Lost all fish overnight

[noobaura]

Hello. I’m new to the hobby did my research and over a span of three months added a pair of clown, a pair of leopard wrasse, a diamond goby, hippo tang. A few days ago I got a powder blue tang and added it without qt to my display. I saw white spots on my powder blue within the first two days. I moved both my tangs to QT treated with copper power. All th other fish looked healthy. I fed the tank last night with mysis and all my fish ate well. Everything looked good. I woke up this morning to a grave where all fish except the goby are dead. The hermits and snails look fine. What could be the reason? I clean my glass with a mixture of dish soap, vinegar, alcohol and RO. I’ve never sprayed the glass directly. I spray onto a cloth and wipe the glass. I’ve been using this solution for weeks. Not sure what caused it all to die overnight. It’s a 80G system. It had low alkalinity so I dosed about 250ml of alk over a 4 day period

 

[Lavey29]

Well to start with you crammed a bunch of fish that were never intended to be in a small tank like yours. Stress led to ich, 02 levels go down overnight and once one fish died it created a domino affect with ammonia poisoning and lack of 02. You need to educate yourself to the hobby and make sure you put fish in an appropriate environment.

 

[Chikpeas]

I mean I know I’m really new to saltwater so there are WAY more experienced members out there—

B U T, you’re probably going to be bombed with questions like:

-Was your tank cycled before adding these fish?
-How long did you wait to add a new fish when you stocked your tank?
-Did you ammonia test?

There could be a lot of variables to losing fish overnight… but it’s possible throwing in new additions sent your system over the edge.

 

[noobaura]

Well to start with you crammed a bunch of fish that were never intended to be in a small tank like yours. Stress led to ich, 02 levels go down overnight and once one fish died it created a domino affect with ammonia poisoning and lack of 02.

How do I deal with this going forward? I did a large water change today and added carbon

 

[noobaura]

I mean I know I’m really new to saltwater so there are WAY more experienced members out there—

B U T, you’re probably going to be bombed with questions like:

-Was your tank cycled before adding these fish?
-How long did you wait to add a new fish when you stocked your tank?
-Did you ammonia test?

There could be a lot of variables to losing fish overnight… but it’s possible throwing in new additions sent your system over the edge.

It was cycled for 2 months. Ammonia was 0. Tested everything. It did really well for a month. Just don’t know what happened overnight

 

[Lavey29]

How do I deal with this going forward? I did a large water change today and added carbon

Well that's fine. What does your filtration consist of? What are your complete current parameters? If some fish were displaying signs of disease such as ich then the display tank needs to fallow for a minimum of 45 days.

 

[Chikpeas]

It was cycled for 2 months. Ammonia was 0. Tested everything. It did really well for a month. Just don’t know what happened overnight

When you add a fish to a cycled aquarium that’s not used to fish- the bio load has to adjust to that fish. It takes time for everything to catch up.

Throwing in another fish— and then another, right after one another doesn’t allow your system to adjust properly. It has to play some serious catchup. Fish are going to be REALLY stressed by that too.

And then throwing those guys in with ich, like Lavey said, is what probably caused everything to collapse.

Moving forward, you need to do a Lot more research. Don’t add anymore fish, focus on the fish you currently have and research the crap out of them. You’re going to have to really fight to keep them.

 

[slingfox]

It was a bad idea to add a hippo tang and powder blue. Those fish are way too large for an 80g. It was also too early to add a diamond goby---you should wait a year before adding such a fish since that will give time for your sandbed to mature.

Best step going forward is to run your tank without any fish whatsoever for 45 days. As you add new fish put them through the QT protocol outlined in this board.

Since the goby survived you can either return him or put him into your QT tank and put him through medicated QT protocol to make sure he is not infected.