Added new Live Rock --now fish are dying.

clstewart

clstewart

Hifi_Samurai
Mar 20, 2007
16
0
0
49
Long Beach, CA
We've had a 28G reef tank setup for several months now. An Eheim canister filter, two powerheads, we do approx. 10% water changes each weekend with water purchased from LFS. Up to the point, we've had healthy and happy fish, with no problems whatsoever....

However, a couple of days ago we purchased two more large live rocks, a live tonga rock, and an additional powerhead, added them to the tank in the evening, and the next morning all of our fish are breathing hard and looking terrible. We've lost two fish in two days!!! The remaining 4 little guys are not improving with an additional 10% water change.

Salinity is at 1.026
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 10

Anyone have any ideas why our fish are breathing hard and dying? All logic points to the newly added live rock, however I've never heard of live rock doing harm? We are quite stumped and worried! Any advice or ideas would be appreciated.
 
it sounds like ick ....
 
Grins said:
I'd not assume it was ich. It sounds like ammonia to me, are the parameters you listed from today? What is the tank temp?
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:iagree: It sounds more like an ammonia issue to me than anything else.
 
Grins said:
Which would make sense if there was a lot of die off from the new rock.
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There was definitely an ammonia spike overnight, as we did lose two fish. However, after a small water change, levels are now back to normal, as per my previous posting. Unfortunately, the fish still have labored breathing, though they are active and eating (as they were yesterday as well).

Once again, when we first noticed that the fish were not well (yesterday), we tested the water parameters and they were good (ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 10). Therefore, it seems to me that there must be something else going on besides ammonia.
 
how big were the chunks of live rock added?? If it was ammonia poisoning, it would be showing up on a test...If there was some ammonia and its been very quickly converted to nitrite etc etc, then it should soon pass with water changes....personaly, i would do a 20% water change now, just to be on the safe side...
 
Reefscape said:
he he he....you posted same time as me....I am thinking a little more than ammonia here for some reason...
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Yes, I'm thinking there's something else... as we've done two small water changes over two days "just to be safe", and there has never been any change in the parameters except a slight .25 of ammonia when two fish died overnight. We then immediately did small water change #2, yet the fish are still breathing heavily... there seems to be no link to ammonia.

Hopefully, the rest of our fish will pull through this whatever it is..
 
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