Killed My Fish

[jonnyuk]

as per the title, somehow i've killed my two fish, fireball angel and red headed goby. its a bit of story so hoping it makes sense.

i did a water change last wednesday night, then went away for a 2 days. brought back with me some zoa coral from london, put this in the tank friday night and all was well.

i went away on saturday night and came back yesterday lunch time. this is where i do a few different things and wondering if one of them has killed my fish

1: 2.00 feed my fish a small amount of mashed up garlic (raw), they eat the lot
2: 2.30 feed my corals with filter feeder food (0.5ml of orange stuff i've used for months)
3: 4.00 fed my fish flake as per normal
4: at 7.30 used some puty from a5 aquatics to glue down my new coral and some other bits to stop my zebra hermit crap doing his usual trick of knocking off my coral. the stuff used was for pond repairs etc but also said for coral in aquariums on the packaging, it also said fish safe. i asked a couple of guys at a5 who all said its fine. it was a two part mix that you blend together.

i blended the puty in a jug of water i had taken from the tank, the instructions said to use gloves so i used the gloves you get at petrol stations.

following this the water was cloudy and the hermit crap decided to crawl all over the newly fixed down coral, tiny, tiny bits of the puty came off into the water as he crawled all over it.


i then did my usual 7lt water change, pre-heater my water, put a pump in it to circulate the water and added my tmc pro reef salt (done this hours before).

finished all this by about 8.00

went to bed about 10.00 and all was well.

came down this morning to find my angel wedge in some rock with my pom pom crab all over it, my goby nowhere to be seen.

i checked my water and all is well

temp=25.5c
sg .025

did not check anything else as had no time.

my angel had no sign of injury, eyes where clear, skin looked clean, no slime, no fin damage at all. looked like he had dyed not long before.

some info about my tank

40ltr
about 8kg of live rock
nano power head
external filter filled with live rock/carbon/phosphate remover

1 blood shrimp
1 randell shrimp
1 pom pom crab
1 zebra hermit crap
1 angel
1 goby

everything is alive apart from the fish

i'm at a loss really unless it was the garlic/puty.

any ideas as to what has happend?

thanks
Jonathan

 

[Uriel]

Certain putty's although "Fish Safe" suck oxygen out of the water when they are curing. Since your tank is a nano this could have had a very drastic effect and is probably what killed you fish. D-D Aquascaping putty and milliput both have this effect.

 

[demasonisrule]

Certain putty's although "Fish Safe" suck oxygen out of the water when they are curing. Since your tank is a nano this could have had a very drastic effect and is probably what killed you fish. D-D Aquascaping putty and milliput both have this effect.

+1 Do you have any flow directed at the surface (so that it ripples), so as to aid in oxygenating the water? If not, I would say it was probably the putty, how much did you use? Also, though I doubt this would kill your fish but not your inverts, check your other water parameters.

 

[ALW]

It could have been something on the gloves. I wouldnt feed garlic to your fish either.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

I would agree with the putty theory. Not sure if it removes oxygen from the water (it might do, I just don't know that for a fact) but I do know it can change the water chemistry. If it removes the Oxygen from the water this would have been even worse overnight as oxygen levels naturally drop then also and CO2 levels increase. In a nano tank this effect would have been even more drastic.

Really sorry for the lose though. In future I would recommend using less putty and try not to disturb it too much when its in the water (it shouldn't make your water cloudy, if it is then you are disturbing it too much).

I also agree with not feeding garlic, there is no proof at all that it has any kind of beneficial effect for fish. Only time I would recommend using garlic is as a food attractant to try and help picky eaters to eat frozen food.

 

[jonnyuk]

abit of an update on this (sorry for the late replies been following this on another forum).

i used just fixit putty made by king fish, i'd say 3/4 of golf ball size in total. it did make my water go cloudy.

i have since done 2 (monday night and last night) 7ltr water changes. my corals all look ropey, especially my toad stool and zenia's. my inverts are all still alive though.

allot of people have said its more than likely 02 or lack of that has caused my problems.

i do have my power head pointing at the surface causing ripples and breaking the surface etc.

all i can do now is wait and see.