my turmoil and maybe get some support again from you all. My tank was doing great after my last post regarding treating my tank with copper and raising salinity. I had done a few water changes after my copper treatment and copper was down low to a 0.69 ppm. All the fish were great and eating well, healthy etc. I was so busy with work I couldn’t do a water change for around 5 weeks. The fish were eating and swimming fine but my tank didn’t look very good. So on Friday I did a normal water change (40 gallons), my RedSea wavemakers were reallly dirty with low flow so decided to follow the Citric acid method and clean all my powerheads including mp40s. I kept them in clean water overnight and also rinsed well. Suddenly my naso tang wasn’t looking right and died the next day. Within the span of a few days I’ve lost several fish. I removed the wavemakers and rinsed again thinking there might have been Risidue on them and did another 50 gallon water change last night. My tests were all normal for my tank, no ammonia, nitrites, nitrates around 40 which has always been my case. I could not figure out what was causing my fish to die suddenly until I read about disturbing sand bed as if it’s not moved weekly can store toxic gases and toxic nutrients? I did see some bubbles on the side of my tank with the red and green algae on the bottom corners of tank but I cleaned and scrubbed to remove them. I removed all my live rock, and moved my sand bed to evenly distribute the sand, for some reason my sand moves all over the place leaving some spots that show the tank floor. Is wit possible for the sand bed to kill so many fish. I don’t have any sand sifting fish so the sand is only moved by the pumps. I found two fish stuck to my mp40s not sure if they were weak or just got pulled in? Any suggestions or any information is greatly appreciated? Should I move my sand around weekly? Get a goby? On my LFS guys insistence I retreated the tank with copper currently reading 1.98 ppm with copper power he believed the sand could have released some ich eggs or something I don’t believe so because the fish that died was so fast and none of them were sick of showing any signs of prolonged illness. I added the copper in hopes of a remedy before I read about the sand beds. Please help me find what’s going on. Thank you.

There was an odd smell after I changed the water which I noticed after leaving the house and coming back, normally there is never a smell but this time I noticed it as soon as I stepped into the door away from the tank. I don’t have any pics before I did the water change the sand had moved to the corners in a heap of around 3-4 in at least with the green and red algae in the sand bed corners and bottoms edges.

 

[newreef1]

Im not sure what sand has to do with this. The obvious answer was given- You treated the tank with copper which dropped to a very low level and in essence, you broke the treatment cycle and temporally removed water flow with pump cleaning, and it appears oxygen may have dropped when flow was interrupted.
Fish stuck to the power head is a sign of weakness likely from disease. The red/green algae likely from lack of water movement and maintenance and appears to be cyano.
For tthe copper, if you are going to treat with copper, You can't have it hover at 1.98 but get to therapeutic level 2.25-2.5 now. . . ramping it is as bad as not adding any. how are you testing Copper level?
Also, after all this , you mentioned ammonia and nitrate are Zero - How are you testing these levels?
The treatment regimen is:
Treat with Coppersafe or Copper Power at therapeutic level 2.25-2.5 For a FULL 30 days (do not interrupt this 30 day period) monitored by a reliable Copper Test kit such as Hanna Brand- No API brand. Also monitor Ammonia levels while in quarantine with a reliable test kit and add aeration during treatment using an air stone.
The display tank will have to be kept fishless (FALLOW) for 6-8 weeks to assure the existing parasites go through their life cycle without a host fish and die off

I test the copper with Hannah copper and use copper power. Please help I just came home and two more fish are dead! I’m having a tank crash with no visible symptoms of Ich or anything!!

 

[newreef1]

What are the fishes symptoms? Are they lying flat on the bottom and breathing heavy?

My bad sandbed experience: I had a sand bed approximately 1” deep for about 6-8 weeks (weeks). Got some new rocks and a springeri damsel and rearranged the rocks multiple times kicking up a small amount of dust before putting in the damsel. Then the next day I rearranged all the rockwork kicking up significantly more and the damsel started exhibiting the same signs as several other people mentioned after disturbing sand beds like lying flat on the sand, breathing heavy, and some other stuff I don’t remember but found looking into it (Brandon may know the threads with this info) the damsel was dead the next morning.

could’ve been stress or something else, but I know there are several threads about fishing lying on their sides on the bottom breathing hard and oftentimes dying after

Yes those are some of the symptoms.

