WHAT DID I DO?!?!?!!!

[j_z_e_r_o_n]

I COMPLETELY LOST MY WHOLE TANK! I had one fish die from ick and pop eye 2 days ago. I had begun lowering the salinity level to induce hyposalinity to kill off the parasite that remained in the tank as described <a href="https://www.saltwaterfish.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=10&t=001950" target="_blank">here</a>. In the process the tank started becoming a little cloudy. I thought it was just from just introducing the dechlorinated water (non-salted). Then this morning I went to check on my tank and it was completely cloudy and all my poor fish were dead!
Did I do something wrong? Over the course of 18 hours I had lowered it from 1.023 to 1.016...I figured that was gradual enough... was that too much too fast? One thing I regret doing was not checking my levels before I started this. Now I would just like to know what would have caused the tank to cloud up like that? Is it from adding the dechlorinated water or something else?
Well I guess you live and learn. Two things I took from this...
1. COMPLETELY understand what you are doing before you do it. I thought I knew enough, but obviously not.
2. Need to check my levels more frequently and before I do anything major to the tank. It's my own fault on this one, so not much more can be said about that.
I know I'll take a lot from this tragic episode. Hopefully I won't make the same mistakes twice!
Now I guess I'll just drain the tank and start a new...

 

[j_z_e_r_o_n]

It was a complete fish tank...no live rock or sand...I was using crushed coral. Just fish...couple of Domino Damsels, couple yellow tail, neon damsel, another damsel I didn't know what it was, Maroon clownfish, ornate wrasse, and the one that died first from ick and pop eye was a flame angel.
I'm going to completely start over and go with a DSB and some live rock this time...going to take everything really slow and make sure I do it right. I'm not about to lose that many fish again. Granted damsels are dime a dozen...I really liked them all...kind of got attached to them.
Like I said before...live and learn. Guess I learned the hard way.

 

[jakob4001]

I would suggest having a Q tank as well; especially if you are planning on going the route of LR & DSB...that way you have safe controlled environemnt w/o killing off your LR; w/o a host for ich after about months time, it should die off in both tanks...

 

[beth]

Speaking of water levels, what are they? Perhap that was the problem.

 

[j_z_e_r_o_n]

Originally posted by Beth:
<strong>Speaking of water levels, what are they? Perhap that was the problem.</strong><hr></blockquote>
Granted all these levels were taken after everyone died, so they could be skewed due to that.
pH 7.5
Ammonia - 6.1 mg/L+..off the chart...way high...maybe due to my first fish that died during the night. I found him in the morning. However everyone else was fine. They died sometime last night and didn't find them till this morning as well.
Nitrate - 50 mg/L
Nitrite - .3 mg/L
I'm assuming I wiped out the rest of my fish with an ammonia spike (maybe). When I cleaned them out they looked really pale and reddish and some even had their guts coming out of their stomachs.
It bothers me that I was doing so good for about 7 months at keeping everything stable and every fish healthy and alive and now in less than 48 hours I completely wiped out the tank.
RIP-Sally, Harry, Spot, O'Doyle, Stripe, Digger, Luvx, Sam, and Mir.

 

[eseow]

If one fish died, it probably caused an ammonia spike, which could not have been absorbed in a "Fish Only" tank. If you had some live rock/sand, it might have not been able to spike, due to live rock being able to absorb ammonia spike or keep levels low. By your readings of water and your decription of the dead fish, the proteins in the dead fish were being broken down already. This would be the cause of the high toxic readings. This also depends on how well or how big of a load your bio-filter can handle. I assume the PH dropped from adding straight declorinated freshwater, but not adding PH up solution or buffer.