All my fish dead! Why??

[40B Knasty]

Puffer fish died? That could trash your tank. They put out a toxin. Same with box fish. In 20 gal it would not take much to kill everything. 500 ppm nitrate is truly unlikely.

Puffers DO NOT release a toxin when they die. Their flesh can be 10,000 stronger than a drop of cyanide. So as long as you or the inhabitants of the tank are not eating the flesh. There is no issue when a Puffer dies.

 

[siniang]

Are you sure about that? I had that happen to my fish when the tank neighbor (they shared the same water) - a trigger - died and released a toxin that killed my fish. I've also heard that about pufferfish...

 

[Melia]

As you all know, my tank had crashed a few months ago. As it was very tragic, I cycled the tank again with very hardy invertebrates, (hermit crabs, pistol shrimp, humpback cowrie) recently I went to the beach to catch a quick small fish for the tank, so far he’s been doing great, so I got another puffer fish for cheap from another tank owner, who is also doing really great. Even though my tank crashed, I kept filtering it and cleaning it to keep it habitable. It all worked out.

 

[beaslbob]

could be some toxin. the .25 ammonia can be a false positive especially with the api test kit. the ammo dot only reads the dangerous free ammonia whereas the api and most ammonia test kits read both the free and locked ammonia.

I would add some macro algae. Just use some egg crate to partition the tank into a larger fish area and a small macro algae area. Some lighting to light up that area from the side would help.

Don't change water, just top off with freshwater. stop using any chemicals.

If you haven't established a fish yet, try the common cheap male molly. they can acclimate to full saltwater. And if you lose it you're only out two bucks or so.

Best tank ever.

and as usual my .02

 

[Jesterrace]

I do not use RO/DI water, whenever I add water to the tank I add the needed amount of salt and XTreme water conditioner.

There is your first problem. Treated Tapwater is a gamble at best. One of the things some people don't realize is that municipal water systems periodically do a flush of their systems which can cause ammonia and/or nitrite, nitrates to spike, so you might go months or even a couple of years with no issues and then all of a sudden you have major problems. How often do you change the water, filters and how often do you feed and how much do you feed?

 

[Camaro Show Corals]

Did your puffer die