Has anyone heard of anything like this?

If it was live fish, then it might have been cryptocaryon (marine ich) or amyloodimium (marine velvet).

What was the food, and how long did it take to kill the fish?

Personally I wouldnt be so quick to say that the "white bugs" are the source of the death chamber (his tank).

I often notice white bugs in my salt tanks, and they have been ID'd as beneficial bugs to my tank.

I'd get him or you to check out the tanks paramaters to make sure they are okay before blaming the live feeders for the situation. Sure it sounds by your post that once he fed the livefish, then the bugs appeared and killed off his fish, but how long did that take? Has he ever observed his tank at night with a flashlight to see just how many "white bugs" are already present in a salt tank?

Theres so many possibilities here and we dont have any facts to go on, so I dont believe anyone can make an educated guess as to what happened.

If he's still got fish living in the tank (and I DONT KNOW WHAT FISH THEY ARE), assuming they are not damsels, then for how long have they been living since the incident happened? If they are more fragile fish and are still around say a month or more afterwards, then it's reasonably safe to assume that some more fish could be added to the tank.

I had a death chamber tank myself, but eventually I determined (and I may actually be wrong) that it became polluted by things such as plastic cleaner and polisher that may have inadvertantly entered the tank, or colognes that were left over on my arms after throughly rinsing my arms in as hot of water as I could stand.

So many possiblities, but so little information to really go on.

Goodluck,

Sorry if I came off as sounding frustrated with your post, Im really not. But a lot of people on other forums (myself included) have posted about white bugs or as I term then white sand fleas, which live in the live sandbed of most salt tanks and non harmfull and only benefficial.

I've never in all my years in this hobby seen ICH swimming around the tank, though I know that ich will come out of a fish at a certain stage and this is when it's killed off by ich treatments.

So it seems kind of unlikely that it was ich that came from the live feeders, though I whole heartedly agree that ich often comes into tanks by goldfish and other live feeder fish. My first goldfish came in with ich and died within 72 hours, but I never noticed any ich swimming around. Now Im not saying it doesnt happen, and Ive been fortunate enough to never have had any of my marine fish contract ich so perhaps as mogurnda said that it's a form of marine ich that Ive been lucky enough to always avoid.

Anyway, I would suggest to him to go ahead and put another fish in there and see what happens, since it happened a year or two ago, he's obviously got a well established tank and if theres still life in the tank (as you posted there is) then he can certainly add another fish to the tank at this point.

The only thing I would be worried about is a fish being added that is too small and might become eel food, though I have no experience with marine eels and limited experience with freshwater rubber band eels (YUCK! they just give me the eb gb's).

Again, goodluck to you and him.

Although there are free swimming stages in both of the diseases I mentioned, they are essentially invisible. I was thinking maybe he saw the spots on the fish at some point soon after (like a few days) the feeders were added.

As I recall (and one of the fish experts can correct me), eels tend to be resistant to ich because they have a very thick slime layer. May explain why it survived.

Most SW tanks have a lot of harmless tiny white dots running around on various surfaces. They usually aren't swimming, though. Most of these are copepods, which can be thought of as scavengers and snacks.

Ah YES, copepods, thats what I was trying to think of. Both my marine tanks are filled with copepods and are more visible at night, but also visible at different times of the day.

Ich as well as velvet can become established on an eel but only if the eel has an extremely compromised immune system. So morgunda you are right this is probably why the eel survived.