HELP!Tank crash!

[caribbeannie]

I've had a 29 gallon Biocube set up for about seven weeks: all water parameters WNL, test almost daily, LAS tested too. My fish have died one by one over the last week: all lost their appetite, found dead. The only thing different is that I added a coral banded shrimp: he seems fine, as do my corals. Is he killing them??? The fish didn't seem punctured, attacked, just dead. One fish is completely missing, a healthy (?) lawnmower. could he have eaten him??? Do I need to let my tank lie fallow for a while, get rid of the CBS?I was feeding Formula one food....they ate it at first....???

 

[mcbdz]

First, sorry about your loss. Now to make it easier for people to help you list all your actual info. Real numbers, not just WNNL. Age of tank. What kind of fish and how long you had them before they died. What else do you have in your tank sytill(corals, inverts, etc.) Maybe then someone will notice something that will help. Good Luck

 

[spanko]

How many fish are we talking about here?

 

[porthosandjazz]

Originally Posted by caribbeannie
I've had a 29 gallon Biocube set up for about seven weeks: all water parameters WNL, test almost daily, LAS tested too. My fish have died one by one over the last week: all lost their appetite, found dead. The only thing different is that I added a coral banded shrimp: he seems fine, as do my corals. Is he killing them??? The fish didn't seem punctured, attacked, just dead. One fish is completely missing, a healthy (?) lawnmower. could he have eaten him??? Do I need to let my tank lie fallow for a while, get rid of the CBS?I was feeding Formula one food....they ate it at first....???

Regarding the lawnmower blenny...
We lost ours for three months. Turns out he JUMPED into the back part of our tank.. the overflow area and he survived there on nothing but leftovers. He was very skinny when we found him.

 

[reefkprz]

I'm curious how you have more than one fish in a 7 week old tank to begin with. at seven weeks you should only have had one.

 

[caribbeannie]

I entered a question to learn, not get condemned. For those less judgemental,I started with RO water prepared with salt by my LAS, my pH is 8.2, nitrates and nitrites at 0,have remained there, 35 pds. of cured live rock,live sand, 4 hermits, 2 turbos, for two weeks: at advice of LAS, added a small Sumatran Perc: he ate and swam fine for the last few weeks until this last week, then died. I added the Lawnmower after a couple of weeks to eat the moderate green algae: the last time I saw him was fine, eating. I added the Coral banded shrimp a week ago.He seems fine (is he killing or eating fish?are they capable of that?) I've checked the overflow, etc for the Lawnmower: he's not in there. I added a foam barrier to keep him out of there: he did that jump over trick a couple of weeks ago. The corals are two very small zoas, one small frogspawn, a leather coral and a few small mushrooms. I've been adding 1/2 cap full of Kent Marine calcium buffers A&B alternate days each at direction of LAS. I've changed the filters a couple of times. There is a moderate Diatom bloom. Any constructive help is needed and wanted

 

[1journeyman]

Sorry for your loss.
No one is judging you. I'm sure you are sensitive right now, but from an objective standpoint wht I read was advice, not judgement.
Have you tested for ammonia? That is the most toxic and potentially the deadliest product produced by fish waste/decaying food, etc.
Your tank is very young. Adding corals this early can be problematic. Also, if you are using an additive, are you testing for it? NEVER add anything unless you are testing. My guess is your calcium/alk etc. are off the chart high right now. Test for ammonia, Calcium, Alk. and get back to us.
Coral Banded Shrimp are known fish predators.

 

[snaredrum]

Sorry to hear about your loss. I also have a 29 Biocube and have had no problem so far after 3 months. I'm keeping my fingers crossed. Anyway, I have not had to add anything to my tank as far as Cal. buffers or the sort. Have you been having problems with your CA.? Have you been testing your CA.? The reason I ask this is because it seems that a lot of people are adding stuff that would have been takin care of with water changes. My Ca. stays around 450 with no adding of anything. Can you give us a little more infomation like have you tested Ca. I have found out that MOST people on here are very good about giving sound time tested answers to questions. Just my 2 cents. Good luck and keep us posted.

 

[caribbeannie]

I have NO ammonia in the tank, and yes, the calcium has been tested at my LAS the day before yesterday: they are the ones that advised adding it for the corals (which seem to be easier to deal with than fish!)

 

[caribbeannie]

BTW, the store is about as puzzled as I am: I'm probably driving them crazy with all my questions and postulations. I've about decided that there may be some kind of biological issue: bacteria or something(yes, I have a degree in science). Could it have been the Formula One food?Do the diatoms hurt fish?

 

[snaredrum]

I use Formula One sometimes. I haven't had any problems. Over feeding is not the issue because of 0.0 ammonia. hmm. Someone somewhere on here has had the same problem and will crack the case. What does your NO2 (Nitrite) look like? Ammonia might be back down and Nitrite up. Might be worth checking.

 

[caribbeannie]

There are no nitrates or nitrites.......I checked again! I'm not going to add any fish for about 6+ weeks, if ever. The store said they would take the CBS in a trade-in: don't want a trouble-maker, but he seems happy and healthy, more than I can say for the fish.

 

[snaredrum]

I would do a water change just to see if that helps. I would do a couple of 20% ers over a few days. Then retest.

 

[ejensen]

I would stop adding calcium to your tank until you get a calcium test. You do not need to add any with only zoo's. I would invest in test kits so you can provide us with real #'s. You should be writing this stuff down so you can see what you tank is doing. How long have you been adding calcium? So every time you add calcium it should raise it 5 ppm. Those zoo's are not using that much. Your system could crash from that.

