Does Anyone Have Experience With Dead Coral?

[abgeezer]

I am using 3 pieces of dead coral for decoration in my tank as well as a hidey hole for my pleco.

I got a couple sharks that I threw into the tank at the same time as I put the coral in.

Something is not good.

My sharks died as well as a couple of corrys

I had taken a couple pictures of the sharks when I bought them and when I stated to have deaths I was looking at the pictures of the sharks and there were some bumps on them that were not visible to the naked eye but showed up with the camera.

My first thought was that the sharks were not in good shape when I bought them and that is the cause of the tank deaths.

But then I got to wondering if it is possible that it was the coral that caused something negative in the tank.

I had done all the tests and nothing was out of the ordinary with the water.

To close this story I am just wondering if anyone else has put dead coral in their tanks and if it worked out for them or not.

Thanks for your time and thoughts.

 

[*Fishkies*]

I used to use coral in my tanks sometimes, however i had once learned that it can cause your ph to rise and it can cause chemical changes in your water. So maybe consider doing some testing and see what results you see.

 

[abgeezer]

Thanks for the reply Fishkies
I had done all kinds of testing of my water, did not see any drastic or even moderate changes in my water condition because of the coral.

I guess it must have been the sharks with some kind of sickness then.

I have boiled everything so I will try to put the tank back together and hope of the best.

Have a good one

 

[divisible by zero]

how long was the tank set up before putting the sharks in?

 

[Tommy Gun]

I had done all kinds of testing of my water, did not see any drastic or even moderate changes in my water condition because of the coral.

I agree that adding a coral skeleton (or any calcium carbonate based items) to a FW tank should buffer the water's pH towards the more alkaline end of the spectrum. That being said, we may be better equipped to help you if you could not only share the results of your water tests with us, especially the pH, Kh, and Gh since this might provide a few additional clues. My thinking here is that unless the pH of your tank is already high, your test kit may be giving you a false reading, or the coral skeleton is a fake.

Going above and beyond the fact that freshwater fish can be greatly harmed, including death, by large and/or rapid pH changes (in most cases anyways...I realize that there are exceptions), it may also be helpful to know that, under the right circumstances such as a very alkaline pH, ammonia, nitrites and/or nitrates might be more toxic to your fish than they otherwise might be --- so, perhaps your fish were already suffering from ammonia/nitrite/nitrate poisoning, the addition of the coral and subsequent water chemistry changes that are likely to occur may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.

the sharks were not in good shape when I bought them and that is the cause of the tank deaths.

Of course, we should always take the appearance of a fish into consideration before bringing them home since this observation can give clues as to the health of the fish...but it must also be said that, even though a fish looks 'perfectly healthy' in an LFS tank, after they have been chased around, netted, placed in a bag, brought home, and acclimated to a new tank, in many cases, the fish will appear to be much more 'sickly' than it originally did, and can take some time for that to change back to 'normal' again. That being said, it is easy for us to say "it was sick" when a fish dies, but I strongly suggest looking deeper into things to see if you can determine if/what was the actual ailment if for nothing else than to help us avoid the same thing in the future (hence, it is not always a great idea to hurry up and bring home a new fish to replace one which has died unless you know the reason for the death isn't contagious/transmittable)

 

[dizzied]

I doubt the coral did anything. It does not raise PH so fast that it'd cause a problem.

 

[abgeezer]

I had done all kinds of testing of my water, did not see any drastic or even moderate changes in my water condition because of the coral.

""I agree that adding a coral skeleton (or any calcium carbonate based items) to a FW tank should buffer the water's pH towards the more alkaline end of the spectrum. That being said, we may be better equipped to help you if you could not only share the results of your water tests with us, especially the pH, Kh, and Gh since this might provide a few additional clues. My thinking here is that unless the pH of your tank is already high, your test kit may be giving you a false reading, or the coral skeleton is a fake.""The ph level is 6.9 - 7.0 and always was. The Kh and Gh tests were done by a friend and he said they were all within normal range, I did not think to write the numbers down at that time.The coral was boiled for several hours prior to putting into the tankGoing above and beyond the fact that freshwater fish can be greatly harmed, including death, by large and/or rapid pH changes (in most cases anyways...I realize that there are exceptions), it may also be helpful to know that, under the right circumstances such as a very alkaline pH, ammonia, nitrites and/or nitrates might be more toxic to your fish than they otherwise might be --- so, perhaps your fish were already suffering from ammonia/nitrite/nitrate poisoning, the addition of the coral and subsequent water chemistry changes that are likely to occur may have been the straw that broke the camel's back, so to speak.

the sharks were not in good shape when I bought them and that is the cause of the tank deaths.

