What the Fart??!!

[raisingtwo2006]

Ok, so we were gone last Sat. to Panama City, Fl.. Came home on Monday to feed the dogs and all that-then left early Tuesday to Gatlinburg... Came home last night.

SO- the problem-

When we got home, our tank looked terrible.

The froghammer that we paid 50 bucks a head for was dead- nothing but the white skeleton.. The purple hammer that we just got was a white skeleton. The GBTA is all shriveled.. the BTA is bleaching, a pearly Jawfish was dead stuck to the powerhead, the cleaner shrimp is nowhere to be seen.

What in the world happened??

We had our water tested and everything turner out just perfect- the water level was down from being gone a week, but the salinity wasn't that high- our MHs are on a timer, for a 9 hour stretch, give or take a little. My xenia tips are all white and droopy, and the monti caps were still colored but had no polyp extension.. oh, and the GSP had no flowers showing either. Also, most of the mushrooms melted and the zoa are looking crinkly.

We thought maybe it got too hot if the timer didn't switch off, or maybe it didn't come on.. and there was a 4 day stretch with no light.

The only fish that didn't make it was the jawfish- even the Powder Blue is still swimming and eating.

The water looks a little cloudy, but the skimmer is still working, and not going crazy.


This sucks you guys!!


What happened??

 

[johnr2604]

I had something similar happen a few months ago and never did figure it out. All my perams checked great. Sorry about your losses and hope you can come to a conclusion

 

[dmahoney82]

Ahh the pleasures of taking a vacation and coming home to a disaster. Good luck

 

[soojpudge]

So sorry for your losses :sad:.

 

[jaydm93teg]

could the power have gone out during one of georgias little storms while u were gone? Maybe if ur power went out for a day or so couldve had a temp spike or something and the power came back on and u never knew it went out cause nobody was there?

 

[raisingtwo2006]

I don't think it went out... none of the clocks were flashing. the lights are out now cuz of a storm, though. how long is it going to take the bta to bounce back?

 

[jmaneyapanda]

what were your actual water parameters? A change in salinity can be quite problematic for inverts. I wouldn't doubtr if it was some chain reaction event. All it would take is one thing to die, and then that triggers another, etc. At the very least do a big water change and run some carbon.

 

[raisingtwo2006]

the salinity was at 1.024. we usually keep it at 021-022. I only added about two gals of freshwater to bring it down slowly. today I added two more.

nitrates were 0. ammonia was 0. nitrites were 0. ph was 8.1ish

 

[FutureInterest]

ACK! Its going to be hard to pinpoint the problem... I just hope your tank recovers completely and there are no further losses.

 

[raisingtwo2006]

here is a nice little tidbit... I discovered that my filter isn't working. its a magnum 350. I don't know how long it hasn't been working for. you can't hear it. and unless the water level is way low..you can't see any movement from it. I tried what I knew to do to fix it. but the impeller seems to not be spinning. or maybe it is...I don't know but its not creating suction and no water is being pulled through the pipes. I went to petsmart to try to buy a filter but they are closed... I grabbed some hob filter replacements from walmart to at least get some filtering going on.

 

[jmaneyapanda]

RaisingTwo2006;189265 wrote: the salinity was at 1.024. we usually keep it at 021-022. I only added about two gals of freshwater to bring it down slowly. today I added two more.

nitrates were 0. ammonia was 0. nitrites were 0. ph was 8.1ish

eeehhhh.....get your salinity up. Most corals will not survive well in salinity that low. Aside from the canister filter failing, what other flow do you have in the tank?

 

[raisingtwo2006]

OK, will raise the Salinity to .O26 the other flow is a koralia 2. the guy at petland did the test and everything was testing at zero. no nothing. I don't know what kind of test he used though..

 

[darren24]

If you travel overnight and do not auto top off I would keep the SG at the 1.024 - 1.025 mark. That way it will not get out of range (on the high side) if you are gone overnight.

 

[soojpudge]

I think they use dip strips to test the water which is hardly very accurate... With that much die off how could your water be perfect!

My lil theory is that since you keep your salinity on the low side and were going to be gone for 4-5 days... You may have put too much fresh water in the tank to compensate? So you lowered it to a level that a few things died and that caused more death. Maybe.

I dunno its just a thought. Sorry for your losses though. :sad:

 

[soarin']

I think that test must be off.

The fact that your mushrooms "melted" should be an indicator that something went pretty wrong in the tank -- those guys are pretty tough as far as I know.

I don't think it was a tank power outage, because the xenias only have a little white at the tips -- if the tank had any period of time without oxygen that affected anything else, the xenia would be the first to go.

Do you think you might have had an automatic fish feeder that dumped too much food in the tank? (or a human one?)

The GSP acts pretty much like a living water tester -- if they are not out then something is wrong with your water.

How stinky was the dead fish stuck to the powerhead? If he had died early enough, that might have killed off the frogspawns and stressed everything else. I think it would take a day or two for the frogspawn to turn to white skeleton.

Was it a large cleaner shrimp that is missing? Maybe he died and set off a chain reaction?

i am very sorry to hear about your loss -- I know what it's like to come home to a tank disaster!

 

[raisingtwo2006]

the tests werent with strips.. i saw him putting drops of stuff in tubes of my water. but i dont know what test it was.

no one fed them while we were gone. no auto feeder or anything. we fed them as we passed through on monday night. the jawfish looked like he was recently dead.. his eyes werent even clouded over. the shrimp was pretty big.. one of the bigger ones i have seen.

the mushrooms had started drooping and melting before we left. but i figured it was because of the light upgrade.

the gsp has a few (10-15) polyps coming out now, but the btas are still very white. they are extended like normal. and will take krill and mysis from me, but they still look bad.

 

[reefknight]

Kimberly - Sorry to hear about your losses,

I would raise the salinity as some of the others have suggested. I would aim for the the .025 - .026 range. I kept this same level even when I had a fish only system, as a couple of my fish were Red Sea specimens and this was closer to their natural level.