ok so i have had this tank set up for several months (am very experienced with cichlids but have mostly kept Ca/Sa) with no issues. then yesterday i completely rearrange the tank and add in a slate cave wall to the back and now today everyone is dead :/ tank is a 55g with 19 mbuna and 1 peacock around 3" and under and a little syno cat (one jacobfreibergi male, no aggression issues he was one of the biggest in the tank so only 2 fish were dominant to him) parameters are zero nitrite, less than 5 nitrate, and .25 ammonia (almost certain this is only because i tested after i got home from work today instead of this morning and there were still several dead fish in the tank while i was at work as they were still alive when i left this morning :/) only things i can think of are that either somehow some of the silicon on the wall wasn't cured all the way (have been slowly working on it for months but newest last parts of the wall were done 3 days before adding to tank, figured this would be adequate as it was thin layers for the most part) no mold inhibitors or anything in the silicon its the same silicon that i used to put together the free-standing slate structure that has been in there since the tank was cycling with no problems, or possibly i stirred some kind of chemical reaction into the water when i was moving the sand about (though i have never experienced this since didnt think it was a problem with cichlid tanks since they are generally constantly moving the sand around and its not just laying there stagnant. when i got up this morning and saw that a lot of them were dead and the others looking like they were having issues breathing i hurried and did another water change and scooped out the dead ones and only filled it back up to 3in below the top of the tank so the filter could oxygenate more and added a water pump to further disturb the surface on the other side of the tank but the rest of them still died while i was at work :/ other than those two possibilities i am at a complete loss for why this has happened so any ideas would be greatly appreciated (also filter is an aquaclear 110 with tons of biomedia in it, def not a filtration issue)
Any Ideas on Mysterious Tank Die-off?
- Thread starter Sarah88
- Start date
must have been something on the slate, was it only slate and silicone in the wall? the slate could have been contaminated when/if it was mined, diesel spillage or anything i guess, could have soaked up anything... defo didnt tag a cable and make a short when installing it?
i mean its possible but i got all the slate at the same time and the free-standing structure has been in there this whole time with no problems so would think if there was something on the slate it would have been on all of it? pretty sure i didn't have any lotion or anything on at the time i'm generally pretty good about remembering to wash my arms and everything really well before messing with my tanks. also i did have to dremmel off the end of the bottom cave layer as it was too long to fit and quite a bit of the plastic from the gutter got into the water, i siphoned most of it back out but figured the filter could get the rest and that it was just like pvc plastic so wouldn't do anything to the water, could that have done it?
no i had the heater out of the tank when installing so nothing to snag...it is white plastic gutters cut to varying length layers and tied together with cable ties then the slate was siliconed to it
no i had the heater out of the tank when installing so nothing to snag...it is white plastic gutters cut to varying length layers and tied together with cable ties then the slate was siliconed to it
no kiddos and no i have a digital probe thermometer in there so would know if the temp was crazy. was up for about another 1.5-2hrs after putting it in last night and other than everyone pooping everywhere, everybody seemed to be doing just fine... is it possible no O2 is getting to the water in the caves and they were suffocating while sleeping in them? but then why would the few left continue to die in the morning...
yeah i mean its possible the heater is several years old but didn't do anything to it in the process of changing around the tank so pretty sure its linked to either the wall or me stirring the sand all up. the water did get cloudy from the sand stirring as i didn't rinse it in the beginning until it ran completely clear (in my big tank in the past i always just used PFS, this time since was doing africans went for aragonite and it was taking forever to run clear so got impatient) but last night i added some cheap tetras and a couple platys from walmart to the tank after draining it completly and filling it back in twice so there wasnt really any cloudiness left and this morning they are all dead except for one platy and the water was a little cloudy so am doing 2 full waterchanges again and seeing if i can get this platy to live and then will see where i go from there if its the sand it should get better from me getting all the loose particles out of the water column. if it doesnt get any better then it has to be the wall and ill have to try and get it back out of the tank to cure longer. thanks for the help everyone hopefully these water changes fix it
