Fish deaths

[captexas]

I've been in the hobby for a few years now and for some strange reason I'm having nothing but troubles with this 45g FOWLR tank I've set up. In the past few weeks I've now had a total of 7 fish die on me. I've tested the water and all readings come up normal for PH, KH/Alk, nitrate, nitrite, and ammonia. Tank temp is 82 degrees max. I've done numerous water changes over the past few weeks and that didn't help. The hermit crabs and snails all seem to be fine. Oh, I'm using Oceanic salt.

Any ideas on what else I should look at? I've never had fish deaths like this before.

[demodiki]

What types of fish do you have in there now? What has died? How were those fish acclimated?

[Ram_Puppy]

when you find the dead fish, are their bodies intact?

What is your PH, etc... (Give us numbers, 'normal' only tells us so much)
how long do the survive in your tank before dieing?
What fish do you have in your tank that Have NOT died? is there a damsel w/ a nasty personality?
how long has the tank been setup?
what filtration methedology are you using?
Do you have a grounding probe? stray current could be the culprit...

more info! it could be many things!

[don-n-sa]

I have a question...where have you got these fish from?

I have purchased 50+ fish over the last 5 years and there is one store here that I have had about 10% live.

[Texreefer]

what is your salinity and has it risen rapidly lately?

[Bill S]

I'd also be suspicious of some kind of poisoning. Happened to my daughter's nano, when she was at school. I tried massive/complete water changes, plenty of downtime, etc. Put 2 fish in, they were dead in hours. Ended up stripping it down completely, throwing everything in it, out. Fine now.

[erikharrison]

Well, mine kept dying due to lack of oxygen... err, I killed them by accident!

[captexas]

Let's see -
Ph - between 7.7 and 8
KH/Alk - 9.3/3.31
Nitrate - 0
Nitrite - 0
Ammonia - 0
Salinity - 1.025 and has been stable

Tank is 45g with sump and refugium loaded with feather culerpa. Tank has about 40lbs. of live rock and I'm running an Aqua C Urchin in sump skimmer. Nothing out of the ordinary. I don't have a grounding probe on the tank, never had to use one before on my other tanks, but I will check for stray voltage later.

The fish that I have had over the past month or so include two different butterfly fish, a hippo tang, a flame angel, and 3 percula clown fish. All were eating frozen and/or flake food. All were slowly acclimated over a few hours and all did fine for days/weeks. And there was no damage to their bodies as if there was some other creature in the tank killing them.

I've gotten the fish at different places, Aquarium Designs, Fin Addict, and Alamo Aquatics.

Right now all that is left in the tank is a kenya tree coral, a rock of zooanthids, a bubble tip anemone, hermit crabs, and snails. The anemone has been closing up off and on a lot lately.

[brewercm]

Any possible way any other polutants might be getting into your tank that wouldn't be showing up on test kits (household cleaners etc.).

[Ram_Puppy]

yeah, I agree w/ cliff.. it's sounding like a toxin to me.

w/o the ability to test and see what is going on I would drop in some carbon (tri-base from cb pets because it is just awesome carbon) and a pillow of purigen to just start sucking stuff out of the water.

oh, be careful on that tribase not to add to much at once, Richard told me that carbon has an affinity for O2, and adding a lot at once can actually strip o2 out of your water. (once it's wet for a day or 2 this becomes a non issue.)

[AMulwani]

I quit this hobby six years ago. I had a 75gal salt aquarium with fish and some live rock it lasted 2 years. one day I decide to exterminate the house using some kind of local fog I bought at the HEB and with in days everything in my aquarium started dying. It took me this long to try over again.

[SoLiD]

You may want to tear it down and rebiuld if you suspect that it could be a fish only disease or parasite. Ich isn't the only thing that kills fish. It only takes one infected fish to kill the rest. -SoLiD

[sharkboy]

That's alot of fish for a 45...maybe they were stressed out :unsure

[captexas]

Um . . not all the fish were in the tank at the same exact time. The most fish I had in there at any one time was 4. After one or two fish died, I'd do a major water change and wait a week or so before buying a replacement.

[sharkboy]

Maybe it's the fish you started out with...butterfly fishes are a hit or miss and the flame angel is also. But the percs are usually very hardy...