n8n June 28, 2015 Share June 28, 2015 Good morning, Yesterday I had a problem and thought maybe some folks could enlighten me. I have 93g cube tank with about 15g in the 30g sump. Anyways so my system is healthy with some LPS, bubble tips, min max, fish, and 50lbs of Fiji rock. It's been up over 6 months fairly stable..... So we see in a bag at LFS a new arrival of a magnificant anemea and its way mis priced so we buy it take it home. Anyways so I spend like 4 hours drip acclimating it, have lights dim. Add it to tank no problems so far. Give it maybe another 30 minutes or so and then turn up the lights a little. About 30 minutes later I realize sump is slightly low on water ( I had auto off since I was dripping) so I add about 2 gallons of water to the about 110 gallon setup. Then about 30 minutes later ......... So we first noticed the white beach ball ( urchin ) kinda smoking.. White cloudy stuff is coming out of it, so I'm trying to google what it's doing and then I notice fish on their side.... Yeh What. So pretty much most of the live stock within like 30-60 seconds looked dead. So I immediately net them out to the bucket I have next to tank I was using to refill tank. Even peppermint shrimp are fleeing for surface. The last fish to come out was yellow tang ( largest ) and the maroon clowns. Those three fish just seemed sluggish and not dead. So we dump the bucket into my quarantine tank, and proceed to try to pull out some fire shrimp. By the time I move all the livestock, most of the ones that looked dead are now moving.... After about an hour all the livestock has recovered but 2 wraiths ( small carpenter and medium ruby head ).... So what happened ??? I did 50% water change on both tanks and got my hospital tank up if any need to be separated. The qt tank has not had copper in over a month with carbon so it's invert safe. One of the fire shrimp was on his back for like 6 hours just moving his feet bug it appears he has since molted and is fine. In the dt where the problem was 12 hrs ago the corals are fine, nems look happy, and remaining inverts ( snails hermit crabs and remaining peppermint shrimp look fine ) Obviously I'm going to start doing water tests... Anyways any ideas suggestions ? Thank you Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n8n June 28, 2015 Author Share June 28, 2015 Too add more, there was a rotting egg smell. tank became cloudy from urchin releasing white stuff. I checked salinity at time and it was fine. We are testing everything right now and so far every test is within norms. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jon Lazar June 28, 2015 Share June 28, 2015 The urchin was probably releasing sperm, but I don't think that has anything to do with your fish laying on their sides. I've seen fish play dead when frightened. If your livestock (fish, corals, and inverts) are all fine and water checks good (especially ammonia), then I would just sit back and enjoy the tank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n8n June 28, 2015 Author Share June 28, 2015 Two fish died, yeh I read also it could be sperm. Normally the fish are impossible to net but they were like stunned. I'm almost thinking they all somehow were stung by something from new nem. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Origami June 28, 2015 Share June 28, 2015 The rotting egg smell was hydrogen sulfide, which is toxic to a lot of fish and other life forms. It had to come from somewhere. Did anything smell bad - the anemone in the bag, for example? Any idea where the hydrogen sulfide came from? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n8n June 28, 2015 Author Share June 28, 2015 The rotting egg smell was hydrogen sulfide, which is toxic to a lot of fish and other life forms. It had to come from somewhere. Did anything smell bad - the anemone in the bag, for example? Any idea where the hydrogen sulfide came from? We didn't smell it in the bag. We could smell it a little in the stand and I went through and cleaned skimmer and skimmate container prior to adding it. Right when the big event happened and afterwards it was very strong and tank was cloudy for hours. It seems like things are fine now so I'm kinda scratching my head. All the fish that survived are in the other tank still, planning to put a chromis back to see if it's safe before I put anything else back. At least I know my fish get along in 1/4th the water and only pvc hiding places. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WheresTheReef June 29, 2015 Share June 29, 2015 Did you stir up the sand when you added the water? Could happen if you add water too quickly. That might be the source of the hydrogen sulfide gas being released and cloudy tank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n8n June 29, 2015 Author Share June 29, 2015 I only added 2 gallons and the tank is very deep. That seems very unlikely I stirred up sand bed. The sand bed isn't very deep anyways. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fishgate June 30, 2015 Share June 30, 2015 4 hours is WAY too long to drip acclimate and could be the source of your problems. A buildup of ammonia in your new arrivals bags could have killed them or at least started the process. Search for the recommended way to drip acclimate. