Freaking out, fish won’t eat and everything is dying.

[Matthew Palmer]

A bit of backstory,
I have my 55 gallon saltwater aquarium that was running for the better part of a year and a half. But I made the decision to move it into my living room and in the process do a full cleaning. After this move I purchased a brand new, Forza canister filter which had the capibility to clean a tank 3 times the size of mine. It’s been around a half a year since this move and not only have all my clean up crew mysteriously disappeared, but my hammer coral, candy cane coral, leather coral, and hairy mushroom coral have all died (they were all the coral I had at the time). And I haven’t even started on the fish.
I had a six line wrasse for a month, flame angel for a month, Kamohara Blenny for two weeks, and royal gramma for three days before they all mysteriously died within a week from each other. Now to the present day.
The reason I’m even writing this is because I found both of my emerald crabs dead tonight.
This leaves me with only a yellow tang, clownfish, and scooter blenny in the tank... that’s it. And they were all doing fine until the clownfish and tang stopped eating three days ago and refuse to eat no matter what. The yellow tang is also breathing really hard.
I’ve been checking the water whenever something dies and the test always turns out normal. When I checked my water last (three days ago). I had...
High range PH : 7.9
Ammonia: 0 ppm
Nitrite: 0 ppm
Nitrate: (around) 2 ppm

I am going to test it again tomorrow since I have added some purple up and some buffer.
I’m not new at the hobby but I’ve definitely never had anything like this happen in a tank.
I’m running out of money and patience with this tank since everything keeps dying. But I do really want to keep it running.
As a preliminary, does anyone have a suggestion as to what is causing the unknown deaths of everything that is living?
The only thing I can think to do right now is scrap the tank (I hope not, at this point, it’s my only one), or get a professional crew to try to totally remodel it.
Any ideas?
-Matthew

 

[Jahalu]

You may have multiple things going on here. If the parameters are good, invert deaths might not be related to fish deaths. The chain of fish deaths sounds like there might be something disease-wise in the tank. Any other symptoms besides breathing hard?

 

[bean2986]

Are you running carbon in case there is toxins? And have you checked for stray voltage?

 

[Cnidoblast]

Wonder if a heater failed and ended up dosing a lethal amount of copper into the system - get a API copper testkit ASAP

 

[Maritimer]

Welcome to Reef2Reef, Matthew - albeit under stressful circumstances.

Let's see if we can help get this sorted out for you - can you post a photo of the tank / system?

And then we'll send out a call to the Cavalry - #reefsquad - and hope someone can shed a ray of light.

To me, it almost feels as though you've got some sort of toxin / contaminant getting into the tank. Is there any possibility of something rusting/corroding? Scented candles or something similar being used around the tank? Glass-cleaner or other household cleaners that might have gotten in there as an aerosol? ... A place to start, to try to eliminate the impossible . . .

~Bruce

 

[DSC reef]

I'm leaning towards a contaminant. This is unfortunate and I'm sorry for your losses. There were significant changes so it's going to be hard to pinpoint. You wrote that you did a full cleaning, did you use anything to clean with? Did you stir up a dirty sand bed? Maybe something malfunctioned or a contaminant was in the filter?

 

[4FordFamily]

Welcome to Reef2Reef, Matthew - albeit under stressful circumstances.

Let's see if we can help get this sorted out for you - can you post a photo of the tank / system?

And then we'll send out a call to the Cavalry - #reefsquad - and hope someone can shed a ray of light.

To me, it almost feels as though you've got some sort of toxin / contaminant getting into the tank. Is there any possibility of something rusting/corroding? Scented candles or something similar being used around the tank? Glass-cleaner or other household cleaners that might have gotten in there as an aerosol? ... A place to start, to try to eliminate the impossible . . .

~Bruce

Welcome home, you will love it here, op. I do agree with this.

 

[40B Knasty]

Going to have to agree with the crew about it being either stray voltage, copper, or a cleaning solution.
You can rule out a fish, invert, or coral disease or parasite since everything is being hit with whatever the unknown cause is.
Slim chance of it being leeching of lead from your glass. pH is low. That can show sign of low O². Could be your sand bed releasing nitrogen gas.

 

[Matthew Palmer]

It’s not the prettiest thing algae and cyano-wise (probably due to my clean up crew dying) But this is all I could snap this morning. I will get more if needed later today after a water test.

 

[Diesel]

It's always a burden when you have to go through this.
If you have a carbon reactor hook it up ASAP as that will remove any unwanted toxins from your water.
Reading through your post I miss a lot of things as in history of water parameters, also if you ever quarantined your new fish.
Due to your corals dying off we all could agree on that something is up with the parameters of this tank.
I see all fish on the bottom of your tank and you mentioned that they ain't eating and experience rapid breathing.
As I said carbon as in activated carbon can help a lot.
Not sure if this can rescue your fish.
Besides the breathing part what else you can see that doesn't look normal on the fish, cloudy eyes, spots, red strikes, discoloration, swimming weird?
All this can lead to a decease.
It's hard though but maybe you should take your loss and not spending a lot of money trying to fix things and start with a clean slate.

