Killed my fish twice – Giving up

[Clownfish54]

For the last 8 years I had a 70 gallon SW Fish & Mushroom tank w/LR. I have had several fish for those 8 years including: Yellow Tang, Clownfishes, Tomato Clownfish, Yellow-Tailed Damsel, Coral Beauty, Pajama Cardinals and a brittle star. I had beautiful blue and green mushrooms. About 6 weeks ago I developed of real bad case of red slime Cyanobacteria. The slime was covering and smothering everything on my LR. After researching on the Internet I decided to use UltraLife Red Slime remover. After following the directions, the red slime turned brown and was gone. My mushrooms, closed however, and never did open fully again. About 1 week later, I did a 20 % water change using well water that I have used for 8 years. I also used Reef Crystals (which was hard due to moisture.) On the cc substrate, there was a lot of what looked liked dust that I vacuumed up. After mixing up the RO, I did the water change and within 3 to 5 minutes all of my fish immediately laid on their side and gasped for air. The Coral Beauty died but the other fish survived.

I contacted Aquarium Systems thinking that because moisture got into my RC that could be the problem. AS agreed that maybe I shouldn’t use it, so they sent me a new batch free of charge.

Yesterday, I did a 15 gallon water change. All of my LR had developed a brownish hair looking substance about ¼ inches long, which looked like the dead remnants of the dead red slime. I again suctioned the cc and dust looking substances, mainly under LR that is hidden from view. I used the new RO and did nothing different in my water changes that I have been doing for the last 8 years. Again, within 3 to 5 minutes all of my fish turned on their side and every fish died, including the brittle star, except the Pajama Cardinal, a lone survivor.

Since this all occurred within 3 to 5 minutes after changing the water, the cause has to be the water, RC or my belief the UltraLife Red Slime Remover. I use the water every day for top-off water and 2 other aquariums so I don’t think it’s that. My RC is new, so that won’t be the cause. I think the UltraLife somehow stored in the dust on the bottom and by me siphoning it, I stirred up something that leached out and killed my fish.

I have about 75 pounds of LR and I am now afraid to ever put any new inhabitants back in my tank. I’m thinking about tearing it down (although it’s in the wall) or removing everything and go back to FW tanks, since LR, etc are so expensive.

Any ideas from your perspective on what killed my fish? Do you agree that I should get rid of the LR? Would cleaning it, be safe to try to salvage LR or turn it into base rock? The LR still has small unopened mushrooms still on it. I really became attached to the fish I had for 8 years and now their gone.

[sanababit]

i am sorry for your loss, i understand what you are going thru, about your problem, i think it was something in the slime remover that did the damage, do you have a skimmer as per instructions say????, anyways dont give up, remove fish from aquarium, remove rock and wash it with fresh saltwater (r/o or well), remove as much substrate as possible, remove all old water from aquarium, fill it up again with frsh saltwater, new substrate and same clean rock, let it cycle for a week or until you see your params are stable and put your fish in, its really sad to see an established 8 year old tank crash.... i'ts to late now but when i used to remove cyano this is what i did

i made a denitrifier to eliminate nitrate
installed a phosban reactor with phosban
3 days lights out, on 4th day actinics, 5th day regular schedule

if you do all these three things you will be set, believe me been there done that, if you need any more info on how to make or get filter pm me, good luck

sana

[EvilE]

I bet it was the slime remover. Does it contain antibiotics? Could have messed up the beneficial bacteria in your tank

[Clownfish54]

Yes, I do have a skimmer and it was producing a lot of foam.

[ManotheSea]

Did you use the Red Slime Remover as instructed? I notice that you waited a week before doing the water change. I think the directions are to do the water change sooner.

The "dust" substance might have been from the hard salt. I seem to remember reading that salt will calcify and wont disolve properly once it has gotten damp.

You might want to have your well water tested. Something may be leeching into your drinking water.

[ManotheSea]

Another thought for you.

I imagine its very cold in Kansas right now so your well water is very cold as well. Did you warm the water before adding it to the tank? Maybe the fish were shocked from cold water.

[The Saltman]

I agree with having your well water tested. I never use anything in my tank that I don't know what it has in it. Therefore, I don't use red slime remover. Your best bet would be to tear it down and start from scratch.

[Clownfish54]

I did heat the water to the same tempature. And yes it is cold in Kansas, 18 degrees right now. I have my well water tested once a year, the last time was in June. I'm thinking tearing it down and starting from scratch is the way to go. So is the majority of opinion is to ditch the LR?