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n8n July 2, 2015 Author Share July 2, 2015 4 hours is WAY too long to drip acclimate and could be the source of your problems. A buildup of ammonia in your new arrivals bags could have killed them or at least started the process. Search for the recommended way to drip acclimate. I'm not trying to be argumentative but I'm not following your logic. Livestock is shipped across the county in plastic bags all the time and it takes a lot longer than 4 hours. The drip technique is actually recommend by companies like live aquaria who ship live stock across the country. As for ammonia and such you first get the bag to temperature by floating it. You then drip water into the bag and slowly remove excess water. Since you are adding and removing water I do not think there is a set time limit that you cannot exceed assuming the bag remains the right temperature and you do not run out of water. I typically want to see the water volume double and remove half each iteration. I normally do the first iteration with the slowest drip and the last iteration with the fastest with the goal of in the end having little to no original water. I also try to do at least 3 iterations. In my case the bag was about two gallons of water ( seriously the anemone alone is half my 30" tank in size ). A slow drip to double a couple gallons takes a long time. Thank you Nathan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fishgate July 2, 2015 Share July 2, 2015 I'm not trying to be argumentative but I'm not following your logic. Livestock is shipped across the county in plastic bags all the time and it takes a lot longer than 4 hours. The drip technique is actually recommend by companies like live aquaria who ship live stock across the country. As for ammonia and such you first get the bag to temperature by floating it. You then drip water into the bag and slowly remove excess water. Since you are adding and removing water I do not think there is a set time limit that you cannot exceed assuming the bag remains the right temperature and you do not run out of water. I typically want to see the water volume double and remove half each iteration. I normally do the first iteration with the slowest drip and the last iteration with the fastest with the goal of in the end having little to no original water. I also try to do at least 3 iterations. In my case the bag was about two gallons of water ( seriously the anemone alone is half my 30" tank in size ). A slow drip to double a couple gallons takes a long time. Thank you Nathan Your heart is in the right place, but you don't understand what happens when you open a bag that has been in transit for a few days. The ammonia immediately spikes up when the bag is opened from ammonium (ammonium converts to ammonia) from fish waste and the fish breathing. 20 - 30 minutes MAX is all you should ever do to drip acclimate. Your fish could easily will be dead within a couple of days doing a 4 hour acclimation. The correct way to acclimate new fish is to find out what salinity and temp they are at before you buy them. Then set up a quarantine tank of these same parameters. Float the bag for 10 minutes to equalize temperature and dump them in as soon as you open the bag. Drip acclimation is the worst way to acclimate fish to your own environment and can be avoided with proper plannning. Your 4 hour drip acclimation is almost certainly what killed your fish. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkiboy July 2, 2015 Share July 2, 2015 (edited) there are also key differences in acclimating a fish that has been purchased locally and has been in transit less than an hour and a fish that has been bagged for next day transport such as those bought online. additionally, immediate use of prime or amquel after taking your readings (namely salinity, temperature, and pH) are very helpful tools in your arsenal to a healthy fish introduction and acclimation. Edited July 2, 2015 by monkiboy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkiboy July 2, 2015 Share July 2, 2015 here is a link with more detailed information if interested in a quick read. there is some methodology that I adopted for our qt acclimation procedures and for transition to treatment tanks. you should feel free to research and devise your own with the utmost care of the specimen as your priority. http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2006/1/aafeature2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n8n July 2, 2015 Author Share July 2, 2015 (edited) I'm not trying to be argumentative but it seems like everyone is wanting to argue. So... I was acclimating an invertebrate, not a fish. I read the article, it clearly states "The quarantine aquarium should not contain invertebrates, substrate, or rock. Invertebrates do not tolerate many of the disease treatments used on fish. Rock and substrate in the aquarium complicate treatment with copper and antibiotics." This fish problem was the existing fish already in the tank. As for ammonia building up in the water, the water was going from the tank into the bag, and the bag was being emptied. The vast majority of th water put back into the tank from the bag was from the tank, and should not have been the nasty water the invertebrate came