Animals are dying, not sure why?

[rickyl2]

Hello everybody,
I've had a 55g for over a year and all has been pretty well but for some reason the past couple weeks a few snails and crabs and my decorator crab died. Also, we have an anemone that for several weeks has turned white (used to be tan color) and is a lot smaller than it normally is.
The only change that we have made to the tank was added a chiller last month, bringing the average temp from 86 to 80 (I slowly brought the temp down to that over a 3 day period) but the anemone had changed before we added the chiller.
Water specs are a little off but doesn't seem drastic enough to be causing all these problems. I usually have better conditions than this but this is the most recent test. These are the only tests we did so maybe I need to do some other tests but I don't know what.
Nitrate- 60
Nitrite- 0
Alkalinity- 80
pH- 7.4
Any help/suggestions would be greatly appreciated. We haven't had any fish die in almost a year so I am trying to keep that from happening.
Thanks
Ricky
imageonex@msn.com

 

[ifirefight]

Whats the ammonia? Ph a little low. Alk Im assumming 80 ..you mean 8.0 dKh.Whats the SG?

 

[rickyl2]

The salinity is good, I use the floating glass type (the cheap kind with the thermometer inside). I will get a test of the ammonia and reply. Thanks for replying.

 

[ifirefight]

Most of your levels are on the lower side...when was the last water change??? Water changes can be very effective at keeping levels where they need to be. Are you using RO/DI water ??

 

[miaheatlvr]

The high temp may have killed something in your tank releasing amonia into your tank and you really have to work on bringing your nitrates down to at least 20-40ppm for starters.

 

[prevwon]

Isn't the PH level way too low? Shouldn't it be around 8.2 or so?

 

[bill109]

Originally Posted by PrevWon
Isn't the PH level way too low? Shouldn't it be around 8.2 or so?
at least 8.0
get tht up but dont add the bufferl stuff to quickly. it will kill ur fish if it is added to quick.

 

[rickyl2]

Tested the ammonia, phosphate and for copper. All were perfect. I may have found the cause, I stupidly thought Sparkletts was fine to top off with but I have heard that is not good to use. Hopefully I wasn't the only one dumb enough to think that. What is your guy's/girl's opinions on the likelyhood that the cause is my top-off water?
Thanks
Ricky

 

[rickyl2]

Oh I forgot, I tested the salinity at the LFS and it is close to perfect too, so it can't be that either (trying to cover all my bases here)

 

[huskychasrs]

Ok you say perfect but what were the actual levels? LFS is not always a trusted source.

 

[rbrockm1]

ph is lil low, but i not sure if it would have an effect on all that. it seems to be inverts that are haveing a hard time or are dyeing. there could be a chance of copper in the tank. its just a suggestion

 

[1journeyman]

What kind of lighting? What kind of anemone?

 

[sk8shorty01]

Originally Posted by rbrockm1
ph is lil low, but i not sure if it would have an effect on all that. it seems to be inverts that are haveing a hard time or are dyeing. there could be a chance of copper in the tank. its just a suggestion
I agree that the PH is quite low, definitely get that up. I would do a water change and use that to slowly bring up the PH to a normal 8.2. Copper is a strong possibility but seeing that there is no tap water being used to add as top-off there probably wont be much copper (if any at all) in the water that is being used. I would say it could be the PH because I would think the inverts would be mroe likely to suffer from changes in any balance in the tank. This would include PH, copper, temp, salinity. You salinity might be good for fish, but might be a little bit low for your inverts.
A water change should help, thats my suggestion.

 

[mcbdz]

Water change has my vote.

Then maybe some carbon just incase there is a toxin your not testing for.

 

[rickyl2]

My salinity is hardly high, it is 1.025 (I think) and I tested for copper twice, there is 0. I did a water change last night, hopefully that will help. I have PC lights, I think 130 watt total. It is a bubble tip anemone and has been fine for over 9 months till now. Even the little white starfish have started disappearing too and all my turbo snails (I had 4) are dead.

 

[mcbdz]

You may need to keep some water brewing incase you need more water changes. Try taking some water to lfs and have them test for everything they can test for. Do you have a qt ready just incase you need to remove your fish for safe keeping. Hopefully not, but if there is a crash you maybe able to sve them.

 

[1journeyman]

Ok, I misread your numbers. I thought it said your pH was 8.0.
pH 0f 7.4 is definitely killing things. That needs to be addressed asap.

 

[rickyl2]

Well, I got the pH up to 8.0 so hopefully that helps, I guess I will see what happens. Thanks everyone for your help.