R.I.P bye my poor buddies...

[Jzhou]

I don't think its the temp drop. I've had chillers that went nuts on me and dropped the water to 60 before but never lost anything. This may sound stupid, but when you smell the water did it smell like the fishy smell you get from chinatown. I think there might of been some kind of overnight bacterial outbreak.

 

[KathyC]

I don't think its the temp drop. I've had chillers that went nuts on me and dropped the water to 60 before but never lost anything. This may sound stupid, but when you smell the water did it smell like the fishy smell you get from chinatown. I think there might of been some kind of overnight bacterial outbreak.

+1 that the temp didn't cause them to die and I also would lean toward a bacterial issue.

When you changed the carbon today - what was the inside of it like -very slimy? A bad smell?

 

[Red Terror]

Your fish caught some kind of fungal infection

 

[ryangrieder]

YES. I DID HAVE A FISHY SMELL. Top of my tank when I took the canopy off. So what does this mean? Is that a clue to maybe what's going on???

 

[Jzhou]

If its not the normal fishy smell, then its a sign that it was bacterial. The worse ones are the ones that attack the gills because those act pretty fast. My favorite medicine for it is pimaflex and melaflex.

 

[ryangrieder]

Well, so far if that is true, that could be it. Could it have came from something i may have done? I don't need to worry medication for the fish really because...well...I have none left sadly in that tank. Those three guys were the only three guys...

I'm just going to wait awhile for fish. I'm going to take all the sand out and rock and give them all and good cleaning. Replace the sand and all. Then slowly start stocking coral into it. During the time ill be doing multiple water changes, but should the bacteria die naturally since it does not have a host? I prefer no chemicals because I like more of a natural approach.

 

[KathyC]

That sounds like a good plan Ryan.

And NO, nothing you did, or would even have necessarily noticed!!!!!!!! Please do not blame yourself!

If you are going to go that far with the tank, then best to run a course of antibacterials in there before/while you recycle the tank.
You'd need to use something to cover the bacterial spectrum (gram neg & positive) since we aren't sure what exactly happened (and frankly, it really won't hurt anything by being done at that time) but it does seem bacterial.

I would like to speak with someone before offering a suggestion on which meds to use.

 

[ryangrieder]

Ok thanks alot kathy, when you have something to recommend let me know, I've used melifix in the past and all it did was make my house reek and make my skimmer go insane but fixed nothing. I have Prazi-pro because if you recall about 2 months ago or so my fish had some tape worm and I had my thread about it. That worked alright, but don't know if that would work for this issue.

 

[Aqua Pro Builder]

Sorry for your loss. If I catch your thread/pic earlier, I would have suggested you to take it out for a E-mycin and/or tetracylclin(spelling may be wrong)

 

[Jzhou]

mela is suppose to aid in repair and pima is suppose to be the anti bacterial. Not gonna lie, I use the stuff mostly because I like the smell. And like Kathy says, don't feel bad. Its nothing that can be controlled. Sometimes its a freak mutated bacteria that goes nuts. Somewhat like how some forms of the flesh eating bacteria is nothing more then the strep throat bacteria.

 

[ryangrieder]

Well today i took all the sand out of my tank, cleaned every peace of rock I had and did another 20 gallon water change. Hope maybe that helped a bit.

With this bacteria, would that effect corals?

 

[Jzhou]

Thats really hard to say because we don't know what it exactly is. If your tank is fish only, I would recommend running it under hyposalinity for a month just to make sure every bit of what ever is in there dies.

 

[ryangrieder]

Well no matter what I'm going to wait at LEAST a month. Continue doing water changes 1-2 times a week and just see how it goes.

The tank was fish only, but was going to have corals in it. Now I'm going to do coral only for awhile and then add fish very slowly. But again, not anytime soon...

 

[CDANN76]

just read through this thread ...WOW... I am sorry for your troubles my friend..hope it all works out for you..its really not fair when this stuff happens(especially when things have been good for a while) but we have to keep moving forward..Good luck..

 

[ryangrieder]

Thanks cdann76. I figure to just learn from the past