TANK CRASH IN PROCESS: please help

[JeremyAN7]

please help!
No clue whats going on. I've had this tank up for 6 years. very happy for long time. Nothing much has changed. 75 gallon, reef with 120 lbs rock, sand etc...
i did add a new copperband last week to eat aiptasia, which died after 3 days...
the 7 other fish had been in there happily together for over 2 years.
last night, all looked good....
this am, no problems
when i got home, all but 1 fish are dead.
on the bottom being eaten by hermits.. (I removed them) they didnt look parasitic.
Tested the water everything looks normal except ALK is WAY low.
temp=79, ph = 84, alk = 1.26mql (not good) no2=0, no3=0 spgv=1.025, o2=7ppm, PO2=0, CA=400 mg=1280

I didnt think low alk would acutely kill fish.

Ideas?

the corals look fine at the moment. but i worry about them being next.. and the ALK.

PLEASE HELP

 

[JeremyAN7]

other details:
mh 150 hqi lights +2x 110w actinic 10 hours a day,
protein skimmer remora (non-productive lately)

 

[Aquadiva]

power outage???

How big were the fish and which one survived?? BTW.. did you test for ammonia??

Bummer on the fish.

 

[Ray]

Maybe a power failure? Have you done a water change yet?

 

[~Flighty~]

could the alc be a testing error? Is a power outage a possibility?

Edit: great minds think alike?

 

[Kevin McG]

Stray voltage? chemicals in the water?

 

[JeremyAN7]

oh yeah, new food a few days back.. is it possible it's poison?

 

[JeremyAN7]

ok, no possible power outage (and the tank is UPS'd)
alk tested twice low....
chemicals? shrug. there is a weird foam on the OUTSIDE of the skimmer (dry) i have never seen before.
Stray voltage, how do I test? i didnt think that'd kill them since tehy arnt grounded.

 

[Kevin McG]

oh yeah, new food a few days back.. is it possible it's poison?

Surely possible, type of food(s)??

 

[JeremyAN7]

omega one natural protein formula with garlic marine pellets

 

[Aquadiva]

Maid come through, today??
Exterminator??
Anything that could have been airborne??

Got kids?? My son once decided his fish was thirsty and unloaded an entire juice box into his fish tank.... He meant well...

 

[JeremyAN7]

no one was around today. i assume that all fish dying within 8 hours, implies the offending condition would have been acute as in very very recent.. like something a week ago wouldnt have done this... not that there was anything i remember..
this is sooo frustrating. are my corals at risk too??

 

[kotu100]

im thinking the dying copperband and these fish are waaay to close together in time to just be a coincidence.

 

[NateHanson]

im thinking the dying copperband and these fish are waaay to close together in time to just be a coincidence.

I agree. Simplest explanation is probably that the CBB had something nasty, and it killed the rest of your fish a couple days later. Maybe Brooklynella? That can be highly contagious, kills in a few days, and is sometimes hard to spot if you're not looking for it.

I wouldn't go nuts about the alk. I think that's probably just a red herring. You need to raise it, but do that very slowly, like over the course of a week at least. I think it's probably coincidence that you discovered it when the fish died. When's your last known alk measurement?

 

[JeremyAN7]

alk has been consistantly low for a while (not as low). if i did have a fish disease, how will i know when i'ts safe to put more fish in?

 

[Aquadiva]

Just curious... in addition to the CBB, which fish perished and which one survived??

 

[NateHanson]

alk has been consistantly low for a while (not as low). if i did have a fish disease, how will i know when i'ts safe to put more fish in?

It depends what type of disease. If you can't figure out what it was, I'd put any remaining fish in a separate quarantine system, watch them closely for any signs of illness (and ideally treat them to ensure that they're not quietly carrying the disease). Leave the display system fishless for 2 months. Most fish parasites/diseases will die without any hosts in the tank.

 

[JeremyAN7]

only fish to survive (so far) is nemo. he looks like he's not breathing easy....
the others were 2 pajama cardinals, a stripe damsil, a royal gamma, and 2 blue chromis in addition to the CBB. there is only nemo (true perc) left.

 

[JohnK]

Brook on the CBB comes to mind here.

 

[Greg Hiller]

Hmmmm....some of those fish that died are normally pretty hardy. I'd agree that the copperband dying might have had something to do with the problem, but at the same time I'd err on the side of something in the tank causing a problem. I'd look very carefully at any device in the tank that is plugged into an electrical outlet and make sure there is no problem with any of them. Then I'd do a very large water change, get the alk up to at least 2.5 meq/l, and get some serious carbon on the system. If you have a power filter I'd load it with carbon and run it for a bit.