Fish are dead!

I checked my params and everything is the way its been for the past 7 months. the only exception is the temp. It for some reason sky rocketed from 77 to 84. I turned the heater down (it's been VERY hot in NJ between 85 and 90 the past week) so now the temp is at 79 but the fish are starting to die one by one. Every morning i wake up and find another dead. They look almost like they suffocated if that makes sense. No signs of ich or stress my royal gramma was out swimming the next morning a gonner upside down almost looked like he imploded. next my shrimp, then my hippo tang and his cheeks looked almost purple like he had held his breath and died. my wrasse fish is breathing heavy and im afraid he's next. the only other strange thing is two dead snails and the shells are empty and my frogspawn looks like it has a HUGE bubble where his mouth is...it's super inflated and splitting as well? oh almost forgot! my short tentacle plate was brown and i changed my dosing and the beautiful green started coming back but now he's also purple? the purple looks more like algae that is growing in the tank and not its natural color! Please help peoples!!!! this has been an amazing tank for me watching everything grow. my corals seem a little stressed (not fully out) and my clowns are the only ones swimming around normally!

 

Wow. First things first.

What are your current water parameters?

Amonnia
Nitrite
Nitrate
Phosphate
Alkalinity
Specific Gravity/Salinity ppm?

What brand of heater are you running?

 

Suffocation is a good possibility. 84F is not a dangerous temp, except the fact that the warmer the water, the less dissolved oxygen you have in solution. Does your tank have a cover, and how much flow do you have?

 

What is your Alk or SG? Just curious. Plus I know everyone else on 3reef will want you to post your parameters too.

I'm strong to the finish cause I eats me spinach. I'm ReefBruh the reefing man. Toot Toot.

 

i recently had problem with heat and it affected my corals only and not my fish, my temp hit about 88 at one point, since then i have been using lots of ice in bags to keep the tank cool and fans. The sudden heat changed did it for me. Purplish coloring im not sure, mine bleached from it. if you could post a pic more people could help out

 

++1. High temp means low oxygen levels.

 

that sounds like the perfect answer! i have no cover i am in the basement and its always very cool in here! especially with the central air it's always a good 5 degrees cooler down here compared to the rest of the house. Alk was 0 everything read good with the exception of my nitrates it has been at a steady 15ppm almost 20 forever! the salinity is 1026. what should i do about oxygen? the temp i am going to turn off the heater over night because I lowered it a lot and the temp only dropped 4 degrees. I might have to pick up a new one. I'm just a bit frustrated here because the tank was doing GREAT!!! my plate is acting weird though it's a nice neon green plate and now turning purple and the purple looks more like the algae that was growing on the sandbed. can this grow on a coral too?

 

Sometimes algae can overtake coral too.

I have a Marineland stealth pro(recalled, I know) heater which was fine until about 2 weeks ago when my tank heated up 12 degrees higher than normal(usually at 80*) so now it was at 92.5* F. when I got home I unplugged the heater and have now been running with no heater for 2 weeks. I've been keeping a steady 77* F.

 

Determining oxygen levels (ORP) in your water can be a difficult task. Mike (Mikejrice), from Elite Reef (a Colorado fish store), is a sponsor of this forum and did a good write-up on this subject, just a few weeks ago, to explain how to figure out your ORP level for a person's specific tank setup/situation. Let me see if I can find it.

I know as temperature increases, dissolved oxygen decreases. When salinity increases, dissolved oxygen decreases once again.

 

Do you by chance, dose ozone to your aquarium?