~Flighty~
Now with more baby
I'm so sad this morning. I woke up to a mystery disaster. I have a 42g hex tank plumbed into my large system. This morning one large clown and all four filefish were dead. Survivers are one smaller clown and two cardinal fish. The only tank change is that the siphon is broken between the hex and the system, but in reflection, that may have happened several days ago. The tank has its own powerhead and batery backup airstone, so there should be no immediate issue with it being disconnected from the main system. In fact I run it this way frequently as an anemone psudo QT.
This is a tough big loss, my mated pair of (eating) orange spotted files, my new couple (maybe pair) of barred files which were also eating, and a large female pink skunk which was pairing with an orange skunk, but had not yet laid eggs.
It looks like maybe O2 deprivation is the cause. Larger fish look like they died first. But how the heck did the tank get O2 deprived? Maybe the female clown died and caused an ammonia spike? She is the only one that looks like she has been dead for more than a couple of hours. Maybe the powerhead jammed and worked itself back on when I jostled it and I didn't notice? with any power problem, the backup air would have been on. I just don't know.
I am running a bubble line now and the remaining fish have perked up. Some brittle stars are dead and my porcelain crab was uncharacteristically at the top of the rockwork until the bubbles got going.
I am so bummed!
This is a tough big loss, my mated pair of (eating) orange spotted files, my new couple (maybe pair) of barred files which were also eating, and a large female pink skunk which was pairing with an orange skunk, but had not yet laid eggs.
It looks like maybe O2 deprivation is the cause. Larger fish look like they died first. But how the heck did the tank get O2 deprived? Maybe the female clown died and caused an ammonia spike? She is the only one that looks like she has been dead for more than a couple of hours. Maybe the powerhead jammed and worked itself back on when I jostled it and I didn't notice? with any power problem, the backup air would have been on. I just don't know.
I am running a bubble line now and the remaining fish have perked up. Some brittle stars are dead and my porcelain crab was uncharacteristically at the top of the rockwork until the bubbles got going.
I am so bummed!