Of course, we should always take the appearance of a fish into consideration before bringing them home since this observation can give clues as to the health of the fish...but it must also be said that, even though a fish looks 'perfectly healthy' in an LFS tank, after they have been chased around, netted, placed in a bag, brought home, and acclimated to a new tank, in many cases, the fish will appear to be much more 'sickly' than it originally did, and can take some time for that to change back to 'normal' again. That being said, it is easy for us to say "it was sick" when a fish dies, but I strongly suggest looking deeper into things to see if you can determine if/what was the actual ailment if for nothing else than to help us avoid the same thing in the future (hence, it is not always a great idea to hurry up and bring home a new fish to replace one which has died unless you know the reason for the death isn't contagious/transmittable)

I have the remaining live fish in a small clean tank and everything that was in the big tank has been boiled and is sitting there empty until I see if everyone else is going to live or die.I am using RO water which has a ph level of 7.1 with no chemicals in the water. I went to the hardware store where I bought the sharks from today and while chatting up the girl in the back room I noticed that there was one catfish shark in the trash as well as a couple others I could not identify without poking in the trash and being obvious. So I think that once I have this sickness fixed I should be good. The shark in the trash looked like it had a 5mm round spot of fuzzy growth and screwed up looking scales on it. Kind of looked like some pictures of Ich I have seenI have been giving the survivors fresh water and a medication size dose of Cycle as well as Aquarium salts with no charcoal in the filter right now.Thanks for your thoughts.Link to a pic of the coral http/www3.telus.net/public/chad.cox/coral2407.gif

how long was the tank set up before putting the sharks in?

The tank had been running good for 2years with 75% water changes every 10 days and 95% water changes every 6 weeksThanks for your input

 

[Tommy Gun]

The Kh and Gh tests were done by a friend and he said they were all within normal range

Not to be rude or anything, but what exactly is the 'normal' range of Kh, Gh, or even pH? If understood, there really isn't one 'normal' range since this isn't a test for a chemical like ammonia, nitrite, nitrate, phosphate, etc... Why is this important to note? Exactly because:

I doubt the coral did anything. It does not raise PH so fast that it'd cause a problem.

You cannot apply this statement to every situation. For example, if the Kh in my tank is higher than yours, then my adding coral (or any calcium carbonate based substance...i.e. crushed coral, snail shells, etc...) will have less impact, or at least less rapid impact on my water chemistry than it would in your tank. So, no offense dizzied but...

I am using RO water which has a ph level of 7.1

...before you can make the statement you did (which I realize you didn't already know at the time, just making a point), you would have to ask abgeezer if he/she uses a product such as RO Right to replace the very essential trace elements that his/her fish would require to live for any long duration of time AND would adjust the Kh of the water so that coral skeletons would not, in fact, create a rapid change in pH. To support that notion, when adding marine salt mix to RO water, all of those trace elements are already included in the salt (hence, there is no need to use products like RO right). You can also learn more about what I am speaking of by clicking HERE.

The more I learn about your situation abgeezer, the more I am becoming convinced that the coral skeletons could be the cause, at least in part, of your recent deaths. Granted, there are some good benefits to using RO water, but in freshwater tanks, you MUST take some steps to replace the trace elements (major and minor) that are found in non-purified water....not only because the fish need those elements, but also to ensure that the water chemistry remain stable enough to not create osmotic problems for your fish. Additionally, the presence of dead fish in your hardware store's garbage is not only a sign of improper health and safety standards IMHO, but cannot really be a huge indicator of problems seeing as how they probably do not look at fish as something to be cared for entirely correctly, but rather as a source of income. In fact, I am willing to bet that many fish die in an LFS for a myriad of reasons other than illness/diseases....they just dispose of them in a less than public manner. My point here is simply this: fish die for reasons other than illness/diseases and if we keep a closed mind to that fact, we may never figure out how to avoid further deaths in the future.

 

[dizzied]

You cannot apply this statement to every situation. For example, if the Kh in my tank is higher than yours, then my adding coral (or any calcium carbonate based substance...i.e. crushed coral, snail shells, etc...) will have less impact, or at least less rapid impact on my water chemistry than it would in your tank. So, no offense dizzied but...

Actually, if your tank has a higher KH, the impact would be faster rather than slower. I still stand by my statement, dead coral won't change your water chemistry so fast that it would cause deaths, unless the pieces were so big, they took up most of the tank's volume.