just curious, and not to hijack, but would reefroids or phyto serve the same purpose? or is that more coral food

No problem you don't want to start an entire thread just for that but Coral food

thank you everybody!

they would serve the same purpose, if you have corals that eat it it would be probably be better but IMO, its more expensive to keep your tank going with those and pellets get the job done pretty handily and for cheaper. And I wouldn't use mysis because I'm lazy and can't be bothered to defrost it etc.

BTW Troni, sorry to hear of the loss.. hopefully we can track do the cause? I'm kinda with Pat on the parasite thing, cause its strange for the inverts to be unaffected, if there was a parameter problem which it sounds like there wasnt. did you ever have ich or anything like it in the past? (not that ich was the cause)

sure. i had a cleaner shrimp aswell and 4 nass snails, emerald crab. i added my sump in with 5 gal rodi and 10 tap water. the tap water was not dechlorinated untill i relized it a few hours later. the salinity dropped and i raised it waaaay to fast. the cleaner shrimp died within hours and the nass snails snout is half the size and split down the middle and emerald crab is ok.
never had ich or anything before. shortly after adding my sump i added 2 hector gobies which i think brought something because they died 2 and 4 days later.