Oh no! Massacre!! :(

[darknes]

Wow! I woke up this morning to see my cleaner shrimp and all my fish but one dead!!
Everything looked great last night, temperature is fine, I don't understand.

The tank is filled with coral and they all look perfect...it's soo sad.
There's literally thousands of bristle worms out right now munching away on the fish, but I'm going to remove them before they rot. I just can't comprehend...been keeping the tank for 4 years, and never had anything like this happen, heck I haven't lost a fish in 2 years.

The fish that's alive looks great.
The only thing I can think of is I left for 5 days over Christmas, and accidentally forgot to plugin the pump to the auto-topoff. When I got back, the water was extremely low, and I slowly raised it back to normal. However, that was over a week ago, and everything seemed to be fine.

 

[notsonoob]

Maybe the water being so low your salinity shot up through the roof?
Hard to say.
that just plain su()S

 

[darknes]

Originally Posted by NOTSONOOB
Maybe the water being so low your salinity shot up through the roof?
Hard to say.
that just plain su()S
Yeah, I was worried about that, but it was a week ago. I should've noticed something much sooner if it went up high enough to cause harm.
I'm testing the parameters now.
I remember watching the tank at 1AM last night, and everything looked great...I just got a new camera and was planning on taking pics of everything today.

 

[darknes]

One thing I did notice is that the fish all died with their mouths fully opened, and all fins fully extended...I don't remember that happening in the past.

 

[florida joe]

So sorry for you loss
Don’t think it was the salt so long after you adjusted the high salt level, high salt would stress your fish for sure but a sudden die off of all but one fish does not sound like its was stress induced any chance of a short in one of your electrical systems jolting the tank are all your systems on a gfi plug

 

[darknes]

Originally Posted by florida joe
So sorry for you loss
Don’t think it was the salt so long after you adjusted the high salt level, high salt would stress your fish for sure but a sudden die off of all but one fish does not sound like its was stress induced any chance of a short in one of your electrical systems jolting the tank are all your systems on a gfi plug
I thought of an electrical failure too, but everything is on a gfci, and that wasn't tripped.

 

[darknes]

ammonia 0.25 mg/L
Nitrate 25 mg/L
Nitrite 0.5 mg/L
I've never had zero nitrates, and the ammonia might be because so many fish were dead, and I don't think 0.25 would have killed them all suddenly.

 

[florida joe]

Originally Posted by Darknes
I thought of an electrical failure too, but everything is on a gfci, and that wasn't tripped.
You sound like you had a reef tank did you by any chance have any sea cucumbers in your thank

 

[1journeyman]

My initial guess is your O2 depleted for some reason. Tell us more about your setup.

 

[darknes]

Originally Posted by florida joe
You sound like you had a reef tank did you by any chance have any sea cucumbers in your thank
Nope, nothing poisonous.
I have tons of corals, and they all look great: clam, torch coral, gps, tons of mushrooms, kenya tree, several acros and montis, leather coral, encrusting gorgonians, etc.
I lost a horse-faced blenny, angelfish, 3 blue chromis, and cleaner shrimp. All my snails and crabs and spotted goby seem fine. Everything has been together in this tank for about a year now since I moved, with no losses. My two camel shrimp and brittle starfish are unaccounted for, but I never see them anyway.

 

[darknes]

Originally Posted by 1journeyman
My initial guess is your O2 depleted for some reason. Tell us more about your setup.
O2 measures about 6 mg/L...not ideal, but shouldn't be that low.
It's a 55 gallon reef tank. I have a Coralife SuperSkimmer, 2 Koralia 3's, and a large canister filter with carbon and PhosPure. There is also a fan that blows across the top when the MH comes on. It seems to have decent circulation (turbulent surface water), and wasn't overstocked. I have at least 120lbs live rock, and 3-8" sandbed (depending on where the goby decides he likes the sand).

 

[darknes]

There is one SPS that I notice did attack my leather coral last night (I'll have to move it). There were threads between the two, and the leather was shriveled where they were attached. I was told it's a very aggressive coral when I bought it.
I can't think of the name, but it's the green coral in front of the pic below (2 month old pic, btw). Could this have poisoned the tank?

 

[florida joe]

Picking up on what journeymen said with your protein skimmer and I assume you have an open sump I don’t think its 02 depletion did you smell any hydrogen sulfide ( rotten eggs) in a seriously oxygen depleted system the water will give off that smell and you will also see bubbles rise from your tank

 

[darknes]

Originally Posted by florida joe
Picking up on what journeymen said with your protein skimmer and I assume you have an open sump I don’t think its 02 depletion did you smell any hydrogen sulfide ( rotten eggs) in a seriously oxygen depleted system the water will give off that smell and you will also see bubbles rise from your tank
Well, I actually don't have a sump or fuge. It's not a drilled tank and it's on a second floor apartment, so I was too scared to setup a siphoned overflow system. The water smells just fine to me. I did turn off the skimmer yesterday, because it needed cleaning and today was my cleaning/waterchange day so I was going to clean it today.
One other thing I've thought of: I've been dosing 0.5 mL of vodka to the tank every other day or ever couple of days since I started the tank a year ago. I haven't dosed any for about a week and a half since I was gone over Christmas and have been really busy with work since getting back. Could this have done something??

 

[darknes]

I'm going to test my RODI water too that's in the autotopoff reservoir. However, if something was wrong with the water from it, they would have died the night before since I filled it 2 days ago.

 

[bjoe23]

Originally Posted by Darknes
ammonia 0.25 mg/L
Nitrate 25 mg/L
Nitrite 0.5 mg/L
I've never had zero nitrates, and the ammonia might be because so many fish were dead, and I don't think 0.25 would have killed them all suddenly.
Ammonia of .25 kill my fish suddenly...

 

[notsonoob]

That would be my guess. Something must have been in the water. Or is it possible that something died earlier and you missed it? It could have caused an Ammoinia spike? Sometimes I don't see certian fish for a couple of days. Bottom dwellers and my mandrin.
Just a thought, but my guess is that something was up with your water you added.
Good luck.

 

[fishfaq01]

did you say you dose vodka? and if so why?

 

[darknes]

Originally Posted by fishfaq01
did you say you dose vodka? and if so why?
It's one of those controversial topics in reefkeeping. Some swear by it, others aren't sure it does anything. I wouldn't recommend it unless you read up on it thoroughly, because you can really destroy your tank with it.
I kept my dosage very low, though.

 

[1journeyman]

The only variable then is that you turned off your skimmer?