[Brighteyes_13]

i know im putting in my input pretty late in the thread but i see a couple of culprits in the killing.

1) you said you use warmer water to aid in the disolving of the salt for the changes. warm tapwater is lower in oxygenation than cold tapwater. warmer water has less of an ability to hold onto oxygen. By allowing the water to cool overnight as in previous times you allowed the water to reoxygenate. so i dont believe the skimmer was the issue at all.

2) You added the salt and allowed the water to cool. exactly how long was the salt mixing in the water before being added. partially disolved salt is very harsh on the gills of the fish (i believe its quite accidic?)

3)dechlorination possibly bad. the overnight mixing method would definately have given more of a chance to offgas chlorine, whereas this change was possibly quite chlorinated, even if the dechlorination product you used removed part of it.

all of these things kinda lead to the same conclusion though. The waterchange was probably at fault in some way or another. one of those items alone would definately stress your fish out and cause bad things, but the combination of 2 or more of them could have caused such widespread casualties.

as for your algae problem, i definately agree with your decision to go RO/DI, silicates in the water cause all sorts of nasty algae blooms. thats part of the reason we chlorinate, to kill biological matter in the water.

anyways.. just my point of view.


and dont give up, i just lost everything too, maybe not as much, but an empty tank for a few weeks is better than no tank at all.