Most fish suddenly die in 180 gallon tank

[Weirdkloud]

I have a new 80 gallon - sorry title was error - tank that has been running for 4 months. It cycled and we started adding fish about 3 months ago. Some were from another longterm reef tank in the house (60 gallon, 4 years, never had problems) and others were new. One tang, 2 anthias, foxface, wrasses, 2 damsels, a blenny, a goby and a Cardinal. Carefully not overstocked. Lots of shrimp, crabs. No corals yet. Plenty of live rocks with hiding places. Large nios quantum skimmer. They had been living together well for about 2 months when we put on a single radion xr15 over half the tank for the first time, about 8 hours per day. That was the only change we made.

A few days later we noted the fish were all hiding and then they started rapidly dying during the day.

All water testing looked good to us. Temp was normal. We took water to local marine store and they also said it all checked out and levels were within normal range. We did a water 30% change anyway with no improvement. On a suggestion I looked at voltage and it was 0.7 on my meter. I freaked out and changed the parts in my skimmer and heater and got it down to 0.2 but just noted today that it's actually 0.9 in my other tank and the fish left in there is fine. I dont think it's aggression because the large anthias and the Cardinal were the worst and they're all dead. Also the fish don't have injuries. Fish store couldnt find anything telling about dead fish.

The few fish I have left are acting bizarre gulping water, swimming sideways, and generally dying day by day. I have a goby, a lawnmower blenny, 1 wrasse and my tang. The inverts and my goby-shrimp pair look great. Everyone else looks like they're on the way out. Doing another large water change today.

I'm thinking of giving up on the hobby. I feel like my friends have died and it's my fault. I just want to know why. Any ideas? Thank you so much.

 

[brandon429]

It’s fish disease. 80% of all new assemblies that skip fallow and quarantine will experience an eighty pct loss or more in the first eight months

must reinstate fallow, treat the fish separately, instate Paul’s feeding method thereafter.

to find sources: disease = fish disease forum here at rtr

Paul’s feeding method = search out Paul B 50 year old reef. You must still instate fallow and qt even if you use Paul’s feeding method, the fish disease forum specifically shows how to fallow and qt, and excellent feeding can’t make disease stay away alone. If you happen to have a fifty year old reef, and perfect feeding, it can. Self discover both source materials and read for one hour, your fish losses will drop substantially.


once you read for an hour in the fish disease forum


you’ll see how all disagreements about fallow and qt occur outside that forum. In actual place where only fallow and qt comprise the most fixes, few debate the practice. They debate the practice outside the forum, where there’s no responsibility to fix anyone’s tank live time. There are no retail potions you can buy or use other than actual medications that will work, reference for the claim is the fish disease forum where literally only fallow and quarantine fixes comprise all the proof you can see for pages and the other methods are totally absent.

 

[reefinatl]

It’s fish disease.

Agreed, almost 100% a disease outbreak. Only other option is chemical contamination of some sort but unlikely since only fish seem afflicted.

Maybe Velvet, there have been some theories that lighting can accelerate it. If velvet got in there it was just a matter of time even if you had no lights though.

 

[Weirdkloud]

Thank you so much

 

[brandon429]

It’s such a challenge compared to freshwater.

In fw, we know selecting the strongest fish at the lfs and bringing them home to a quality tank matched and aged to their biotope adaptation will typically lend a long life and the system fights back against disease without all the tedious approach


but marine, totally opposite. the healthy lfs specimens are still infected carriers, the disease or parasites quickly aim for lesser adapted ones from the mix, they infect and numbers increase to the point the strong ones will succumb. But at least they’re making headway in the fish disease forum always focus specifically here for any updates or changes to best procedures:

Fish Disease Treatment and Diagnosis

A forum for discussing treatment and diagnosing saltwater reef fish.

www.reef2reef.com

there are methods that work against marine fish disease aside from qt and fallow but you’re safer playing the documented numbers here. I know of no source for a more updated view on the internet than those of a gent whose daily task is running a giant public zoo aquatics exhibit. There’s internet opining and then there running a complete aquatics exhibit at the zoo and being nice enough to log the procedure online we can use free of charge.