OMG WTF?!?
 

So as per usual... I turn off all circulation and feed my corals.

Same routine. Power heads and return pump. No longer than usual. In fact about 20 mins top.

Then I turn around and my coral beauty is sitting facefirst in my candy cane. Six line curled around a rock not moving. Anthias acting weird.

Yellow tang is fine. Shrimp is fine ( which usually inverts are sensitive to issues ), coral beauty is now swimming again but six line is not.

OXYGEN?? WTF?? This has never happened before.

I tested water.

Ph - 8.0
NO3 - 0
NO2 - 0
NH4 - 0

Iron - 0

Salinity 1.024
Temp

I have yet to see my firefish, tailspot or neon.

Clowns look normal too.

Water is mixing. 20G change coming in about 10 minutes.

HELP. WTF is going on?

Weird! Any new food?

Frozen cyclopeeze.

But its not the first time I fed it.

As with any frozen food, I defrost in fridge and then use within about a week.

Never had any issues.

FUUUUUUDGE!

Stray voltage? Do you have ground probes in your tank? Maybe something happened to your power in the tank when you turned it back on, or disturbed some wires.

Just some thoughts. I recently found some stray voltage in one of my tanks due to a light fixture,... that didn't even touch the water.

What is the temperature? And do you have a lot of aeration when you have your pump running? what tank size and number/size of fish?

It could be that the oxygen level is already a bit low when the pumps are running so when you cut off the pump this low level of oxygen is depleated fast. I can't think of anything else. Ph is a little low if it was day time with light and aeration so that could be it.

Are they breathing fast?

Hmmm, I doubt you feed enough of that to bother anything if it was "bad". I'm not sold on the oxygen idea because I don't think your tank was off long enough. Did they start reacting while the tank was turned off or after you turned it back on?

Could it have something to do with an electrical leak? It is true 20 minutes is not long and I do it sometime for one hour to let my ricordeas eat and never see any bad effect on anything from turning off the circulation even for that long.

It is strange.

20 gallon water change complete.

Neon goby has come out. I am hoping it was an oxygen exchange issue. I cant understand it. It was almost instantly they changed though.....

Anyone happen to do any cleaning in the room with the tank? just a little polish or cleaner in the tank can cause big problems

I use a ground probe.

Temp 78.
PH is ok. It was tested early morning as light were just on. It will rise.
Not breathing fast at all.


I cannot remember... but I believe it was after I turned the pumps back on.

Sixline has now gone into hiding. No chance of recovering him if he dies.

No. I was the only one awake. Nothing remotely close enough that would have gotten into the tank.

My anthias is swimming a little. But staying on the bottom in the corner.

Yellow tang is inspecting him. Literally nudging him. Has never before.

Hmmm, I was thinking stray voltage too. Now I am thinking some sort of toxin on your hands or feeding equipment...? What are the corals doing? You say the 6-Line is hiding, are the rest of the fish swimming around like nothing happened or still all bunged up?

EDIT: Nevermind, I see your answer just a minute before mine about the fish still being bunged up. Which fish are acting "normal"? Which ones are bunged up?

No. Only the Yellow, clowns and neon are acting normal. Cleaner shrimp is fine too.

Coral Beauty is swimming, but hiding. I can see her with a flashlight and she is actively moving around.

Tailspot I found.... but not sure if he is ok or not. He has not come out of his lair but is definitely breathing. Firefish unfound. Anthias messed up.

I can't see what would have been on my hands. I am pretty good at cleaning them... but who knows. That could be as simple as walking by and touching the wrong thing, no way to confirm that possibility but I guess it cant be ruled out.

The corals look beautiful. As always.

Tailspot just made a lap of the tank.

AND ITS THE FRUCKIN STORE TOUR DAY TOO!!!!!


ARRRRRRRGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

It seems only the more sensitive species are messed up. I don't know if you will ever find out what happened, but I do know that you will be nervous on your next feeding! ;) I hope everything pulls through. I would put some fresh carbon online and hope for the best.

Its relatively new carbon but I will change now. ROX.

SIXLINE SENSITIVE?

I have had him over 3 years. Super hardy. Been through two moves and all. My oldest fish.

Well its wait and see time.

Nothing much more I can do now.

Store tours to set my mind at ease. Maybe. This sucks.

YEAH!!

My sixline just made a lap of the tank!!!!

