jaytoni

Hi im fairly new at keeping saltwater fish my 65 gallon tank has been up and running for about 3 months i have plenty of live rock very good filtration and air movement i also use a deltec mce-600 skimmer.All my water tests show the water is fine and all the levels are perfect but over the past week i've lost most of my fish and i cant understand it the fish had no signs of disease like whitespot or velvet if anyone could help me with this or know what may have caused this any informayion would be greatly apprecciated thanks

sgould

What are your exact water test readings? Have there been any changes or anything done differently with the tank in the last week?

jaytoni

hi sean i havn't done anything different i always stick to a schedule,my test readings are

ph-8.2
ammonia-0
nitrate-10 ppm
nitrite-o.1
phosphates-0.1
salinity-ive kept it stable at1.023
temperature is always kept at 25-26 degrees

sgould

Hmm. Well, the nitirite reading is not perfect, but it also is not currently high enough that it would be my first suspect. Has it been higher lately or is .1 pretty representative?

What fish have you had in the tank, both the ones that died and the ones still going? Are they pretty new, or have they been in there for most of the 3 months the tank has been set up?

Honestly at this point I do not even have a guess, so I am fishing for more information. (I'd like to say that pun was intentional, but it wasn't. )

jaytoni

when i do the nitrite test every week its quite stable at 0.1 its never reached 0.25.

The fish i had and lost over one weekend were:
1 flame angel
2 clown fish
1 yellow tang
1 pyjama wrasse
1 cleaner wrasse
1 stawberry gramma
All that remains in the tank now is 2 green chromis and a bubble anenome,all of the above had been in the tank for nearly 2 months without any problems.The only physical signs were the fish seemed to be breathing very quickly and they were lathargic,i dont know if that is relevant even though i have 2 pumps for surface movement and the skimmer is always running.Do you think it could of been a viral disease

sgould

Well, perhaps someone else can offer other ideas, but the 2 possibilities that occur to me are A) ammonia/nitrite poisoning and B) velvet. My reasoning:

Ammonia/nitrite poisoning: Rapid breathing and lethargy can both be symptoms. Rapid breathing by itself could also imply low oxygen levels in the tank, although if you have good surface movement that should not be an issue. In a fully cycled tank, nitrite readings should be consistently zero. The fact that you are getting readings implies that something has caused a spike in the tank. The spike would have started out as ammonia and gone through a cycle that has yet to complete, which could be why you are getting residual nitrite readings. Things that could have caused a spike would be something dying and not being removed from the tank, excess food, a die-off of your nitrifying bacteria (which could be caused by some chemical additives, rinsing filter media in untreated tap water, or water changes also with untreated tap water). I realize you are saying your readings are very low and have not been higher, but I can say with certainty that 0 nitrites are the expected norm for a mature tank and any other reading implies a problem somewhere. You might also try testing some straight tap water and see what your readings are right out of the tap.

Velvet: I have no direct personal experience with velvet, but as it attacks the gills, rapid breathing is a common symptom. I would think that you would be able to see spots appearing on the fish before they actually started dying, but I have also read that velvet can move very quickly.

jaytoni

cheers for your help and information hopefully things will get better

≈ D ≈

After reading, I'm leaning more to the Ammonia/Nitrate poisoning. I too have never had any encounters with Velvet (apart from my wife - her name; ) but I always added my stock slower than you have done to make sure everything had settled down before a new occupant. Test your tap water and let us know if you find anything.

Wolfgang8810

how is the anemone looking? Is it looking kinda bleached out? when they get stressed i think they can release toxins. Right?