I don't know what's happening, please help

V

vahtryn

Registered Member
Jan 12, 2007
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Hello,

I have a 20 gallon salt water aquarium. It's about four months old, and have cycled 1/4 of the water monthly, I also replace my filters on the recommended dates (for the water filter and protein skimmer). I check the salinity, nitrate, nitrite, amonea, PH etc.

For the past few months the water has tested in the "ideal" range on everything that I was told to test for. Though now something is happening.

Last night while at a comedy club we came home to find our starfish (who was fine before) had "disintergrated" and our bengai cardinal is mostly white and looking very sickly. Our clown fish was also dead on the bottom of the tank.

I've called our aquarium stores and they've been no help. I can't find anything like this through google so I thought I'd try some interaction.

Ideas?
 
if you could post your water parameters on here that would be great. Its kind of odd that almost everything died that quickly though. How many days Prior to this did you do a water change? Are you using Tap water or RO (reverse Osmosis) water?
 
If it melted down, I expect that it was a Linckia or a Fromia star. They are very sensitive to changes, and will melt down if you look at them crosseyed. It may have suffered a shock upon entering your tank, or even encountered an insult at the shop before you got it, then took a while to finally succumb.

The fish may have been reacting to the pollution of the tank by the rotting starfish.
 
mogurnda said:
If it melted down, I expect that it was a Linckia or a Fromia star. They are very sensitive to changes, and will melt down if you look at them crosseyed. It may have suffered a shock upon entering your tank, or even encountered an insult at the shop before you got it, then took a while to finally succumb.

The fish may have been reacting to the pollution of the tank by the rotting starfish.
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The starfish was orange in colour here's a picture of it.
 
post your parameters. throw away the dead star and do a water change. when you say that one of your fish looks white, do you mean that it's pale or that it has something white on it. what kind of water do you use and what have you done with your tank a week or so before stuff started happening?
 
Looks like an orange linckia to me. They tend to be a poor choice for several reasons. First, they ship really badly, and most melt down before, or soon after they are sold. Second, if they survive they need a lot of grazing space in a mature tank, or they will starve to death and (again) melt down.

Activated carbon, and a few hefty water changes will probably help that cardinal get back to health.
 
BadRoma1 said:
post your parameters. throw away the dead star and do a water change. when you say that one of your fish looks white, do you mean that it's pale or that it has something white on it. what kind of water do you use and what have you done with your tank a week or so before stuff started happening?
Click to expand...
I'll test the water when I get home and post the results as soon as I can. I'm currently using tap water (all that I have in my flat). I have a chemical that I measure out based on how much water we are using to neutralize it from the chemicals that are added in.

For the salt I'm using "Instant Ocean." I sterlize the 4 gallon pot I use to make the water. The water temperature is around 78 degrees when I make the salt water as well.

The week before all I did was change out 1/4 of the water like I do monthly. I also replaced my charcoal filter, the white filter and sterlized the "rock" filter in my water filter. I also replaced the filter of my protein skimmer.
 
what did you do when you sterelized the rock? what else live do you have in your tank? one thing that i know for sure so far is that you need to do water changes more often, because you only have 20 gallons tank. forgive me, but what kind of water filter do you have and what filter do you replace in the protein skimmer? and what is the name of the chemical that you use with your tap water? i know that instant ocean has low hardness and possible low Ph, so addition of those mostlikely be needed.
 
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