got ethical husbandry?

BlueSallymandr's 40 gallon AIO tank

Well, my tank appears to be crashing. Everything looked normal this morning, and my fish ate around noon, and I fed the corals. Then the fish started panting and lying around. I tested ammonia at 0 and pH same as before (8.2). I went to the store to pick up some water and carbon, and the wrasse and Yasha goby were dead by the time I got back. The royal gramma is alive but lying in a cave and panting. I lowered the water level in the tank to allow more oxygen exchange (I had thought that the skimmer was the primary source of oxygen exchange), and put in a temporary airstone, but it doesn't seem to be helping. I changed over 8 gallons of water and added carbon in case there is some contaminant in the water. Any ideas?

Both freshwater tanks in the same room/airspace are totally fine and I haven't sprayed anything in the air.

PIF one fish tank. (Joking but not by much)
 
What’s the temperature and salinity?

Ato up and running?

Odd considering tank has been running for a while, also is the return pump still running normally?
 
As far as oxygenation goes, I’ve always gone off of the water surface. I try to have a powerhead or return near the surface to agitate the water. Some rippling is good enough for gas exchange. Even without that, I would think a protein skimmer would be good enough.

I would check other parameters, maybe nitrite, since it can be deadly just like ammonia. Its just very odd that everything went from great to a catastrophe so fast
 
The gramma died, so I'm fishless now.

Tank temperature is 79.7F, and salinity is 1.027, even though I do have the ATO hooked up. I added a little RO water to get it down to 1.026. The water looks clear, except there is some algae scum on the surface. I am having some algae that might be dinoflagellates. I do have the return pump running fine, near the surface of the water, and it does cause rippling.

I buy all my water at High Tide because I live near there, and I am sure that the ATO water came from the R/O water jug. I assume it's safe, definitely shouldn't be chlorinated since it's natural sea water.

The urchin is still alive and well (I can see the little legs moving). My cleaner shrimp is also fine for now. This is just the weirdest thing to me.
 
Really bummed to see this. I’m sure it would make you feel better to determine the cause, so feel free to continue running things by us. Slightly elevated temps and salinity shouldn’t cause complete fish death like this.

How are your corals doing?
 
Did some more testing, but nothing stood out:
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate ~ 2.5
Phosphate - 0 (dosed some after testing)

I wonder how I know when/if it is safe to put fish back in?

Corals are looking fine to me - the weeping willow toadstool is out and usually that's the first one to get stressed by me messing with the tank.

The only thing I can think of is something on my hands, but I am usually very careful about rinsing well before putting them in the tank.
 
BlueSallymandr said:
Did some more testing, but nothing stood out:
Nitrite - 0
Nitrate ~ 2.5
Phosphate - 0 (dosed some after testing)

I wonder how I know when/if it is safe to put fish back in?

Corals are looking fine to me - the weeping willow toadstool is out and usually that's the first one to get stressed by me messing with the tank.

The only thing I can think of is something on my hands, but I am usually very careful about rinsing well before putting them in the tank.
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It’s hard to say when it would be safe without knowing what the issue is. I’m really wondering what other input others will have, because I am completely stumped
 
Can you post pictures of what you mean by algae scum on the surface and possible Dino’s? I’m guessing if you have algae collecting at the surface you don’t have much surface agitation? Even if you did have Dino’s and they were one of the toxic strains like ostreopsis, your CUC probably would’ve died before your fish. If I had to guess based off the algae scum on the surface, maybe it was an oxygen issue for lack of surface agitation? Especially if you’re running your tank at 80F… warmer water has less oxygen. I see you have a skimmer but sometimes those nano skimmers aren’t all that great
 
BlueSallymandr said:
The gramma died, so I'm fishless now.

Tank temperature is 79.7F, and salinity is 1.027, even though I do have the ATO hooked up. I added a little RO water to get it down to 1.026. The water looks clear, except there is some algae scum on the surface. I am having some algae that might be dinoflagellates. I do have the return pump running fine, near the surface of the water, and it does cause rippling.

I buy all my water at High Tide because I live near there, and I am sure that the ATO water came from the R/O water jug. I assume it's safe, definitely shouldn't be chlorinated since it's natural sea water.

The urchin is still alive and well (I can see the little legs moving). My cleaner shrimp is also fine for now. This is just the weirdest thing to me.
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Bummer for the loss. I'm hopefully you can figure out the possibly cause for peace of mindnif nothing else.

I would definitely wait a while before adding any more fish just to observe the cuc. I would give it a week or a little more.

The fish didn't have any visible spots or odd behavior before today I assume?

If I had to guess I would think low oxygen prehaps only based in fact cuc probably take in less oxygen than fish who are larger and more active.

Some parameters being off I would expect cuc to prehaps die first.

I doubt Your listed numbers would cause a sudden total fish death.

Are any of your coral effected at all?
 
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Here's the algae that I'm seeing. When you blast it, it comes off in clumps. I didn't mean that there was a film over the top of the water, just some floating algae.

Yeah, there weren't any marks or anything on the fish. They looked perfect except for being dead. The weirdest thing is that everything else seems fine. My cleaner shrimp, pistol shrimp, pom-pom crab, and tuxedo urchin are all alive and acting normally. Corals all look the same to me.
 
BlueSallymandr said:
View attachment 62519
Here's the algae that I'm seeing. When you blast it, it comes off in clumps. I didn't mean that there was a film over the top of the water, just some floating algae.

