Hello all,
All the organisms in my reef are dying and I am stumped why. My tank has not been doing well for the last two months and was finally starting to return to normal despite a massive hair algae outbreak. Today I was vacuuming the gravel and scrubbing the hair algae off the rocks. I attach the end of the gravel vacuum to a water cartridge filter with a 5 micron filter inside. A sicce pump plumbed inline then returns the water to the aquarium. I do it this way so I can remove all of the particulates in the reef while only doing a 10% water change. I do this once a month or every other month and this has been the fifth time I did it in almost a year without issues previously. During the water change my yellownose shrimp goby died but I attributed it to being injured while moving the rocks around. Right after I finished topping off the aquarium I noticed the yellow tang hanging out upside down and a green chromis laying on it's side twitching. Once again I chalked it up to physical trauma and went to bed because I was so angry I had killed three of my longest lived fish. When I woke up at 3am I am in disbelief because all of the inhabitants are now affected. I moved all of the fish I could catch to my quarantine tank and my fire shrimp to a small 3 gallon.
I am left with all of my corals in my tank and the other inverts too large to fit in 3 gallons. All remaining organisms appears severely stressed but I don't have any place to put them. I've been keeping saltwater for almost 20 years and I am stumped. My leading theory is toxin exposure but I am unsure of what it was or how it got into my system. I don't keep any particularly toxic species such as sea apples or puffers. The water I used to top off the tank was the same water I had just used this past weekend. I also changed the carbon in the media reactor. I have attached photos of the most afflicted fish and my corals. Any suggestions to help resolve this issue or if anyone has any theories, it would be greatly appreciated.
All the organisms in my reef are dying and I am stumped why. My tank has not been doing well for the last two months and was finally starting to return to normal despite a massive hair algae outbreak. Today I was vacuuming the gravel and scrubbing the hair algae off the rocks. I attach the end of the gravel vacuum to a water cartridge filter with a 5 micron filter inside. A sicce pump plumbed inline then returns the water to the aquarium. I do it this way so I can remove all of the particulates in the reef while only doing a 10% water change. I do this once a month or every other month and this has been the fifth time I did it in almost a year without issues previously. During the water change my yellownose shrimp goby died but I attributed it to being injured while moving the rocks around. Right after I finished topping off the aquarium I noticed the yellow tang hanging out upside down and a green chromis laying on it's side twitching. Once again I chalked it up to physical trauma and went to bed because I was so angry I had killed three of my longest lived fish. When I woke up at 3am I am in disbelief because all of the inhabitants are now affected. I moved all of the fish I could catch to my quarantine tank and my fire shrimp to a small 3 gallon.
I am left with all of my corals in my tank and the other inverts too large to fit in 3 gallons. All remaining organisms appears severely stressed but I don't have any place to put them. I've been keeping saltwater for almost 20 years and I am stumped. My leading theory is toxin exposure but I am unsure of what it was or how it got into my system. I don't keep any particularly toxic species such as sea apples or puffers. The water I used to top off the tank was the same water I had just used this past weekend. I also changed the carbon in the media reactor. I have attached photos of the most afflicted fish and my corals. Any suggestions to help resolve this issue or if anyone has any theories, it would be greatly appreciated.