Tank help please

[keener1830]

My tank is on a downward spiral. Since I have been gone( I just got home the wife has been taking care of the tank) my firefish has died, all my shrimp have died my scotter blenny has died and a couple of my zoos colonies have died. My wife did a 75% water change 3 days ago but has not seen much of a differance. My true perc has black spots on his body and I am afraid my lawn mower is the next thing to go and then it will crash. All the tests are good and the PH looks better now that she did the water change. Any suggestions? it seem like everything started going downhill since I shifted to my aquapod 24.

 

[class clown]

You probably guessed this was coming, but can you please post your water condition paramaters & type of test kit/expiration of test kit here. That'll help. Also, what type of salt & how you are making your makeup water.

 

[Scooterman]

Smaller tanks require more frequent wc's, & big ones, could be the culprit. How did she make the water, was it tested?

 

[returnofsid]

I agree that smaller tanks do take more maintenance. Also, just from the list of fish and inverts that have died, those alone are probably too much of a bio-load for a 24 gallon tank. The Firefish, Scooter Blenny, Lawnmower Blenny, True Perc and "all your shrimp" may have overloaded the bio-filtration capacity of the tank. When you say all your parameters are good, can you please explain everything you test for, what your test results are and what brand test kits you use? You also mention that your pH looks better now, after the WC. Can you go into further detail about what your pH was and what it is now? Rapid pH swings can have a HUGE and lethal impact on our tank life.

 

[keener1830]

The PH was at 8.0 it went up to 8.3 after the water change. Most the stuff died before the water change. THe clown is not dead just has black spots on his body and fins so I do not know how long he is going to make it. As far as the tests go Nitrate was 0 Nirtite was 0 and I know that ammonia was really low. I can't rember the name of the test kit and my ship is underway again so I will not be able to check for another week or so. We got some chems to treat the red slime due to the fact we tried almost everything else and it won't go away. The water change was done by mixing the salt and water in 2 5 gal buckets over night then she changed the water out. I cannot rember the name of the salt but we got it from the LFS in Portland called sea horse and it is what they use in all there tanks.

 

[Snowboarda42]

I would almost venture to say that the water change you're doing is too much. I have a 40 gallon and I only do 5 gallons a week. Next question, did she and what is/was the Specific Gravity of the water you used to change it. Right now, I would stop what you're doing to combat the red algae problem. Reason being, you yourself aren't the one who is dosing this medication, and you aren't around to watch and be ready for things to change. Someone else, the wife, has very little to no knowledge most likely on saltwater tanks. No offense to either of you. You might want to give us the name of the treatment you're using as well.

Another thing you haven't mentioned is your temperature. Perhaps maybe you're Heater coincedentally decided to either stop working all together, or get stuck on, thus "boiling" the tank. Another possibility is that you're house temp is too great and the tank got too hot. Temperature and pH seem to be the most two important things when it comes to keeping fish and other live stock alive.

Your big water changes can be detrimental as well. Yes, it's always better to dilute things as much as you can. But, at the same time, the water you're taking out has microorganisms and bacteria that turn waste into less lethal chemicals in your fish tank. When you take these out, you have a better chance to create what's known as a mini-cycle, which you may have done since your ammonia is up a little. Reason it might only be a little is because of the dilution from your water changes.

If I were you, I would do the following:

1. Stop the Red Algae treatment for now.

2. Stop with the HUGE water changes, let things even out a bit.

3. If its possible, set up a QT tank, get the fish that are left and put them in there. Try not to stess them if you can. Things like catching them at night can help this too. Or use two nets, one small-med. size, and one large. Make sure they're both black. Use the smaller of the two to hoard (yes I used this word with fish) the fish into the bigger net. Try not to move the bigger net if you can. This will trick the fish into thinking, "oh look, a place to hide". Lots of fish stores use this method.

4. Leave the tank fishless for as long as it takes for your fish to start looking healthier.

5. When you go to buy more fish, keep the end number under 4 please! And only add 2 at a time. (It's hard I know)

One question: Is there any chance of a chemical that shouldn't be in the tank got in there? i.e. - was someone cleaning around it and spilled something? That can be another huge impact on your tank as well.

Let us know.

 

[plack]

you mentioned switching to a 24 gallon.
How old is this tank and did everything come from another that was smaller or larger ?

Paul

 

[Scooterman]

I would almost venture to say that the water change you're doing is too much. Your big water changes can be detrimental as well.

DonW changes over a 100% each week, your not removing enough to hurt anything by doing large changes but rather helping if your removing detritus or whatever that isn't right. I agree that you must match your current water parameters when doing a change, get the temp. sg right.

 

[keener1830]

Thanks for all the feed back. As far as temp goes I removed the heater a long time ago due to the fact the coolest the tank was getting was 76 and it was heating up to 82 in the day. The best thing we have figured out is to open the feeding lid during the day to help get the heat out of the tank. I am going to buy a chiller as soon as I get home. She told me she found the tank at 85 one day when she got home, she put a frozen bottle of water in the tank and it came back down to temp. My wife has been working with me on the tank we have since I started it up so she does know a desecent amount about the tank.
As far as tank move goes I moved everything from a 10 gal(1.5 year old tank) to the aquapod 24 (now 5 months old). The only thing I added was some new live rock which I let cure for a month and 20 more lbs of sand. I added the firefish, engineer goby and the 2 shrimp ( since my 1 died during the tank move) once everything was up and running for a month.
We both make sure that the salinty level is the same in the water we are using to change the tank with. Normally we only do 5 gal water changes once a week.
As far as other things in the tank well I have a 3 year old daughter so I don't know if she slipped something in there.
For now I told the wife to let the tank be and I will see how things are doing when I get home in a week or so, if no change then I am taking a sample of my water to the LFS in Longview, WA and will try to figure something out. Thank you everyone for the help and if you can think of anything else please let me know.
thanks

 

[lavenderfish]

I borrowed this from another thread. It is from LEEBCA. I think your red-slime remover may be a problem based on the info Lee provided. Hey Lee hope you don't mind.