Yeah, there weren't any marks or anything on the fish. They looked perfect except for being dead. The weirdest thing is that everything else seems fine. My cleaner shrimp, pistol shrimp, pom-pom crab, and tuxedo urchin are all alive and acting normally. Corals all look the same to me.
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That does look like Dinos.. I think ostreorpsis? Only way to know for sure would be a microscope. If you look at my attachment, it looks similar to your rock
 

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Unfortunately I don't have a microscope. Update on the dinoflagellates: I cut off the lights early Friday morning, and started dosing nutrients heavily to try to combat them. Current readings:
Phosphate - 0.03
Nitrate - 5
I also adjusted my temperature down to a setting of 78F. The reason it was so warm before was that my old tank that I had my fish in was running hot because of the hood, and I wanted to gradually bring the temperature down to let them adjust.

My inverts and CUC are still alive and behaving normally. I'm thinking my fish must have suffocated :( I don't know what else could have possibly killed them so quickly while not affecting my other aquariums or my inverts (no roach spray or anything like that). My idea is to buy a single saltwater acclimated molly and see how it does before adding anything else to the tank, just as sort of a test (I will keep the molly afterwards, I like them).
 
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BlueSallymandr said:
Unfortunately I don't have a microscope. Update on the dinoflagellates: I cut off the lights early Friday morning, and started dosing nutrients heavily to try to combat them. Current readings:
Phosphate - 0.03
Nitrate - 5
I also adjusted my temperature down to a setting of 78F. The reason it was so warm before was that my old tank that I had my fish in was running hot because of the hood, and I wanted to gradually bring the temperature down to let them adjust.

My inverts and CUC are still alive and behaving normally. I'm thinking my fish must have suffocated :( I don't know what else could have possibly killed them so quickly while not affecting my other aquariums or my inverts (no roach spray or anything like that). My idea is to buy a single saltwater acclimated molly and see how it does before adding anything else to the tank, just as sort of a test (I will keep the molly afterwards, I like them).
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@Krak256 had something similar happen a little while back. I dont think he ever found the culprit.
 
MarcosDelgado0 said:
That does look like Dinos.. I think ostreorpsis? Only way to know for sure would be a microscope. If you look at my attachment, it looks similar to your rock
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I agree. That looks like ostreopsis to me as well. Without a microscope to confirm, it's simply a guess. It is a toxic species and I agree with Marcos, that your cuc would have taken a hit.

Are you running a UV unit by chance?

I had a much worse case of dinos than what I am seeing in your picture and only lost some snails initially. I did not have any fish at that time though, but my nutrients bottomed out significantly. I nuked my microbiology with doses of ChemiClean thinking it was a cyano outbreak
Making the ostreopsis population explode more. Then I started losing coral and more cuc.

I do think something else is at play though. I'm not sure if you'd be up for it, but maybe a restart would be a good idea. I'm not sure if you could house your coral in a different tank for a bit, while you take things out, disinfect, and restart. I know that sounds like a major PIA, and it would be. But the battle with dinos in the long run, depending on species, is a much bigger PIA.
 
I’ve been working on my tank, even though I haven’t been updating lately. I didn’t have the energy to completely restart my tank, and I didn’t want to risk my corals and invertebrates while I did so (I really like my inverts). But things are going much better. The short version of my update is that I beat the dinoflagellates and have been adding fish to my tank. I never found out for sure what caused the deaths of my previous fish, but none of my new fish have died, and all of my invertebrates and corals survived the crash just fine.

Dinoflagellates:

I think that I didn’t have a very bad outbreak, because I was able to get rid of them by doing a three day blackout and adding a bunch of pods (not sure how much the pods helped but I added them at the same time). I was thinking of buying a UV sterilizer to help out (I don’t own one), but the blackout was so quick acting to get rid of them that I didn’t feel like it was necessary.

11/3/24

Already looking better due to the blackout period. Added some established filter media and a sponge to the filter from Ken at High Tide Aquatics, to get my ecosystem more stable, along with a bunch of pods and a saltwater acclimated black molly. I figured that the molly could literally test the waters.

11/13/24

Molly is doing well, and I had no further problems with the tank. Added a small pair of orange skunk clownfish and a tailspot blenny.

11/23/24

Added a Yasha goby that I had my eye on from last time, but I didn’t want to buy until I saw how the other fish were faring. I had known that my pistol shrimp was still alive because I heard it snapping, but I hadn’t seen it since my previous goby died. The new goby found the shrimp’s burrow immediately and they paired up right away. I’m really happy because this was originally what got me into the saltwater hobby (at first I just wanted a little tank with a shrimp and a goby). Now the pair is active and I see the shrimp all the time.

Also added two new frags, a kryptonite candy cane and a bubblegum Montipora digitata (my first SPS coral!) I’m not sure if the Montipora is going to make it but I stuck it in the highest PAR region of the tank on top of my rocks.

12/6/24

Two new fish: a royal gramma and a pygmy (cherub) angelfish. I know the latter is a bit of a risk, but I decided to chance it, and so far it hasn’t made me regret it, haha. It picks at my rockwork but is leaving my corals alone.

The fish are getting along pretty well. The larger of the two skunk clowns is making herself the boss of the tank, it looks like. Neither of the clowns has discovered my corals, but these are a captive bred pair and are probably not used to having corals in their tank.

I noticed that my duncan coral has sprouted four new heads, and I’m so excited to see it growing.

My nutrients, on the other hand, are still so low. I am dosing phosphate and nitrate to try to keep my corals happy. I’m thinking of picking up some Reef Roids or something?
 
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