Well like I said, he had that eye get all puffy and cloudy before it caved in.

Like I said, I'm at a loss. I generally have a pretty good idea of what I'm dealing with and I just don't have anything here. Angels can be polyp eaters but I don't have corals that would've done that. I suppose he could've coasted too close to the Anemone and gotten stung, but I believe theirs is a neurotoxin that would've just dropped him dead.

The only other time I've been stumped like this was by a massive crustacean die-off about a year ago. In the span of 24 hours, all 4 peppermint shrimp, both camel shrimp, both cleaner shrimp and a coral banded, not to mention all 3 emerald crabs and who knows how many hermits (though not all) all crapped out on me.

My urchin was just fine. My corals were just fine. I ran the water tests and turned up nothing. If it were water issues, the Urchin would've shown it first anyway (he's the caged canary of my tank). I would have at least shown some burn-off in the SPS and closing up on the LPS and softies. I didn't have anything that would've gone after the shrimp (besides, the Coral Banded was in the sump due to bad behavior).

I never did figure it out. I waited a coupe months, put a couple new cleaner shrimp in and re-populated the hermits, as well as a couple more emerald crabs. About the only thing I can even begin to figure is a power surge or something that put a faint charge through the water; maybe the pump hiccuped. It could also have been a nitrogen blowoff, but I still think that would have shown up somewhere else. I had a Sea Hare die on me a couple months prior, but had he released a toxin it would've shown up immediately. The only other fish in there that was venemous was my fox-face (cool damn fish, highly recommended).

Damn baffling hobby sometimes.

Of course it's just a guess, but I would guess the eye symptoms were a secondary bacterial infection. Aeromonas is a pretty opportunistic bacteria so it's possible the eye was infected because the fish's health was degraded in general. I guess it's also possible that Aeromonas was the primary culprit, since it can result in pretty severe tissue loss if unchecked. However, again it would be extremely rare for it to be bad enough to "rot out" a fish like that before you ever noticed any surface lesions.

Very, very true. We had a situation similar to yours, where we had 14 ghost shrimp all die overnight. Never did figure out why. Luckily they're only .33 each!

I'll have to look that up.

Like I said, he was hiding in the caves and rocks for a couple days. It wasn't until I got him in quarantine that I was able to give him a good look-over. The lesions may have appeared before I recognized them.

Okay, so I got my 10 gallon quarantine tank set up.

1 betta male

1 wisteria plant, 2 java moss, 1 hygro

Ammonia levels are reading 0 and it's been up for about 5 days. Plants aren't looking well, though. Should I add more CO2 and get a better light? It has a 20w fluorescent, but I'm not sure it's a real grow light.

Any advice?

You put plants in your quarantine tank? Several of the meds that might require the use of a QT could hurt the plants, just FYI.

5 days isn't near long enough in most cases. Have you checked your nitrite/nitrate levels? If ammonia is reading zero but nitrate is also zero, your cycle hasn't started, let alone finished.

I would not suggest adding CO2 - at best it will do nothing in your setup, at worst it will screw up water parameters (CO2 lowers pH, sometimes rapidly). Furthermore, the plants you chose should grow well without extra CO2, especially the hygro (water wisteria and hygrophilia difformis are the same plant, BTW).

Can you give more details on your lighting? 20W isn't necessarily insufficient for a 10G tank but there are many other factors to consider other than wattage, particularly the spectral output.

I just put them in there for decoration. Not really worried if they die because of meds. It's just kind of a test run to see how well I can manage a little larger planted tank.

I'm not worried about the cycle starting right now, because the plants should be absorbing all the ammonia.

Light is a grow fluorescent from the pet store.

Well you picked pretty hardy plants. Java moss spreads slowly but surely across just about everything and I couldn't kill the Hygro if I wanted to! :)

Just keep in mind that because you're successful with these two VERY hardy plants doesn't mean you're cut out for plant-keeping. It's been a lot of trial and error for me and a lot of the big box stores don't help because they sell a lot of plants that will NEVER survive fully-submerged no matter how much you baby them.

In the end, cycling really doesn't matter for a QT since there's quite a few meds that would kill your nitrifying bacteria anyway. Just don't leave your plants in there too long!

Grow fluorescents a lot of times come in the range from 5000-5500K color temperature. They make for good supplementary lights (I have one 5500K T5) but for plants, the bulk of your light should be in the 6500K range (usually marketed as "full daylight"). I would check the Kelvin rating just to be sure.

The reasons for this are multiple but the basics have to do with the depth of light penetration and the amount of light output in the useable spectra - yellow/green output is largely useless to plants and can lead to algae problems.

K, I thought it said 6500, but maybe it just sucks.

Also, my hygro and wisteria look completely different. Maybe same family? They're for sure not the same plant. I'll get pics later tonight.

No, if it's a 6500K "plant growth" lamp, it's probably pretty good. Any idea what brand it was by chance?

Well, hygrophilia is the genus. The particular species with the common name water wisteria is hygrophilia difformis. It looks kind of like carrot tops. That's what I have.

What does your other hygro look like, especially the leaves?

Long, and flat, kinda like an Amazon sword.

No idea on the brand. Whatever they sell at Petco.

Like this?

http://www.aquabid.com/uploads/livep...1304642455.jpg

That's hygrophilia polysperma, or dwarf hygro. I don't have any experience with it so I can't say if it is as forgiving as its cousin.

I believe Petco sells Zoo Med, which I use and have had very good luck. I don't know if I already asked this, but what size is the bulb? Is it a screw-in compact fluorescent or an actual tube?

Gotta brag a little bit here - got a new Naso Tang, cleaned the tank up a bit, have been dosing with some coral supplements and am pretty happy with the reef for the moment (though, as ever, this is always the moment things will go haywire:

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/VlGu4B4dy5Q" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

(Work is blocking youtube, so this may not work...)

Okay, should be fixed, even if I can't see it.

There's some fairly cool stuff in there now. That little pink guy that flashes around a bit is a mystery wrasse; he's pretty rare and isn't exactly cheap. I've had him for about 9 months now and he's doubled in size. He's an eating machine and has taken to pretty well torturing any new additions that aren't big enough to kick the hell out of him. I have to introduce smaller fish at night and sometimes in pairs to make sure that he'll either miss them or get distracted.

Those clownfish were no bigger than 5 centimeters when I got them from a local breeder. They were sucked into overflows on several occasions and rescued. The big delta-shaped tang is a Dejardinii Sailfin, the Red Sea model; much prettier than his Hawaiian cousin. The Naso is the silverish one with the yellow markings around his eyes. That fish is freakin' awesome - was eating out of my hands in the 2nd day.

I'm going to get a Flame Angel back in there as well as a Kole tang for hair algae control and then probably concentrate on coral growth for awhile. I may get a calcium reactor or some additional water movers that will allow for better corals. Maybe a 250W light setup or better skimmer. The nice SPS corals require extremely clean water and that's just very tough to do with the kind of bio-load I have in that tank; lots of big fish. I'm a fish guy first, corals second.

Well, that is until I inevitably backslide as is normally the case with these things. Then I'll probably want to dump bleach in the whole thing and walk away. It happens every 3 months or so...

That's a nice setup. I'm jealous.

Beautiful tank and awesome video!! I hope to eventually move to saltwater in a couple of years.