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š I woke up this morning to find all my beautiful tank mates: 2 seahorses, 2 clowns and my scooter all dead. As you can imagine I was devastated. Everything else in the tank was in a very bad way, my soft coral was struggling and my Emerald crab, hermit crab and peppermint shrimp and snail were not coping at all well.
I could not understand it, last night they were all very happy. Everything was eating well and brightly coloured and swimming around and then all of a sudden they are gone.I took all my survivors to the local aquarium store as I didnāt believe I had any hope of keeping them alive if I didnāt and also took a water sample so I could get to the bottom of why I lost most of my tank mates in this horrible way.
Turns out over night my water levels shifted and the ammonia levels went quite high and will have poisoned my poor sweethearts. I pray they didnāt suffer too much.
I still am in disbelief this happened over night suddenly. Especially as I said before everything seemed fine. I got told by the man in the shop that I overloaded my tank with livestock does this sound right? I have a Clear seal Mini pentagon aquarium that holds 9 gallons (39.15litres). Its 15ā high and I thought it was a perfect tank for me to get use to my new pets in before upgrading when they got larger.
I use a Fluval filter and heater and also have the fitted lights in the tank hood more for the coral than anything.
Please can you give me you opinions on this setup, my seahorses were very precious to me and I feel so guilty that they have died. I would like to eventually try again however I want to know whether I will need to buy a new tank. I have also heard that a good protein skinner can prevent this happening again so if I donāt need a new tank should I invest in one of those?Thanks
An emotional seahorse keeper, Charlotte šHow long did you cycle your tank before you added the fish?
I had a similar thing happen once, not in my seahorse tank though. We had a power outage while I was at work. I was using a fluval cannister filter and when the power started again, all the water and waste from the filter was pushed back into the tank. By the time I arrived home from work, most of my fish were dead. I had many of them for years. The ammonia had spiked to over 8. I had to move my remaining fish to an aquarium shop for a couple of months and cycle the tank again. It is good now.
My most recent ammonia spike was in my seahorse tank a few months ago. The reading was between .5 and 1. I think it was a general water quality issue. We have been in drought for the past few years and last spring (autumn in the N.H.) we got a lot of rain. Lots of people had trouble with their aquariums. My seahorses are still recovering and thanks to the advice of people like Pete they have a good chance of surviving.
I hope this helps you to figure out what might have happened in your tank.
Regards
Lonnie
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