Bacteria are generally separated into two main groups. The group is based upon the reaction of the bacteria cell wall to a staining system developed by a person named Gram. Those two groups are known as Gram Positive, and Gram Negative. We don't need to know much more details about this for our hobby.

The bacteria that convert ammonia to nitrite and nitrites to nitrates are Gram Positive. Erythromycin (as mentioned above) kills Gram Positive bacteria. When a marine fish has a bacterial infection, the proper way forward is to identify the kind of bacteria or, at least, to put the bacteria into one of those two groups (Positive or Negative). After that, the proper antibiotic is chosen to check the infection.

In our hobby, most aquarists don't or can't get an identification of the microbe they are working with. But when it comes to a bacterial infection, we do know that most marine fishes with a bacterial infection are fighting off Gram Negative bacteria and thus we choose first to treat with a Gram Negative antibiotic. If that doesn't work, we 'guess' they were Gram Positive and switch the treatment to another antibiotic. Most Gram Positive antibiotics will kill the helpful bacteria in the aquarium biological filter. This cause spikes in ammonia and/or nitrites. Then, if the infection doesn't kill the fish, the bad water quality will!

The bacteria that make up 'red slime' and the various slime formations that show up in our aquariums are Gram Positive (unfortunately). Some of the remedies for red slime is actually Erythromycin (which I don't recommend be added to the display tank). That is the 'secret ingredient' in red slime remedies.

Hope this helps.
__________________
LEE

 

[NaH2O]

Any chance of getting a pic of the clownfish? Does the clownfish go in any corals or an anemone? You might find this thread helpful, with regards to the clownfish. See if the spots look similar as to the ones in the pictures: Black Spots on Clown

 

[NaH2O]

lavenderfish brought up a good point about red slime remover. It doesn't target only the "bad stuff" that most of us don't want...it will also target the good bacterias in our tanks. You may have ammonia due to the biological filter getting compromised. Was the red slime remover used before or after the fish losses?

 

[burning2nd]

sounds like a bunch of possible problems prohaps....

a lot of small things could have gone wrong in the last few weeks......

i thought i remember reading something you wrote about the tank move not to long ago right?

the tank move, the large water change. (was temp/silinity exactly the same) what about feeding what did you do there when all of this was going on?

i have 3 small tanks... i done huge water changes... ( like 90%) on my 30. and 50% on the 5.5 ive never lost anything from large water changes..... (not 2 say that cant cause it) but.
the slime remover..... thats another probability as well

Im sorry to hear about this.......

 

[thekingfish]

My friends tank crashed after using erythromycin to treat his red slime.
His tank was looking good except for the red slime, and in the days after using the remover lost most of his fish and corals.
The sudden death of all the red slime was too much for his tank to handle I guess.
Sorry to say that once the initial damage was done, nothing he did helped the decline/death of the corals.

 

[keener1830]

The red slime remover was just added yesterday so I know that it is not the cause of the deaths of fish and inverts. Now I just cross my fingers and hope that is dosen't finish off my tank.
As far as pics go none right now due to the fact I brought the good camera with me for the last leg of our patrol so I can take pics of all the cool things I get to see while I am out at sea for 2 months.
burning2nd
as far as the move goes yes I switched tanks about 4 months ago and about a month and a half after things started going downhill. I am having issues with the saphire skimmer tired to fix it while I was home but don't know if I did. With the water changes we try to keep the water go in the tank the same temp and same salinty before we do the water change.
As far as feeding goes once the red slime took off hard core she stoped feeding the tank for about a week but most my fish were fat anyway so it probally did them so good to loose some weight. The first shrimp I had in the 10 gal died a few days after the move to the new tank. I replaced that one with 2 more. Then a week or 2 later I found my emerald crab dead. After that nothing else died. About a month ago I got an email from my wife telling me the shrimp where gone and she couldn't find the fire fish. And about 3 weeks ago the black spots appeared on the clown fish. My big problem is that I cannot due much due to the fact I am out here doing my job. And the zoo colonies started to die between the time the fire fish died and the clown got black spots. There are 2 colonies of zoos still alive the rest of them are pretty much gone.

 

[burning2nd]

i used red slime remover way back in the day.... my tank was young.... fish lived....

owch..... ruff story,

chin up my friend

 

[keener1830]

Well got home today and it seems the tank is doing better, took the water down to my local pet store and they told me the nitrates and nitraites are at 0, the PH is at 8.3 and ammonia is good so I think the major water change helped to turn things around I will never use tap water again because when I was the PH never got above 8. I noticed that some of my neon green zoos have spread all over one of my large rocks and are looking good. Thanks every one for the help. Oh and the red slime is almost gone too the stuff I used was blue vet red slime control. made by blue life. And the clown looks like it is starting to get better we shall see. Once again thanks everyone

 

[Snowboarda42]

Glad to hear its doing better. Patience is key in this hobby.

It looks like you're using RO/DI water now correct? This might help with the red slime problem too. You should also look into some salifert test kits so you don't have to go to your LFS all the time to get your water tested. Look into getting at LEAST Nitrate, Ammonia, Calcium, KH/Alk. Personally I'd even go for the Nitrite, Phosphate, and Mg while you're there. Also, look into a Ph meter. They range from $40-$80 and are so nice to have.

Look around your tank for your Firefish, they have suicidal tenencies. If you don't find him and don't see him for a few days, you might try looking under rocks for him. His rotting body will make an ammonia spike unfortunately...