Something IS WRONG, really WRONG.

I'll start from the beginning... At home I have a 75 gallon reef which is doing fairly well for the most part, but was fairly on the budget. I ended up convincing my grandfather to get a tank of his own (not on budget ).


We started by getting a Marineland 60 gallon cube with overflow. After some planning I got a 10 gallon tank from petco and some pvc and pvc cement from Lowes. I bought glass baffles from a local place and siliconed them in to the 10 gallon tank using regular silicone. I put it under the stand and plumbed everything in.

For equipment I chose a Reef Octopus sss 1000 (ended up swapping it out with my Bubble Magus nac7 due to noise) for the protein skimmer, a Finnex 300 watt titanium heater, a 26 watt cfl bulb in a Lowes reflector to put over the fuge (where I'd be growing chaeto), a Mag 7 (with a brass adapter) as the return pump, a bit under 100 pounds of Marcorocks dry rock, 20 pounds of dry sand, a Radion unit for main lighting, two Vortech mp10s for flow, and regular Instant Ocean for salt.

Once all the equipment was set up and the tank was full and running we added two table shrimp and a piece of live rock from the LFS to get the cycle started. After a few weeks of testing with the API master test kit the ammonia and nitrites read 0 and the nitrates read fairly high at about 15 ppm.

I wanted to start the tank out clean so over the course of a week I did two 30 gallon water changes. I wouldn't have done that if there was any life in the tank...

Now some of the stuff I use for big water changes (which I don't really do) is kinda dirty. A regular utility pump, some metal stuff, large containers that were used for god knows what before they took on their life as aquariums tools, and garden hoses that have and are only used for aquarium stuff. Though I don't think any thing was bad enough to cause the problems that we've experienced, especially since it's the same exact stuff I use to do water changes on my eel tank.

After letting it sit for about another week, we went to the LFS to see if we could find anything. He didn't see any fish he liked but we did find an exceptionally colored Galaxea that they were selling for a low price cause they didn't know what it was, so we got it...

It seemed super healthy (opened in the bag and opened right away once in the tank). And by the way... I only temp acclimated it for about 40 minutes and didn't do any parameter acclimation, nor did I dip it. I came the next day just to check on it. Well... There was hardly any flesh left and it was completely dead by next day. The people on here suggested that it could have been burned by the light, which seems possible...

About another week later we decided to get some fishies. We went back to the LFS and picked up a prawn goby, a six line wrasse, a pistol shrimp, and a cleaner shrimp. They were all drip acclimated for over 2 hours and then floated for 30 minutes to get the temperature back up.

I spent the night so I could properly observe them. In the morning I could see the wrasse swimming around back and fourth behind the rocks, the goby making a cave under a rock with the pistol shrimp, and the cleaner shrimp just hanging on to the rocks in one place in the back of the tank.

Everything seemed to be going great except, except.... I found it odd and strange the way the cleaner was staying so still in such a strange place, but assumed he was still just acclimating to his new environment.

Three days later I came by just to check how things were going... X_X

The pistol shrimp's corpse was laying right there and the cleaner shrimp was also lying in a fairly visible place. After further searching I found what I'm pretty sure was the two fish... Dead...

I quickly did a water test. Everything was normal except that the ammonia was elevated to about 0.2 ppm, which wouldn't be surprising with 4 creatures rotting in it.


What's most discouraging of all is that we're not dealing with an ammonia problem or a lack of oxygen, or even a parasite. There's something in that tank that is killing everything, practically overnight.

The only thing I can think of at this point is that it's either some serious contaminant in the tank that got there before the tank was filled, or is still leaking in to the tank from a piece of equipment, OR it could be stray voltage, but I find that unlikely since all the equipment in the tank is very new and if I'm not mistaken, it doesn't usually kill in that manner.



Please please please just give some ideas guys. At this point all I want is theories as to what could be wrong with this tank. I'm stumped. >_>

 

Where did the water come from when you originally filled it and did your changes?

Just curious, did you prep all of the new equipment to be in the tanks, or even the tanks themselves? By this I mean using either dishsoap or vinegar. Clearly there is some contamination as you seem to know what you are doing.

 

If it where my tank, I would want to remove that brass tap from the equation
brass contains a lot of copper and Zinc at high levels is toxic to fish and at low levels toxic to inverts

before adding more live stock , I would remove that and replace with plastic alternative
and then run Cuprisorb in my aqaurium to remove any residual, accumulated copper

Steve

 

Oh yah I forgot to mention I'm using a BRS 75 gpd RO/DI unit...


I rinsed all the equipment off in fresh water.

 

If I had to guess I would have to say its the sllicone and/or the pvc cement. In the past ive always used aquarium safe silicone and dont know about the cement but I woildnt trust it.

 

What are your nitrite and nitrate levels, please give the tested values?
What is the specific gravity at?
How is the temperature and have you doubled checked it?
Do test for stray voltage to be safe.
Buy carbon, not from Kent, and use it and change it often.
Get some copper absorbing resin. It will pull out other metals also.
Did you use dechlorinator if you are not using RODI water?

 

What was the silicone you used? Some contain microbial agents and are toxic to most life.

 

Not sure of the name but I got it at the lfs

 

+1

That's the first thing I thought of. Saltwater is highly corrosive to heavy metals. Wouldn't take long to OD your tank with a brass fitting.

 

If you are referring to the silicone then that should not be the problem unless you added water before the silicone was fully cured.

What is the pH?