[badcop]

Do any homes use heating oil near you?

If so, now that it is cold could any of your neighbors tanks leaked heating oil into the soil? Thereby contaminating your well water how ever slightly.

It doesn't take much. Looking for clues,

1) How long did recovery take for the fish that survived both times?
2) Did you have Carbon, or some other absorbtion/adsorbtion filtering media in the system to take the toxin out.
3) If you didn't have anything that would bind the toxin, then it must have passed out of your water column as it degassed from the water.

[rbursek]

Just a note well water is always 56*F at that depth all is 56*, most basement slabs if un heated run that, just info, no clue to your fish loss.
Bob

[backyardspecial]

Keep your rocks and replace the old sand with new sand.

If you have some time on your hands you should "cook" your rocks. Try and search on RC when you get a chance they have instruction on how to do it. Basically you place your rocks in a tank or something like a trash bin without light for 1 to 6 months or however long it takes for all the algae to die off.

If you cant wait just boil the rocks in hot water or clean/scrub the rock the best you can.

This is the perfect excuse to upgrade everything to the latest and greatest.

[Clownfish54]

As far as the water goes, since I use it every night and there were no problems, I think it's okay. The fish that recovered, took about 20 minutes the first time. The Cardinal fish was the only one that didn't show signs of distress. I assume the LR that still have quite a few mushrooms on them, should still be boiled or placed in a trash bin? Or is it possible to remove them and store them in my 100 gal SW tank which containes a snowflake eel, puffer fish and huma triggerfish?

[backyardspecial]

If you want to keep the mushrooms alive then you probably going to have to scrub the rock while avoiding the mushrooms. I'm not sure if you can just remove the mushrooms from the rock. Should be ok in your 100 but i don't know for sure.

[ArgonDreams]

It's almost assuredly Red Slime remover. they work very well at what they are doing, however a byproduct is oxygen deprivation and potentially an ammonia/ammonium issue. I think likely you had an ammonium --> Ammonia reaction when you did the water change. Ammonium is far less toxic and when you raised the PH of the system as you were doing the water change it had a rapid conversion to Ammonia. Thus you fishes immediate reaction.

However that's merely a guess. These products are also known for oxygen deprivation. It's why you need to aerate while using the product. The very nature of killing the red slime does this.

In short, these are products with significant risks, avoid them unless absolutely necessary.

There is likely nothing wrong now with your system. A large water change of 50% or more would be in order. I wouldn't throw out the mushrooms or the rock, it's the baby with the bath water here.

P.S. How do I know this? That 24 Gallon Aquapod in my sig wasn't a Fowlr, it was my first reef. I killed it, I made this same mistake.

[badcop]

Clownfish 54 by your "20 minute" response for recovery, I have to agree with ArgonDreams, sounds like ammonia is your culprit, did you do any ph tests of make up water, or tank water when you had the incident?

[Clownfish54]

I did not check for PH and ammonia. I might check that tomorrow and see what it looks like. I love the way Ultralife gives so little directions and says it's reef safe. I did it also because of good luck from several forum users. I guess I didn't think about O2 depravation, since 15 gallons isn't a lot in a 70 gal tank with another 10 in the sump. I appreciate the advice. Do you think I should run carbon, keep my mushroom rocks after a good wash around the mushrooms and maybe try re-curring the rest of the LR? Would that remove the "slime remover?" or is kinda like copper, once it's in your tank, it's always there? Should I get rid of the cc and replace it with sand?

What really bothers me, is that fish are a capative audience and if we are going to take them out of their natural element, we should provide them with the best care possible. Although I thought I was doing the right thing, I feel absolutely terrible that I did such a dumb thing and the fish died when it was so uncessary.

[UrbanSage]

Have you had CC substrate in that tank for 8 years?

[ArgonDreams]

It's completely removable. If you aren't already running carbon, get it in there today. The way that Red Slime remover works is that it is an antibiotic, which eludes me at the moment. Treat it similar to medication. A large water change and run carbon to remove. Likely your rock and mushrooms are fine. If you have no fish in the tank or just one, watch your perms and ride it out. The CC will be fine but that's up to you if you want to change it out. I highly doubt anything in the Red Slime is infesting anything at all, however if you haven't been running carbon, start now. Keep your skimmer running as well.

[badcop]

I'm not up to date with the active ingrdient of ultralife red slime remover. But I recall when it first came out it was basically Erythryomycin. Recall that red slime is cyanobacteria.

