Tank cleaned out in 1 night...

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af0929

Feeder Fish
MFK Member
Dec 24, 2008
33
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Las Vegas
I have a 180 FOWLR and a 43 thats currently FOWLR but being prepped to be a reef. Two days ago i did 33% (roughly) water changes on both tanks. I used a large trash can i had just bought for this and used the same water for both water changes...there have been no issues the last few days with either tank...But today i got home from work and the entire 180 shorty of my eel is dead. I have NO idea what happened. the salinity was lowered during the water change because it was high but not signifigantly. The 43 is fine. There are no dead fish or fish acting like they are going to die in it. I lost alot of good fish:

1xPorcupine puffer (my third dog)
1xYellow eye kole tang
1xpowder brown tang
2xcleaner goby
1xfoxface
1xlionfish

All thats left is a golden moray eel. And from the way he is acting he doesnt have long left. I just noticed while typing this a white spiderwebish thing on a few of the rocks. I know ive seen pictures of this before but dont know what it is. I didnt see anything on the fish themselves. The ph is a tad low showing 7.8-8. Ammonia, Nitrites, Nitrates are undetectable. The temp is steady 78. The salinity is a tad high at 1.026.

I have a few questions now.
Any idea what the stringy stuff is? (i will try to get a pic later)
Any idea what could have gone wrong?
Is there anything i can do to save my eel? i dont have another tank to put it in. My 43 has all small fish.
If the eel dies of...where do i go from here? how do i start over?

Please help. This tank is my pride and joy. It was like getting rid of a family member when i had to get rid of the fish (especially the puffer)...thanks
 
So sorry for your loss. I'm sure someone here might be able to shed some light on why it happened but you may need to provide a little more info. What type of filtration are you using on the 180 gallon?
 
Im running an FX5 can for filtration. It seems to be operating fine as far as i can tell. I will try to get pics up soon. The eel is showing signs of life still but he seems to be breathing really hard. I adjusted the powerhead to push more bubbles in the water just in case its an o2 issue.
 
maybe overfeeding? i read somewhere a while ago that "cobwebs" in an aquarium on decor or plants is possibly from overfeeding. a girl at my work was asking me about this stuff that wasnt too bad but it was on her fake plants and the one cave for her fish. i would do a 20-30% change and siphon out the "cobwebs" and then do another change like two or three days after the first one. have you done a change recently?
 
IMO, you didnt have enough filtration. One fx5 on a 180 is hardly enough for your stock. How long has the tank been est.? You said you changed about 60 Gallons, how long did you let the salt mix for?
 
dam that sux sorry to hear that i would try and get the eel outa there put him in a holding tank or the other tank you have
 
I am still not positive what the white stuff is. I dont think its overfeeding bc the food traditionally doesnt last more then a few min with all of the fish. But im gonna clean them out.

it seems to me the FX5 should be more then enough for the minimal load (relitively speaking) that i had in the tank. It kept the ammonia's, Nitrites, and Nitrates at damn near zero. I do want to add a sump as well but for now its enough.

I think i figured it out. When i changed the water I adjusted the powerhead. I dont think i adjusted it high enough. When i discovered the fish I re-adjusted the powerhead to just gaurentee that there was enough O2 in the water. By that evening the eel and damsel were acting far better. Today you would not even know there was ever an issue. So my lesson learned from this is gaurentee that powerhead is always in a good position to put enough O2 in the water. I hate what happened to the fish but i think it was totally my fault :(.

Does that sound like it makes scince or am i just blowing smoke? Thanks for all the help.
 
What were your parameters before change? Did you rinse out the trash can before you filled it? lingering chemicals from the manufacture process could have leached in. Sucks about your loss, I had one fish left in my SW tank too after the great fish boiling when the heater frizzed out.
 
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