with. The invertebrate was fine, is fine, and is still fine even half a week later. I did testing of the water in the tank, and there is undetectably low ammonia and nitrite. A bag with 50% of the water exchange three times has around 12.5% of its orignial water (assuming none of it was discarded before adding to the tank which i did). The amount of water that went from the bag into the tank was mimimized lets say it was half a gallon (containing 12.5% of the orignial water), when it dilutes with 110 galons of water, you will find if you do some simple math, there less than 6 thousands (.000625) percent of the original water from the bag into the tank. I find it super highly unlikely that the tank crashed because of a 0.000625 % water change. If it was a fish, I would have put it in QT but it was an invertebrate, namely an an anemone, because of #1 copper, and #2 even if i QT in a non-copper tank because it might attach itself onto something and be very difficult to move. Prime might be a consideration for the bag in the future, but I do not put prime in my DT. I actually try to avoid using prime as much as possible unless I know I have an parameter problem. I'm going to have to read up about "ammonium converts to ammonia". I am pretty sure this is not an instantious process and like most chemical processes it takes time but i could be dead wrong. I did not get these from Live Aquarium but they put their money where their mouth is on the highly successful/documented acclimation process (which takes around an hour) which is 3x as long as 20 minutes obviously. Back to the problem -> The symptoms that I saw is the fish acted like they were stung by the anemone, many of them appeared to instantaniously as though they couldn't move at all for awhile, and slowly after 30min to 2 hours started moving again. I have yet to ever see that type of symptom with ammonia. I've had a QT reach pretty high ammonia levels from my own mistakes/lack of keeping up with it, and I did not see fish experience instantious paralasis. I'm going to keep on doing DRIP -> QT for my Fish, and DRIP -> DT for my inverts/corals. Thanks! -Nathan Edited July 2, 2015 by n8n Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkiboy July 2, 2015 Share July 2, 2015 (edited) hi nathan. I certainly am not looking to argue if you were at all referring to my post. I know sometimes it is hard to judge tone from a bunch of characters on a screen. my response was to yours of fishgate's (which began speaking about fish acclimation). glad you found it helpful in some regard and will continue your research as there is always more for us to learn on how to better care for our livestock. Edited July 2, 2015 by monkiboy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHSublime July 2, 2015 Share July 2, 2015 I don't think anybody is trying to argue with you, they are just trying to help you determine what caused your problem. If you smelled that rotten egg smell, then Tom is spot on with pointing you in the direction of figuring out where the hydrogen Sulfide came from. I would look into that. Here is a good article by Randy Holmes-Farley. From the recolection of events you have given, it is hard to asses what happened. If you didn't smell the hydrogen sulfide in the bag, but you kind of smelled it in the stand, I would look to the water that you added to your sump. Had it been sitting without aeration for a while? Was it freshly made water, or perhaps water that had been sitting around? Refer to #7 in preventing hydrogen sulfide in the aquarium (article I linked you to.)I would not turn to the anemone stung all my fish theory. It sounds like something shocked your fish an inverts, and I would look to a 'chemical reaction' in the water. Additionally, keep us updated with the Ritteri. Those are expert rated nems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n8n July 2, 2015 Author Share July 2, 2015 (edited) I don't think anybody is trying to argue with you, they are just trying to help you determine what caused your problem. If you smelled that rotten egg smell, then Tom is spot on with pointing you in the direction of figuring out where the hydrogen Sulfide came from. I would look into that. Here is a good article by Randy Holmes-Farley. From the recolection of events you have given, it is hard to asses what happened. If you didn't smell the hydrogen sulfide in the bag, but you kind of smelled it in the stand, I would look to the water that you added to your sump. Had it been sitting without aeration for a while? Was it freshly made water, or perhaps water that had been sitting around? Refer to #7 in preventing hydrogen sulfide in the aquarium (article I linked you to.) I would not turn to the anemone stung all my fish theory. It sounds like something shocked your fish an inverts, and I would look to a 'chemical reaction' in the water. Additionally, keep us updated with the Ritteri. Those are expert rated nems. I think he is spot on with the smell being a problem. The smell did not come from the bag, or the tank, it was coming from the stand. I have since done a deep cleaning in the stand and the smell is gone. I'm not exactly sure where/what was causing it. I have a three compartment sump. The last compartment has an eheim pump feeding display and sicce feeding