Antibiotic versus Bacterium= Dead

Bad side effect is that Antibiotics are not discrimintory. If it is a wide spectrum it will kill gram pos and gram neg bacteria. This includes denitrifying bacteria in our tanks.

The lesson learned is to be on top of removing organics from the system.Especially if you have the habit of healthy feedings. If your seeing alot of detritus brought up from vacuuming your CC, then cyanobacteria can and will happen.

If you peruse all the Cyanobacteria (red slime algea) posts you will find many suggested tips to deal with it. Cyano occurs in nature. It's the first to showup. When it overwhelms your tank it usually means something is slack in cleaning up. (Skimmer, live sand bed, flora, fauna, the owner)

Personally I use more flow in the slime areas. This helps bring more oxygen to the area, and current is a hostile environment for slime.

In tanks with crushed coral bottoms I vacuum once a week at most, once every two weeks at the least.

It's more work, but the payoff is worth it if your proud of your tank.

[ManotheSea]

If you get a lot of overflowing foam from your skimmer, keep it on and keep emptying it. The foam you are removing is the red slime treatment. After several hours of keeping up with foam removal the skimmer will settle down because most of the treatment was skimmed out. Antibiotics are organics too. I dont think they would absorb into rocks like copper. Thats just my take on it. The Ammonium to Ammonia spike suggested above seems likely and is also a dissapating event. Keep your Live Rock.

[Clownfish54]

Just a quick note, I contacted Ultra-life and they responded with this quote: "sorry to hear about the situation. I have a few logical explanations. 1st, if I got it correct, you did a water change after 1 week of the addition of RSR. If that is true, the RSR would be dissolved and it does not reform. Especially if you followed directions and mixed until dissolved.

For the water change, and quick problems after, mostly I think of the change Was it same ph, temp and salinity. Did the container have something in it, etc??

Did you test all levels before and after change of the tank and the change water? ph, DO, salinity, temp?

I have recommended water changes occasionally were distress has been seen in animals., as this Dilutes water is in the tank. But if parameters of added water are off, that could be potential problem.

The other thing I think of is the detritus on the tank bottom, If this got stirred up and into the gills, maybe that was a problem.

Also this is no byproduct of RED Slime that I know of. I have never heard of it doing that. Sometimes, when the RS dissappears other algaes under it show up. But not convert.

Also the development of hair algae raises some questions. If this wasnt there originally, I suspect something in the water change again. Not sure if the growth of HA has anything to do with fish distress directly, but 2 things together add some suspicion.

After the 2nd change and problems, I cant help but thinik that is the problem somehow.

DId you use a different container than usual. Perhaps mold had grown, something strange???

DId you change the water source, or if using city water, maybe it changed. Maybe chlorine/chloromines???

The water would be the suspect to me."

I can't say for 100 % certainity, its not the water, however, my containers have not change, I use the water in other tanks, I drink the water. No I did not test the water before the change. Temp was approximately the same. I did check it last night and found a little ammonia, no nitrites, ph and alkalinity was good.

Although, I haven't decided yet, I'm thinking about boiling the LR with no mushrooms and trying to clean and save the LR with Mushrooms, etc. I'm also thinking about throwing away the cc and adding 1 or 2 inches of sand and slowly starting over. My Pajama Cardinal is still alive. Other than bristle worms, they are the only thing still alive that I have found. To do it right, open to more suggestions. My idea is FOWLR, some mushrooms and inverts but thats about it. Thanks, this group has been great.

[hammmerhead]

I have used the red slime remover with some success. It usually took two treatments though. If your fish were on there side within minutes I would say it was something that literally "shocked" them and was dramatic. Whether it was the PH, water temp, chemicals, etc. We may never know.

Has anyone ever added bleach to your well?




Has anyone added bleach to your well in the past?

[Clownfish54]

No bleach ever added. The fish within a few minutes, turned on their side, some breathing hard, so just not doing much. PJ Cardinal still active fine. I tried to increase circulation, but to no avail.

[aquaman67]

Sorry if I missed this, but how long after you made the water for your water change did you use it?

In other words, how long did the new salt water mix before you used it?

[NYIntensity]

What's past is past; we could speculate all day long... a hundred things could have gone wrong, one killed your fish. I'd run carbon, do huge water changes weekly (25% +) and test the water. Do you have a QT tank? If so, try filling the QT tank with new h2o and moving a rock with some mushrooms into it....if they open, I'd start moving everything into it, clean out your DT and sump, give them a thorough scrub with vinegar and water, and then slowly move things back.