Sad day, here. Multiple fish and shrimp deaths. Help me think this through.

Shane said: "I've read about many cases of this over on TRT. It's figured to be a case of oxygen depletion during heavy bacterial or algae respiration, and inverts are usually fine. It's the fish that die because oxygen levels drop below what they need, which explains the heavy breathing. Though it usually happens in tanks that have heavy algae problems or higher phosphate levels. You said your tank doesn't have excessive algae though. How thick is the growth on your ATS? Are you having to dose kalk to raise alk?


Maybe do a search and see what comes up, see if it fits with what you have going on. Over there they call it Sudden Mass Death syndrome. Hope that helps."




No algae in tank, minor growth on ATS, just a bit of cyanobacteria in one top corner where flow isn't great. No, I haven't had to dose.


I will check into it. Thanks. /DesktopModules/ActiveForums/themes/_default/emoticons/smile.gif

 

The gills did not appear inflamed and the Purigen was new and well rinsed.


I am leaning toward thinking it was a contaminate that the Chemipure removed.

 

Everything appears fine here this morning.


Despite the bad shape they were in, the clown, the sixline, the mandarin, and the watchman goby that were all left in the tank are just fine, corals and remaining inverts looks great.


I am especially relieved that the purple tang and the midas blennie that I moved to the other tank are ok. I really thought I was going to loose both of them. The tang had large blotchy pale spots and was laying almost on his side, gasping. The blennie was all blotchy, too but with darker blotches and was also laying on a rock gasping. Scooped them all right up with no resistance on their part at all.


The transferred shrimp did die.


So in the end I only lost the two cleaner shrimp and my female clown.


We spent hours yesterday going over every possibility. Tested each piece of equipment with a meter. Tested and retested water.


I got nuthin.


My best guess, as I said above, is that some sort of contaminate was introduced to the tank and the Chemipure removed it.