the reactor. Few little things in the bottom but not a whole lot. The first compartment had a skimmer with once again a little bit of debre but not a whole lot. The middle compartment was really where I think the smell was coming from. The middle area was a refugium. It has one of those 8x8x4 blocks in one side, I had two chato balls in it and added Caulerpa. Over the last 6 months the two chato balls pretty much vanished and most of the invasive macro algea, with only a small amount directly under the light that was mostly along the water line (ontop of the rock block). Sometimes it was exposed above water other times it was underwater. I'm kinda thinking anything on that was above the water line might be causing the smell but not really sure. At one time i had a ton of pods down in the fug too but recently i haven't seen a single pod. As strange as it sounds i've always struggled to keep anything growing in the fug. The skimmer has a large avast marine external collection container that I was thinking the smell might have been from but i cleaned it and the smell was still there so i wasn't really sure beyond that. In the past I have been hesitent to do anything to the middle compartment (fug) due to pods. Since there are very little pods ( i don't see any ) I decided to deep clean everything. I emptyed my fug and moved the skimmer to the middle section, and also got my reactor connected directly to the skimmer (see dyi forum). I moved the block to the first section. I run a sock that I empty either every day or every other day so I shouldn't be having a whole lot of new debre adding up. The fug was totally nasty, i ran a pump through a sock to clean out the fug, and there was literally 4 socks that got clogged while cleaning it. My fuge had some rubble in it but no substrate. It had a think layer of junk on the bottom of it and was crazy cloudy if i brushed my hand on it. Anyways the stand is now clean, the reactor is now connected to the skimmer and the smell (that was coming from the stand/sump area but not exactly sure where/what) it was not coming from the bag is now clean. Most of the fish are back in the tank and everyone seems happy in the tank, the two midnight clowns are very pleased with the Ritteri and so far it seems very happy. I'll keep you updated as it goes. Thank You Nathan Edited July 2, 2015 by n8n Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n8n July 2, 2015 Author Share July 2, 2015 Here is the Ritteri for reference that was in the bag. The tank is a rimless 30" . In the pic with the dollar bill he is touching the sand bed on the other side of the rock. Where are all the fish ? The pic was taken right after I had the problem and moved them to other tank. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
WheresTheReef July 3, 2015 Share July 3, 2015 Nice. Glad things are back in order. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
s2nhle July 8, 2015 Share July 8, 2015 Wow, big anemone. Thanks for sharing Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n8n July 10, 2015 Author Share July 10, 2015 (edited) I don't think anybody is trying to argue with you, they are just trying to help you determine what caused your problem. If you smelled that rotten egg smell, then Tom is spot on with pointing you in the direction of figuring out where the hydrogen Sulfide came from. I would look into that. Here is a good article by Randy Holmes-Farley. From the recolection of events you have given, it is hard to asses what happened. If you didn't smell the hydrogen sulfide in the bag, but you kind of smelled it in the stand, I would look to the water that you added to your sump. Had it been sitting without aeration for a while? Was it freshly made water, or perhaps water that had been sitting around? Refer to #7 in preventing hydrogen sulfide in the aquarium (article I linked you to.) I would not turn to the anemone stung all my fish theory. It sounds like something shocked your fish an inverts, and I would look to a 'chemical reaction' in the water. Additionally, keep us updated with the Ritteri. Those are expert rated nems. Question on the ritteri, so I noticed the pink on its bottom sometimes is caught on the rock. ( not its foot ). Is this something it's intending to do to stay open or should I try to carefully get it unstuck? See picture. Edited July 10, 2015 by n8n Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM July 10, 2015 Share July 10, 2015 Leave it alone. It can get off and doesnt have the same nerves that we do which would cause us to hurt if our skin looked like that. It experiences rocks in the wild, haha. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mattiejay6 July 10, 2015 Share July 10, 2015 Beautiful Ritteri!! I wouldn't mess with it all and let it handle it's own affairs lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHSublime July 11, 2015 Share July 11, 2015 Yep, let it be. Nem does what nem wants. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
n8n July 22, 2015 Author Share July 22, 2015 https://www.dropcam.com/c/27d042575696425ebf52aa8ad374e6bf.mp4 Not sure if link works, however he is doing well. Feeding him 2 silversides every 2-3 days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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