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Wipe Out. All Fish Dead, High Nitrites Have No Idea What Happened.


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Well, all my fish, most of the 'pods, a bunch of inverts all dead. Last night I topped up the tank, tested the water and did some algae scrubbing, this morning everything dead. The coral is all closed up so I don't know how bad my losses are there.

Anyone know what would cause my nitrites to go from zero to max on the test kits (atleast 3.3) in a matter of hours? The tank has been up since May.

help?

:'(

Edit: Troubleshooting with the guys from Aquarium Illusions leads to this hypothesis; copper toxicity from using Instant Ocean's Reef Accelerator. I didn't even use a full dose, but we're thinking it stressed them out enough to affect the water chemistry and cause a nice cycle o' death. :(

Edited by kindasleepy
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Nothing was missing last night, so if anything was dead it was something that was neither fish nor coral because they all looked fine last night. Topped up from my bucket of pre-mixed water that has been sitting for about a week with a power head and heater in it. Slightly hyposaline for top ups. Last night I had no ammonia, no nitrites and a tiny amount of nitrates. This morning I have off the chart nitrites and ammonia at 1.2. I use tap water for my top ups but condition it with Prime, and lately have been testing for ammonia before I use it since we had warm weather there for a bit. Run off= ammonia.

Edited by kindasleepy
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Also, any one have any advice about what to do now, especially with all the dead inverts? I did a 25% water change, and tried to suck up as many pod bodies as possible. There are some I can't get to though so I'm worried that it's going to wipe out my coral and the remaining crabs, snails and pods. Found dead worms on the sand too. So much death. :cry:

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i know i^m not in the same league as u or the same time zone but i had a major wipe out a couple months ago, similair to u, i have a 75 fresh in my bedroom, getting ready to set up a 29g. shrimp, still in my bedroom, i used glass cleaner to clean down the rest of the dresser drawers, & the huge mirror, my tank was about 5 feet from the mirror but some of the fumes from the cleaner must of drifted over the the tank, & like u everything was alive & swimming right side up when i went to bed & when i woke up i l;ost over 7 different pairs of rainbows, it wasn^t a happy day at my house.really peed off,

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Yes it's saltwater, just of a lower salinity than the water in the tank to make up for the extra salinity from evaporation.

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Yeah, Smellyfish. I'm really upset. I've put a tonne of work into that tank and was finally happy with the fish and they seemed happy and then BAM. Dead.

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Well there's a problem right there. for evaporation you use freshwater not saltwater. The salt doesn't evaporate just the water does.

Whats your Salinity reading in the tank? PM me and lets continue this there................................

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Replying here about the salinity so anyone else with advice can also see it.

I understand that salt doesn't evaporate out, however, any time I've ever topped up with completely fresh water the salinity has dropped too rapidly and too far. Before my top up last night the specific gravity was at 1.026, after my top up and currently my SG is 1.024.

Am I the only one that finds that adding completely fresh water makes their SG drop too quickly/too far?

Edited by kindasleepy
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How deep is your sand bed? Any chance something large (fish, star, shrimp, etc) got burried a while ago? Something may have dug up a dead spot in the night and a noxious bubble broke free.

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Last night I topped up the tank, tested the water and did some algae scrubbing..

How much was "some" algae scrubbing? One gram of algae, if decomposes quicker than the filter can manage, equated roughly 1 ppm of ammonia/nitrite in 250 Gallon tank. If the tank is 50 Gallon, then it is 5 ppm. One gram is a lot of algae, though. Was it a lot?

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My tank never had a problem if salinity bounced .003 in one day, but it was hardy fish and corals. By odd chance, is your temp normal or did the heater fry?

Keep doing water changes and adding excess prime to help anything still alive survive.

The one time I had a die off like that, my mother cleaned the front of my tank with Bonami which I assume got sucked into the skimmer air intake...

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