Crash!

[andrew1986]

i woke up this morning and all my fish where dead but my corals are fine ?? also there are a lot of brittle starfish that are out of hiding and I've never seen them out of the rock work before when the lights are on ? ant ideas what could have caused this . All my parameters seem fine
tank 450l
ammonia 0
nitrite 0
mitrate <10
phosphate <2.5

yesterday i changed my water pumps from my old one from my old tank to exactly the same ones from my lfs.
last week end i added a powder blue tang.
rest of stock was a percale clown had 1 year
a valentino puffer had 8 month
a cleaner shrimp.
and a peppermint shrimp

when i came down stair i noticed that the water was really cloudy dunno why any ideas on any of this mystery
also the temp was a little low 24.5 but i was only that low for 8 hours could this affect it so much? because when i went to bed i checked my tank on way past and the temp was correct?

 

[GGtank]

yikes sorry to hear about your crash, thats devastating. Temp is biggie alright. Not sure if it would be enough to kill all your fish but i'm sure one of the other guys will comment here and let you know. Did anything fall into the tank by accident? I'd still do a large water change tbh and make sure your heater is working. Other than that, I'm not sure what happened!

 

[Donya]

What's the pH like? Shrimp ok? Got a stock list up anywhere (specifically inverts like cucumbers)? There are toxins that can just target fish, but also O2 drops can affect fish before inverts - but this also drops the pH usually and is also correlated with poor surface agitation.

Just to be safe, get some carbon in there - a new batch if you haven't recently added any (like within the last week). That will help take out any toxins if there are some floating around in there.

 

[andrew1986]

hi all thanks for the replies it was the ph that had affected the fish + o2 i think as when i tested with my test kit it is 8.2 but when i test with my electric hanna tester it is 6.6?
I'm thinking that my test kit is prob off or summat I've done a massive water change for the carbon can i just put the bag in the tank i don't have my sump set up yet I've been stock piling equipment for it then i can set up all at once. sorry for any spelling/grammer issues I'm absolutely shattered and cant be arced checking it

 

[andrew1986]

hi all thanks for the replies it was the ph that had affected the fish + o2 i think as when i tested with my test kit it is 8.2 but when i test with my electric hanna tester it is 6.6?
I'm thinking that my test kit is prob off or summat I've done a massive water change for the carbon can i just put the bag in the tank i don't have my sump set up yet I've been stock piling equipment for it then i can set up all at once. sorry for any spelling/grammer issues I'm absolutely shattered and cant be arced checking it

 

[andrew1986]

stock list was
1 x powder blue tang
1 x percula clown
1 x valentino puffer
1 x cleaner shrimp
1 x peppermint shrimp
1 x leather tree coral
1 x zoa colony
1 x green star polyp colony
and a couple of mushrooms
also 1 x small cowrie snail
6 x turbo snails
4 x hermit crabs
I've moved all my rock around today before i did the water change to find any more dead stuff all my snails where ok but i found 2 dead hermits


what would be my course of action now?

 

[Donya]

I just hang bags of carbon over the side of the tank too; it's a good quick way to do it in an emergency. Best thing to do would be continue to test NH3, NO2, and pH and do daily WCs until things stabilize.

Regarding the pH readings, do you have some RO water handy? Give that a test with the handheld meter and see if it comes out at 7.0. You can also give some fresh-mixed saltwater a test since your salt mix should give you an appropriate pH in the 8.0-8.4 range. That should help determine which reading was right. And, when in doubt, recalibrate the meter if you're able to do so.

By the way, obligatory check I forgot last time: any possibility of airborne contaminants like aerosols, smelly cleaning products, or glues used right before this event? Just worth ruling out some things while trying to track down the cause.

 

[ainsy]

Are you sure the PB was healthy? They are whitespot magnets.