Something killed all my fish?

[exalectric]

Hey guys. My husband and I just received an order of snails & hermits from ReefCleaners.org and within 24 hours more than half of our fish are dead, in 3 different tank systems. Has anyone had this happen or know what it could be? There have been no changes other than adding these CUC which leads me to believe they’re the culprits or it wouldn’t happen across 3 unconnected tanks at the same time.

Upon seeing a couple fish struggling to swim and a few others no where to be found, we did an emergency 40% water change on all 3 systems and didn’t check the levels beforehand. But now post water change testing kits look the same as always. No fish had any issues before adding these CUC. And the survivors seem to be swimming like normal for now
dead list:
Maroon clown
Oscellaris clown
Foxface
Cleaner goby
2x blue damsels
Bengaii cardinal
Clown tang

Survivors:
1 oscellaris clown
Clown trigger
Picasso trigger
Snowflake eel
Pj cardinal

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. I just can’t imagine how this happened. No water from the shipment got into any tanks and the CUC arrivals are also fine and cruising around.

 

[dwair]

Hey guys. My husband and I just received an order of snails & hermits from ReefCleaners.org and within 24 hours more than half of our fish are dead, in 3 different tank systems. Has anyone had this happen or know what it could be? There have been no changes other than adding these CUC which leads me to believe they’re the culprits or it wouldn’t happen across 3 unconnected tanks at the same time.

Upon seeing a couple fish struggling to swim and a few others no where to be found, we did an emergency 40% water change on all 3 systems and didn’t check the levels beforehand. But now post water change testing kits look the same as always. No fish had any issues before adding these CUC. And the survivors seem to be swimming like normal for now
dead list:
Maroon clown
Oscellaris clown
Foxface
Cleaner goby
2x blue damsels
Bengaii cardinal
Clown tang

Survivors:
1 oscellaris clown
Clown trigger
Picasso trigger
Snowflake eel
Pj cardinal

Any thoughts are greatly appreciated. I just can’t imagine how this happened. No water from the shipment got into any tanks and the CUC arrivals are also fine and cruising around.

No idea, but I've got a reefcleaners order that was supposed to arrive today and was delayed, so now I'm even more nervous...

 

[brandon429]

It is not impossible that the wet shells and surfaces on the actual CUC vectored in brook or some other fast malady. A pure fallow approach would have the cuc held in place in another tank for 80 days that was known clean, or they’d be in place before fish added to the tank, and included in that tanks fallow prep

that some of the fish survived seems to rule our poison and hardware issues, without fish necropsy or obvious symptoms externally it’s quite a big guess

 

[exalectric]

No idea, but I've got a reefcleaners order that was supposed to arrive today and was delayed, so now I'm even more nervous...

Good luck. Hopefully ours was a fluke situation. Thankfully my snowflake eel made it and the spiny box puffer was in a separate tank that didn’t get CUC from this order.

 

[JumboShrimp]

So sorry about your tank.

 

[Cell]

Symptoms of death?

 

[Pistondog]

Sorry about your fish. That's no fun.
Let's us know if you find anything

 

[Rtaylor]

I’d think adding the cuc was coincidental. Reefcleaners doesn’t stock fish and the odds of them bringing a disease into the tank are really tiny. Something else was probably the problem. Any contaminant in the air (cleaners, air fresheners, etc)? Windows open, maybe someone was spraying pesticides in the neighborhood?

 

[Cell]

List the tanks, what died in each and what survived in each.

 

[exalectric]

It is not impossible that the wet shells and surfaces on the actual CUC vectored in brook or some other fast malady. A pure fallow approach would have the cuc held in place in another tank for 80 days that was known clean, or they’d be in place before fish added to the tank, and included in that tanks fallow prep

that some of the fish survived seems to rule our poison and hardware issues, without fish necropsy or obvious symptoms externally it’s quite a big guess

Would the water change have effect on diluting anything like that? The surviving clown was struggling to swim similar to the clown tang who was the last to die prior to water change, but now is just looking for his lost partner.

 

[Goaway]

I can't think of one disease that can kill fish in 24 hours of introduction. What disease would do that?

 

[exalectric]

I’d think adding the cuc was coincidental. Reefcleaners doesn’t stock fish and the odds of them bringing a disease into the tank are really tiny. Something else was probably the problem. Any contaminant in the air (cleaners, air fresheners, etc)? Windows open, maybe someone was spraying pesticides in the neighborhood?

Doubtful. The tanks are in different places in the house, and wouldn’t any air pollutants affect all the tanks? There are 2 other tanks next to each of the tanks with issues, and they’re spread across 2 floors of the house.

 

[gabrieltackitt]

I had an order from them recently and 99% of it was dead already, and I have yet to get a refund for any of it. Everyone had praised them so I was expecting to actually be taken care of when this happened. Not sure I’d even want to try again after this point.

 

[Pistondog]

Can you test for ammonia?

 

[exalectric]

List the tanks, what died in each and what survived in each.

16g biocube- no survivors
Cleaner goby
maroon clown

40 breeder
Oscellaris - 1 dead 1 made it
Snowflake eel - survived
Blue damsels- both dead
Bengali cardinal - 2 dead 1 made it
Pj cardinal - survived

75g
Clown & Picasso trigger - made it
Fox face - died
Clown tang - died
2 oscellaris - made it

 

[exalectric]

Can you test for ammonia?

Ammonia was showing 0 after the water change, but we didn’t grab a water sample before the change because panic over fish dying. I wish we had tho.

 

[Cell]

No symptoms other than struggling to swim? All inverts fine?

 

[exalectric]

Symptoms of death?

Struggling to swim, very lethargic, didn’t come out for feeding time.

No idea on the biocube residents, they were dead once I woke up this morning. but I’m guessing the same issues.

 

[Pistondog]

Ammonia was showing 0 after the water change, but we didn’t grab a water sample before the change because panic over fish dying. I wish we had tho.

Did you drip acclimate?

 

[exalectric]

No symptoms other than struggling to swim? All inverts fine?

Yep. Inverts are perfectly normal, cruising and snacking.