Trying to narrow down whats killing my fish.

JCSReefing · Aug 7, 2018

I recently had some type of bloom in my reef about a week ago. After that has seemed to clear I looked at my fish and realized 1st, my coral beauty had a white spot near its head. next day, Dead.. after that about a day later noticed my hippo/blue tang was scratching on rocks which i thought was just ich possibly or stressed out from the bloom. He is still alive 5 days after however last night my powder blue tang was skinny and had what looked like fin rot and blemishes on the skin. Today, found him on bottom of tank 24hrs later dead.
Other fish in the tank are two oscelerous clowns, two snowflake clowns, a yellow spotted golby, a wrasse, and a blenny. They seem to be hanging in there but am very nervous this is obviously going to spread whatever it is. The blue/hippo tang is also hanging in and all are eating but so was the powder blue and then 24hrs later gone.
I took some picture of the powder blue today in hopes someone could chime in and help.
Also, i lost all monipora's and kenya tree softies. (think this was from whatever bloom i had) I say bloom, becuase all levels of the tank water were not out of the normal by any means. I did a 50% water change after the bloom also. tested again and are;

dkh: 8/7
calcium. 450
magnesium; 1400
phosphate 0.07
nitrate >5ppm
nitrite 0
ammonia 0
ph 7.88

any inpute or what i should do would help!

Humblefish · Aug 7, 2018

Did the bloom look anything like this?

JCSReefing · Aug 7, 2018

Humblefish said:
Did the bloom look anything like this?

No,

No just very cloudy white hazy

Gareth elliott · Aug 7, 2018

Looks like a bacteria bloom.

So ideas, your ammonia test is giving a false negative.
Or the bacteria are using up o2 faster than it is replaced.

You could run uv, doesnt have to be a huge system. Even the cheaper units will help.
Increase aeration, run skimmer 24/7 if not already, add an air stone next to return, point power heads for greater surface agitation. And run an increased wc schedule till cloud dissipates.

You can verify ammonia presence with a nitrite test, if that is zero. Run test than leave in sealed test tube for x hours. If when you return its positive there is most likely ammonia.

JCSReefing · Aug 7, 2018

Gareth elliott said:
Looks like a bacteria bloom.

So ideas, your ammonia test is giving a false negative.
Or the bacteria are using up o2 faster than it is replaced.

You could run uv, doesnt have to be a huge system. Even the cheaper units will help.
Increase aeration, run skimmer 24/7 if not already, add an air stone next to return, point power heads for greater surface agitation. And run an increased wc schedule till cloud dissipates.

You can verify ammonia presence with a nitrite test, if that is zero. Run test than leave in sealed test tube for x hours. If when you return its positive there is most likely ammonia.

I did everything but leave the nitrite test for hours. I will try that. The cloud has been gone now for about 3 days which is when I noticed all the issues with the fish which would be odd for a bacterial bloom to take fish out this fast no?

Gareth elliott · Aug 7, 2018

jcs401 said:
I did everything but leave the nitrite test for hours. I will try that. The cloud has been gone now for about 3 days which is when I noticed all the issues with the fish which would be odd for a bacterial bloom to take fish out this fast no?

Each tank is different in regards to how much O2 enters the system, as well as the inability to quantify the actual population increase of bacteria. Also each bacteria strain has different O2 uptake rates. Couple that with the stress placed on the fish from the parameter shift that caused the bloom.