 

[DeniseAndy]

I am sorry for your losses. I agree it could be a contaminant due to the invert and corals dying. How long did it take for corals to disappear? Days, overnight, month?
What was your clean up crew besides the mithrax you mentioned? Any large turbos?
For the fish, I would guess disease introduced if you began 1 month ago and the newer fish continued to die on you. Did you QT (as asked before)?

Major die off like that will continue to contaminate the system and just compound issues. I have had this happen twice in my 6g tanks (one from heater, one from bad silicon). Each time, I took out anything alive and put in a rescue tank. In your case I would try to get a quick 20g set up to qt the clown and tang, but odds are not good. Sorry.

Next, drain the tank, take the rock and put in a big bucket with saltwater and flow and cover the bin to keep light out. This will kill off algae, but keep good bacteria going. Do water changes every so often. Remove sand and clean well. Clean tank with just water (maybe vinegar). Leave sand to completely dry out.

I would also make sure to really clean the canister filter or remove from picture and use HOB filters. What is in the canister filter?

After that, I would go ahead and start over. You will still have the cured rock going so that will help with cycle. Get stable, then begin with one coral, one fish and see how it progresses.

Good luck!
JMO from my experiences.

 

[Tahoe61]

The only thing I can think to do right now is scrap the tank (I hope not, at this point, it’s my only one), or get a professional crew to try to totally remodel it.
Any ideas?
-Matthew

Welcome to R2R,

A professional crew is going to do water changes, water testing and sell you equipment and other products.

Are you doing water changes and what is the source of your water?
Are you testing parameters other than the basics?
A pH of 7.9 is fine, I would not correct for that value.

You can turn this around without spending a ton of money on a professional crew or scrapping the tank. Proceed with water changes with RODI with a quality salt mix, run some activated carbon and continue routine maintenance and testing.

Good Luck.

 

[Porpoise Hork]

Hello and welcome to the site. While a complete tear down and restart may sound tempting, keep in mind you would likely have to go through another cycle as all your existing nitrifying bacteria will be killed off. To me it sounds like yout tank parameters are way off and the die-off is largely due to the prolonged stress everything has been under. If you do not have a full test kit to check everything, take a sample to your LFS and have them check it for you.

I didn't see any listing of the rest of your tank parameters.
What is the salinity, Alk, calcium, and temp like?
Also when was the last time you serviced the filter?
Do you clean the sand bed, and if so how often?
Are you dosing the tank with anything, if so how old is it?
What kind of food are you feeding with fresh, frozen or flake?
How much surface agitation does your tank have?

 

[Matthew Palmer]

I’m testing the water at my LFS today.
I haven’t serviced the filter for three months since it is indeed meant for a larger tank and that was the advice I was given.
I stir the sand bed once a week since my LFS thinks I should wait one more month to get any nassarius snails or sand sifters.
I added some purple up for the calcium since the last time I tested it was slightly (not much) low. I also added some buffer since my pH was at 8.0
I feed the fish a cycle of mysis, brine, bloodworms, and oyster eggs... maybe small pieces of krill sometimes.
The surface of the water is disrupted to where I can hear the water rising and dropping.

 

[Matthew Palmer]

I’m testing the water at my LFS today.
I haven’t serviced the filter for three months since it is indeed meant for a larger tank and that was the advice I was given.
I stir the sand bed once a week since my LFS thinks I should wait one more month to get any nassarius snails or sand sifters.
I added some purple up for the calcium since the last time I tested it was slightly (not much) low. I also added some buffer since my pH was at 8.0
I feed the fish a cycle of mysis, brine, bloodworms, and oyster eggs... maybe small pieces of krill sometimes.
The surface of the water is disrupted to where I can hear the water rising and dropping.

But I’ll be testing the water again and giving my results in around 3 hours from now.

 

[Matthew Palmer]

These are water test results

Calcium was 560 ppm (or 28 drops) (I know that’s it’s a bit off)
KH was at 196.6 ppm (or 11 drops)

 

[Matthew Palmer]

 

[Matthew Palmer]

 

[Matthew Palmer]

 

[Porpoise Hork]

The calcium level is very high, this alone can cause significant stress in marine life. Natural sea water ranges between 380 and 410. If you're dosing ca, stop. Test your source water and verify it is not the cause of the high levels. Once you have verified the source water is in range do a large water change. At least 30-40%. give it a day or two and repeat.

I don't see a salinity result either. The specific gravity needs to be between 1.021 and 1.026. If it is outside this range it will stress your more sensitive inhabitants and they will start to die off, much like you have had happen.

You really should be checking your water parameters at least 2-3 times a week on a tank this size as things can get out of balance fairly quickly.