HELP!! everything has died!! *long* pics

[cozmo2312]

i don't know what is going on with my tank!! i have had it up and running for about 2 months now and everything was fine until just a few days ago.. here is what i HAD in there:
bicolor psuedochromis
2 emarald crabs
an assortment of blue legged hermits and turbo snails
a coral banded shrimp
a bubble tip anemone
a sea cucumber
and that is about all
tank is a 10 gal with about 13lbs of LR about a 2 inch DSB and no mechanical filtration other than a powerhead.
the other day i woke up and went to turn on my light and noticed that my CBS was laying on the floor of the tank in two different pieces.... i was upset, but i have an emerald crab that is pretty large, so i thought they must have gotten into a fight or something, and the emerald won... well then very next morning i awoke to find my bicolor laying on the floor of the tank, dead as well... he was in one piece though.. i went to the LFS to disscuss this with the guy there and we narrowed it down to the fact that my tank temperature was running too high... so i went to kmart and bought a little fan and lowered my temp from ~80 down to ~76... we tested my water and everything checked out... we even tested dissolved oxyen content, and that was a little low, so we figured lowering the temp would help. i was also told by a friend of mine that the cucumber might be killing everything so i removed him as well.... well that lasted 2 days and then my emerald crabs started to die, and i came home tonight only to find that EVERY one of my turbo snails and blue legged hermits has also died... along with my bubble tip anemone.. and the water was very (white) cloudy... i am completly stumped... i noticed some weird worms or something crawling on one of my rocks that i have no idea what it is (see picture).
sorry this is soo long, but what is going on with my tank??? as far as i can tell there is not a single living thing left and i have to wait until monday to go to the LFS to retest the water and see what they have to say. i'm getting very frustrated!!

 

[the claw]

It wasn't your temp. The average reef is 80-82 on this site. But wait a minute. You had an BTA in the ten gallon? It probably went toxic and killed your tank.

 

[cozmo2312]

say wha???? no one ever said anything to me about BTA's "going toxic" remember, it is dead too, so did it kill everything in my tank and then kill itself??
why would it do this???
also, would this be the reason for all of the cloudyness??
argh, i'm so mad... if this is the case and i leave my tank alone for a few weeks (not add anything) with i eventually be able to start over, or will there be lasting effects in my rocks and sand??

 

[thomas712]

Tank became cloudy huh? I would suspect that you had an ammonia spike somtime after your testing was done at the lfs. Also perhaps heavy DOC's depending on your maintinace routine. Anemone's can fowl a tank but I would suspect at the rate of death occuring in your tank taht the cucumber would be my first choice to blame toxins on as well.
If it were me I would be running a mechanical filtation on that tank with carbon to help filter the water. A small saddle or power filter would keep the surface agitated and raise oxygen levels.
Bad things can happen very fast in a small tank, and putting a cucumber and anemone in that small a space might not have been the best of ideas, and running the carbon might have given you some more time to save something.
Really sorry to hear about the crash.
Thomas

 

[scotts]

Just so that you know, many people feel that keeping a small tank is the hardest thing to do. When something goes wrong it can go wrong in a big way. As you know. The general concensous (sp?) is that the larger the tank the better. There is a bigger room for error.
And yes your temp was not the problem. I run mine about 81 deg.
Scott

 

[grendelprime]

i run my tanks at 80 also, the worm looks like a bristle worm and there ok to have, my first thought was the cumber also, i had 1 in a 30 gallon that was misteriously wiped out a few days after he went on the lamb,small tanks require alot more attention then the larger ones because with such a small volume of water anything can send it out of whack in almost no time at all, sorry about your loss, u might want to do a pretty hefty water change to get your tank stable again and thinking about adding a little HOT filter might not be a bad idea

 

[cozmo2312]

thanks for the replys everyone... when i turned on my light this morning the "worm" thing has doubled if not tripled in size... it's very weird, it looks like a caterpillar of some sort. as far as the cucumber goes, i took him out after my bicolor died, and things in my tank continued to die a couple of days after that (emerald, turbos, etc) so if he released some sort of toxin, would that linger in the tank for a few days killing everything off??
thanks again for all your help

 

[ophiura]

I don't think it was the cuke. Cuke toxins are fatal to fish, but not terribly bad for inverts. I would really like to see more specifics on your tank parameters. Exact tank specs on ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, pH (morning and evening), alk, specific gravity.
I also would have some sort of hang on the back filtration, just for surface movement.