This has been a real bad *$#%ing day - warning pics are not good natured

[Chin_Lee]

Warning - crappy picture below
So I shut down my 300g cube about 2 weeks ago; I had put all my fish into the sump and I placed all the rocks into a big barrel with heater and pumps. All the fish were happy and acclimatized to their new tank very well (to all the tang police out there - my sump is a 180g sump so don't start with me about no tangs in sumps)

For the last couple of days there were probably some die-offs on the rocks cuz its been smelling kinda bad and I decided to do a water change to the big barrel of cooking rocks. I wanted to put a skimmer into the barrel and needed some extra room so I decided to put 2x 8" pieces of rocks from the barrel into the sump. Two hours went by and I went down to feed the fish and I find a dead Flame angel. The Red Sea Regal Angel and 6" Queen angel were on their sides breathing heavily. Not good signs obviously so I quickly removed the two pieces of live rock, and literally dumped in 2 liters of carbon into the sump. Hoping that would absorb any toxicity I had hoped my only casualty was the flame angel.

I just came home from a dinner and i find this:


Regal Angel - DOA
Lubbock Fairy wrasse -DOA
6" Powder blud tang - DOA
Queen Angel - still breathing heavily
6" Emporer angel - time of death 2225 hrs 2008-12-07
plus the flame angel already DOA and been taken out

So not sure whats going on but in the same sump included the following fishes which are well and swimming around:
7" Majestic angel
4" Yellow tang
8" sailfin tang
3.5" Goldflake
2 bangaii cardinals
4" orange spotted rabbit fish
4" purple tang

The sump water is being pumped up to my 165g LPS tank with another wack load of fish and that tank didn't have any casualties either. I'm really hoping the Queen and Emperor angels make it but only time will tell right now.

I've been planning on building a 9 foot tank for my FOWLR tank once i move out the 300g cube but I'm starting to wonder if I should just stick with the 165g LPS tank with my sump. I'll see what other fishes die and which ones make it but it has not been a good day nevetheless.