WOOT WOOT!

All wrasses are sensitive as far as "getting freaked out" goes. Most wrasses are quite hardy once established though. Hardiness and sensitivity are sometimes not opposites. How about this..."he's emotional". :lol:

You could just change half the carbon if it is fairly new.

I changed it all. 3/4 cup new. Reactors are great. No sense in changing only part.

The sixline is now acting like nothing happened at all! Crazy.

Still appears to be the anthias and unfound firefish.

My Anthias has done weirder things before. Here's hoping.

SO AM I!!! Haha!

Thanks for the quick responses everyone.

Appears crisis averted. But still remains the question... WTF?!?!

Wow, weird. So, I didn't quite understand, in the end did none of the fish die, just sort of pass out? Or did you suffer losses here.

I'm thinking in a sort of "unexplained" tank crash or near-miss, it might be a combination of variables that just happened to line up. Like, probably, it WAS a low O2 issue, but exacerbated by a spawn earlier. I had a clam spawn once do a darn near tank wipeout, just all of a sudden fish started dropping out of the sky - there was no indication in the tank although the sump turned out to be a mess of goo everywhere.

Also had a large H. magnifica anemone for close to a decade - thing was huge - if he so much as burped or got ticked off for any reason, fish would die. In fact it was the tank wipeouts that pushed me over the edge with that thing and I got rid of it. Sadly, it died a month after being sold because it cratered the buyers tank. :( Such a shame it had to end that way. That thing would spawn too from time to time and man what a mess it would make.

You think about the things that can spawn in your tank - urchins, snails, corals, even fish sometimes .. it can put an unpredictable load on your tank out of the blue and for the most part it just filters out and may just be perceived as a slight bump in nitrates that even them in the end just disappear a week or so later - but then you add the proverbial straw to the camel's back by turning off all flow for 20 minutes and poof, it's just enough to push things over the edge.

Not saying for sure this specifically was it, but it could be just an unfortunate lining up of 2 or more variables at the wrong time.

I'm not sure I would be turning off my sump return when I feed, I've never done this myself as I don't like the idea. I do however turn off all the controllable streams when I feed. My two tanks are fed off the same wavemaker, my FOWLR does in fact go silent other than the sump return, but my big reef has a 6065 or something (I forget the model, a smallish noncontrollable stream) that stays on near the surface. This has the added benefit that food added gets immediately dispersed the length of the tank which gives the smaller or less aggressive fish a better chance of getting a fair share of feed - otherwise the bigger faster fish get the lion's share.

Anyhow something to consider, if I were you, I'd keep the sump return on when feeding, especially if it's going to be longer than 5 minutes for quiet time.

Good luck and sorry for your stress. There's always something in this hobby..

Leaving the sump return running would filter out the food.

I target feed so pumps off is necessary for a short period.

Once target is done I run power heads in tank.

The sump has constant flow due to two reactors on separate pumps so any issues with sump are non existent.

Crazy.

Re the stray voltage.... You might want to disconnect your ground probe and test with a multi meter just to be sure. Depending on where stray voltage might originate and the location of your ground probe, maybe some part of your tank was still affected, and some fish swam through that area.

Just a far fetched theory..., but might we worth another check.

Hey Pat,

We chatted earlier today about this... sorry to hear it happened but glad no-one was lost!

Chris

Could it be some chimical war from a coral or anemone? you cut off the pump and restart it, the coral or anemone get upset, released toxine in the water and that upset the fish?

If your fish were not breathing fast we can exclude lack of oxygen. That does not leave much? Can it be also some gas pocket from the sand, when the pumps restarted it released some gas in the tank just enough to upset the fish?

I would definitly put some fresh carbon.

Daniella, it happened while the pumps were off, not after they came back on.

food gone bad or something maybe??? assuming all were alive before the feeding the corals happened??

Weird! Glad that all's OK though.
Hope you figure it out!

pat you know why this happened and so do i lol its simply because today was the store tours and you wanted to buy something and well as we all know luck cant have that now can she lol hope everything is alright in there tonight:) next time you plan on buying something dont tell the tank then she cant screw ya over lol:))

+1 on stray voltage ground probe is not a guarantee or a 100% protection, it is easy to measure so why don’t you eliminate this one also by testing

This is an old thread.

Has not happened since I stopped feeding the food i used that day.

No other changes or issues.