Another sad tale

[howdy20012002]

Well, I went down to LA last weekend.
I left friday afternoon
When I called on saturday evening, I was greeted with the news that my entire seahorse tank had castrophically crashed, killing all 12 of my beautiful seahorses.
Apparently, They were all huddled together in the corner as if they were trying to console each other.
The frustrating part is that I don't know what caused the crash.
Unfortunatey, I was unable to test the water to see what the chemistry was like at the time. When I got back, the parameters were right out the roof because a couple of the seahorse bodies were hidden within the rock.

I had moved a couple of things around in the tank on friday, scrapped some algae scum off the back of the tank and moved a powerhead.
But I don't think that would have caused the crash.
Even if I lost one seahorse, I don't think that it would have caused the tank to crash because I had lost one in the past and the body was gone within hours by the scavengers.
Any suggestions as to what caused this? could the algae that I had scrapped off released something that killed them off?
I know seahorses are picky, but besides losing the one a couple of months ago, I had no difficulties at all.
As I think seahorses are awesome little creatures, I will be getting more and was just wondering how long should I wait before putting more in the tank? Obviously I will be testing before I put anything in. I also did a 100 percent water change when I got home.
Any help would be greatly appreciated

[Delphinus]

Sorry to hear of your loss.

[christyf5]

Damn that sucks, sorry to hear that

First off as a suggestion, I have this rule, its just something I've learned over the years. And that is never mess with the tank just before you're going anywhere. Just as I've learned, never mess with the skimmer just before you go to bed. No good can ever come of it (fricken skimmer, it took me a few times and many towels to figure that one out ).

There are many possibilities, you said you moved stuff around? Possibly disturbing a nasty pocket of H2S in the sandbed? Did the powerhead you moved slip and blow into the sandbed? Perhaps the algae scraping stressed them out?

How long has the tank been set up? How big is it?

[OCDP]

Originally Posted by christyf5

Damn that sucks, sorry to hear that

First off as a suggestion, I have this rule, its just something I've learned over the years. And that is never mess with the tank just before you're going anywhere. Just as I've learned, never mess with the skimmer just before you go to bed. No good can ever come of it (fricken skimmer, it took me a few times and many towels to figure that one out ).

There are many possibilities, you said you moved stuff around? Possibly disturbing a nasty pocket of H2S in the sandbed? Did the powerhead you moved slip and blow into the sandbed? Perhaps the algae scraping stressed them out?

How long has the tank been set up? How big is it?

Was there any heat problems while you were gone? Heat's a killer. Sorry for the huge loss, that totally sucks.

[howdy20012002]

Christy
I will definitely not do anything major before heading out again.
I may have caused some movement of some stuff in the sand...but unlikely.
The tank is a 47 gallon that is 31 inches deep.
Before anyone says anything about being overpopulation. I was constantly checking chemistry and the levels were fine. there were only a couple them that were larger...most were smaller juveniles. I had so many in the tank because I was going to take some out after I had confirmed the sexes of them...my intentions are to breed them, so I wanted to make sure that I had the right numbers of males and females. The jevuniles are hard to sex, so I overbought just to make sure.

I had scrapped the glass regularly without any difficulties in the past...

The tank had been up and going since christmas.

OCDP
The heat wasn't a concern. This happened after the big heat wave.

One thing is for sure...I have also learnt don't have so many eggs in one basket so to speak. I will be breaking the numbers down into a couple of different seahorse tanks in the future..so that I don't have so huge losses if, god forbid, something happens again in the future.

[christyf5]

There is a possiblilty that maybe one died and fouled the water??

[Beverly]

Sorry to hear about your SHs, Neal

I suspect it may have been the algae you scraped off the back of the tank. Was any of the algae red and stuck on like coralline, but not coralline? I had some of that stuff on the back of our 120g last summer. I didn't know what it was, but it was overtaking the coralline, so I scraped some of it off. Was away from the tank for 3-4 hours only to come back to two dead fish - my favourite ones! - and the others gasping for breath. Did a 40g water change and threw in some carbon right away, which saved the remaining fish.

What was the red algae on the back of the tank? Don't really know, but I'm guessing it was a species of cyano that, when disturbed, released a cr*pload of toxins. Corals were not affected.

[howdy20012002]

the algae was a cyano like substance...perhaps that explains what happened.