 

[murph]

Originally Posted by caribbeannie
There are no nitrates or nitrites.......I checked again! I'm not going to add any fish for about 6+ weeks, if ever. The store said they would take the CBS in a trade-in: don't want a trouble-maker, but he seems happy and healthy, more than I can say for the fish.

Sad to say but this is probably not a bad idea. Having the tank centered around corals and inverts will eliminate this hobby's number one headache, fish. I would bet ya a beer that the problems you had with your first fish additions originated with poor husbandry at the LFS holding tank level.
I would however add a couple of small inexpensive fish after your six week fallow period for no other reason than to keep the nitrogen cycle stable and help feed your corals. A trio of chromis or a couple of damsels would do the trick. Finding an LFS that doses its holding tanks with copper (a common practice) will greatly reduce the odds of bringing in parasites with these fish additions and hopefully they will serve there purpose for some time. Be careful not to introduce any LFS copper treated water to your main tank when making these additions
If things don't go well with these fish at least you have not spent much money and if there are no other LFS in the area you may have to consider setting up a QT/hospital tank to bring the fish back to proper health before adding to your DT.
You will basically end up with a coral garden. A cool thing IMO. The low fish load will make keeping pristine water quality all the easier too.

 

[caribbeannie]

Had to laugh about your fish comment: how true! I'll do as you advise...may have to trade off the CBS though. I watched him carefully this morning: that guy is a chow hound! I'm wondering if he ate so much that the fish starved or intimidated them. He can scour that tank in short order. I was feeding about 1/4 to 1/2 a cube of Formula one twice a day...thought that was plenty, didn't want to overfeed. As a long time diver, I would love to have a couple of fish....may have to reconsider the tank size. 29 gallons is too small, huh. My husband doesn't really want a big one in the living room. May just have to be satisfied with this for now.

 

[earlybird]

Originally Posted by caribbeannie
BTW, the store is about as puzzled as I am: I'm probably driving them crazy with all my questions and postulations. I've about decided that there may be some kind of biological issue: bacteria or something(yes, I have a degree in science). Could it have been the Formula One food?Do the diatoms hurt fish?
If the tank is only 7 weeks old it has not yet had enough time to establish the nitrifying bacteria. This is why people add fish very slowly. For example. My tank is also about 7 weeks old 29g with 45 lbs of live rock. It cycled about 2 weeks ago and I've only added my clean up crew. I feed my rock as if I'm feeding a pair of clownfish every 3 days. This will help keep my nitrifying bacteria up and in check so that when I do add my 2 clowns (after they have been in a quarantine tank for 4 weeks) the tank will be able to handle their bioload. I will then quarantine my next fish for 4 weeks before introducing to my display tank. How many fish did you lose?
Correct me if I'm wrong, is your local fish store is performing all of your tests? If so do you know exactly what your parameters are? Some LFS just give thumb up or thumb down but it is important to know your exact levels. I brought a sample of my water to a LFS to see if my test kit matched theirs and they said I could add fish but I still had ammonia 0.2 and nitrite 0.4. Yes, some hardy fish can live with those levels but even hardy fish can die from those levels.
It doesn't sound as if you cbs killed your fish, I would assume it would be feasting on them afterwards but it is possible. I have read a lot of posts about them killing fish. I personally would return the cbs.
Hope this helps.

 

[earlybird]

Diatoms don't hurt fish and will go away on their own. They appear in all new tanks.

 

[murph]

Originally Posted by caribbeannie
Had to laugh about your fish comment: how true! I'll do as you advise...may have to trade off the CBS though. I watched him carefully this morning: that guy is a chow hound! I'm wondering if he ate so much that the fish starved or intimidated them. He can scour that tank in short order. I was feeding about 1/4 to 1/2 a cube of Formula one twice a day...thought that was plenty, didn't want to overfeed. As a long time diver, I would love to have a couple of fish....may have to reconsider the tank size. 29 gallons is too small, huh. My husband doesn't really want a big one in the living room. May just have to be satisfied with this for now.

I doubt your CBS is the source of your problems but he will be a problem for any other shrimp you try to add. Best to stick with cleaner shrimp which you can have more than one of. I also doubt you have any general water quality issues if your corals are opening and the CBS is doing well.
Keep in mind there are some benefits to having this size tank with a low fish load. IMO with daily or every-other day water changes of a couple gallons you could get by without a sump or skimmer. These small daily changes with a quality reef style salt mix will make it unnecessary to supplement and should be not much more labour intensive than watering a house plant. No sump means no noise that is commonly associated with that type set up and no skimmer means that much less money spent.
A tank this size will also be cheaper and easier to light. A single halide pendant and you would have no limitations at all as to what corals you want to keep. Circualtion will also be easier. A couple of power heads with some hydor flow deflectors attached will provide excellent laminar flow for this size tank.
You should probably also keep in mind that any and all LFS advice will most likely correspond to how much cash he thinks you have in your wallet so do your own research prior to any livestock and equipment additions.
You can also add inverts to the system dureing the fallow period as they generally dont bring in pahtogens and or parsites. To play it safe though you could round out any invert rock and coral additions and then start the fallow period. Four weeks would probably do the trick.

 

[1journeyman]

I'm really curious on what your Calc. level is....
Many fish are not difficult to keep as long as you meet their basic requirements.
You really do need to test for yourself and start looking at results for a trend. While it's nice that you trust your local store so much, the fact is they set your tank up and have been giving you improper advice (the presence of diatoms indicates a new tank. One that most of us would agree is not ready for corals). Selling you additives without a test kit is a recipe for disaster. You can overdose. Especially in a small body of water.