Fish are dying quick

Ok, this tank has been established for over ten years and suddenly I have fish dropping of like rocks and once they look bad it is only about 24hrs.

The best way to describe what they look like is "dry". They look a bit pale similar to a fish out of water. No sheen to them and it looks like no slime coat. I added a lawnmower blennie a about a month ago but other then that no change. I'm not familiar with marine velvet but thats the first thing that crossed my mind.

Parameters are in check except for nitrates they are around 40ppm. I checked the KH for the first time some one suggested that might be too high or to low which would affect the slime coat. It is at 13-14, is that something to worry about?

Dunno what to do but my Koran which was about 10 years old looked a little off on Monday and was Dead Tuesday. Noticed on clown yesterday looked a little pale, he looks alot worse today but the other 2 smaller ones are dead?

Any ideas? Clown is not looking like he'll make it, Quenn Angel now looks harassed and the leopard wrasse looks unaffected? I've never had anything like this that worked this fast.

 

10 years is about the time OTS (old tank syndrome) kicks in. Are you having a problem maintaining your pH?

 

None, it is always 8.3 to 8.4.

Something else that I didn't mention was that I added an algae scrubber about a week ago, but I didn't think that that would cause anything like this.

Do you know what the range is for the KH?

 

KH is a bit on the high side of the scale but unless it rose quickly I would think its not the culprit

 

Thanks waste, I don't know what it was before so I can only assume it wouldn't have jumped up for any reason. RO water should be 0 but I'll check it anyway.

 

id start looking at the scrubber was it DIYed?

 

It is, not sure what could be doing it, Bucket was an old salt bucket washed out with RO water, I'm going to pull that off now to see if that helps.

Here's a picture, not to good because it is from the phone but it is worth a shot. You can see the head color is normal but the body is "faded"

 

Ok, now I'm no expert. But something simular happened to a friend of mine. Yesterday I got a call from a buddy of mine in monterey. He had just added an ATS to my advice and was pissed because he started loosing fish within the first few days of using it.

So I drove over to his place and inspected what he made, and although the ATS was made correctly he used the wrong type of glue and we suspect the chemicals were running off into the water. Because it was like no joke within a few hours he said they started looking "pale". I don't know if thats it but its worth checking, otherwise everything else you described seems odd.

-Gavin

 

Looking closely at this clown I would say he has no slime coat, is there something that attacks a fishes slime coat and eats it away?

 

Chemical Burn Perhaps? If it was me I'd throw my remaining fish into a QT and see if it helps, because your system shouldn't be crashing for no reason. And if its crashing due to an environmental issue, removing them from the environment might buy you some time till you figure out whats going on.

My 2 cents