Trouble in Paradise

Well, it has been an exhausting week. I apologize to those of you who have been checking in regularly for not posting sooner, but I've been quite busy with getting the tank settled. On Saturday, I had a tragedy.

6pm - fed the fish as I normally do. Nothing new to report. Everybody eats and seems healthy.

7pm - some friends come by, and we make our way out to dinner.

11:30pm - my friends and I come back to the house to suddenly see the Auriga Butterfly stuck to the inlet side of the powerhead. It was completely reactionary, but I immediately stuck my hand in the tank and swatted it away from the powerhead. Shortly thereafter, I question if I should have done that, hoping I didn't hurt it. The poor thing couldn't control itself in any way. It kind of looked like it was drunk. No, I have not been dosing vodka into the tank! J/K...

Anyway, I left the powerheads off overnight, and it settled into one of the top corners, probably because that's likely the spot with the least flow in the tank. Cut to Sunday...

9am - I look all over the tank - I mean everywhere - short of taking the rock out of the tank, there is no place that this fish is hiding. I am assuming the worst. Start my post on http://www.reefcentral.com to ask for some advice.

Spent the afternoon helping Meri pick out paint colors for her new place... cut to

5pm - I decide it would be prudent to do a water change. I replace around 25% (13ish gallons). While working on the tank, I notice that the flame scallop is dead, too. What the heck is going on? I took it out, and the body was all broken down inside the shell - it must have been dead for a while, and I didn't notice. After testing the parameters, I see a small spike in ammonia, but nothing to be too concerned about.

Right now, it's Tuesday at 8:30pm, and I still have not found the fish. Basically, the folks on RC are assuming it's not only dead, but also already cleaned up by my CuC. They work fast, evidently. I would rather have had seen the dead body. It's the not knowing that's killing me. It also makes me think about Bubba - the Yellow Watchman Goby. It disappeared after the first day I had it in the tank. I always assumed it was hiding, because people on RC told me that's what YWGs do. Now, I have to assume it's dead.

So, what now? Well, I'm slowing down considerably for now. The Banggai Cardinal (Arnold, Tommy Lee?) and the Longnose Hawkfish (Pinnochio) are going to stay in the QT as long as I can stand to keep them down there. For one, this will give me time to figure out what's going on in the display tank. I also ordered a bulk supply of granular ferric oxide (GFO), which removes phosphates from the water, and granular activated carbon (GAC) which removes impurities from the water just like in Brita filters.

Some of the folks on RC recommended removing the media from my cannister filter, and replacing it with the GFO and GAC. Right now, the filter has some media, some GAC and some GFO. Evidently, the media is making the nitrates jump up by providing a refuge for bacteria such as nitrosomonas which convert nitrite to nitrate. However, there's nowhere for the nitrate to go, so the concentration is jumping. Normal levels of nitrate are around 20ppm or less. Right now, I've got it down to around 25ish from maybe around 50ish. As soon as I get the GFO and GAC in, I'm going to take care of this. Regular maintenance on the filter is going to become part of my weekly routine.

Well, needless to say, I'm a little dissappointed that when I thought I had five healthy fish in the tank, in reality I now only have three. It's emotional to lose a pet, and it's depressing when you realize that you are throwing money down the drain.

Thanks for listening, and I will post more pictures as soon as I figure out exactly what caused the Auriga to die, and how to fix it. I'm hoping it was just some bad water chemistry. I'll be in touch... until then...