My son just called and told me he woke up and found almost all of his fish had died. He did a water change last weekend and had not seem any visable issues prior to going to bed. I'm guessing it was a defective heater. Are there other possibilities for such a sudden disaster?
I think you are looking in the right direction. Could the tank have over heated due to yesterday's temperature? As water warms up, it doesn't carry as much dissolved oxygen. Fish tend to suffer in that situation. Maintaining a lower temperature and good surface agitation is important. Here is a recent article about dealing with heat.
But certainly a bad heater will cause the same issue...this time of year, just remove the heater altogether. It's just a liability in less you keep your house refrigerated.
It would be nice to have more of your tank details to help more specifically...I recommend completing a Reef Showcase which you can just reference for future questions. It is the same thing you see under my user name that says "Reef Info". It gives you a cool way to show others your tank and provides them information to better help.
Sorry to hear of your losses! This is such a delicate balance we all make with our tanks, I am sure it happens to most of us at one time or another. We try to learn to avoid it, we try to learn not to repeat it, but there is just so much to learn!
Troy is a bit of a drive, perhaps, but Amazon Stingrays is shutting down their existing store this week - moving to a new, much nicer location in Clawson. They are trying to sell off ALL of their SW livestock, so they don't have to deal with the move. You might call to make sure that they still have anything left, but I know they were running some good deals.
(And sorry if this post seems commercial - I am in no way connected to Pat or his store. It just seems like this time, GoodGreef might need the info...)
(And sorry if this post seems commercial - I am in no way connected to Pat or his store. It just seems like this time, GoodGreef might need the info...)
Not at all...Amazon Stingrays is a sponsor here and great people to deal with. It's a great suggestion!
Just be sure you have the problem corrected before adding more fish.