 

[C4ctus99]

There was an odd smell after I changed the water which I noticed after leaving the house and coming back, normally there is never a smell but this time I noticed it as soon as I stepped into the door away from the tank. I don’t have any pics before I did the water change the sand had moved to the corners in a heap of around 3-4 in at least with the green and red algae in the sand bed corners and bottoms edges.

Ooof… not normal. Like sewage or sulfur? I’ve only had sewage smell from over feeding and rotting food…then a dead fish that didn’t get pulled out immediately

 

[newreef1]

Im not sure what sand has to do with this. The obvious answer was given- You treated the tank with copper which dropped to a very low level and in essence, you broke the treatment cycle and temporally removed water flow with pump cleaning, and it appears oxygen may have dropped when flow was interrupted.
Fish stuck to the power head is a sign of weakness likely from disease. The red/green algae likely from lack of water movement and maintenance and appears to be cyano.
For tthe copper, if you are going to treat with copper, You can't have it hover at 1.98 but get to therapeutic level 2.25-2.5 now. . . ramping it is as bad as not adding any. how are you testing Copper level?
Also, after all this , you mentioned ammonia and nitrate are Zero - How are you testing these levels?
The treatment regimen is:
Treat with Coppersafe or Copper Power at therapeutic level 2.25-2.5 For a FULL 30 days (do not interrupt this 30 day period) monitored by a reliable Copper Test kit such as Hanna Brand- No API brand. Also monitor Ammonia levels while in quarantine with a reliable test kit and add aeration during treatment using an air stone.
The display tank will have to be kept fishless (FALLOW) for 6-8 weeks to assure the existing parasites go through their life cycle without a host fish and die off

I added copper only yesterday and didn’t want to put it immediately to 2.5, so added to 1.98 will add remaining copper now to bring it up to 2.5

 

[newreef1]

For a fish to die from ich, it has to be covered in spots, that doesn’t happen in a day and is hard to miss.
Sand releasing hydrogen sulfide is rare, but could happen with really deep sand beds - you would smell the rotten eggs though.
Did you test the pH of the water?
Jay

Exactly I don’t see any symptoms of Ich so not sure if copper is the way to go right now. But my fish are still dying. Yes I smelled a bad smell after changing my water for the first time. I did another water change yesterday and the fish are still dying. Should I do another water change to remove any other toxins or it that too much?

 

[newreef1]

I would run an airstone and add some Poly Filter. Are your remaining fish exhibiting any symptoms? If so, pictures taken in white light, preferably video are needed. Your water parameters need to be noted here also.

Poly Filter Aquarium Filter

The POLY-FILTER is for filtering and purifying both fresh and salt water aquariums. It is a formulation of a special patented material bonded to a synthetic matrix. By means of a unique proprietary process, the POLY-FILTER is made impervious to salt and is also organic loving to certain...

www.bulkreefsupply.com

I just had two fish die that I noticed after coming home. I already ordered some new polishing pads and some new filter socks which will help filter out smaller particles. It will take a couple days for it to come in. The water parameters were normal the ph was slightly low

 

[C4ctus99]

I would make fresh saltwater and get the fish out of that tank… Airstone and powerhead pointed at the surface. A bucket or Rubbermaid to hold them

after they are out shake out your live rock real good and put a couple pieces in with the fish to help with amonia in the temporary quarantine tanks

 

[C4ctus99]

What’s you’re amonia right now?

 

[newreef1]

The sand bed could be a possibility. How deep is it and how long had it sat without being disturbed before you stirred it up ? This is one big reason I always go bare bottom.

It wasn’t disturbed for around 5 weeks at least a couple days maybe even more. The sand had accumulated to the two corners of the tank piling up to at least 3-4 inches maybe even 5. Doing the WC I evenly distributed the sand throughout the tank.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Ooof… not normal. Like sewage or sulfur? I’ve only had sewage smell from over feeding and rotting food…then a dead fish that didn’t get pulled out immediately

Are you using RODI water or tap water from the faucet?
With water changes- Are you equalizing temperature and salinity ?