what happened?

[billm]

I'm at lost to explain what has happened o my tank.I have lost 5 corals and three fish in the last three days.at first i thought it might of been because of the tempenture,because of the lighting scheme i have, two 150 hqi lamps and two 96 watt artinic lamps.the tank tempenture got above 83 degrees.that is when i lost three corals.But then,i took steps to reduce the tempenture by floating frozen water bottles and limiting the lighting to a couple of hours a day.now, two days later, i lost the three fish,yellow tank,bicolor blenny, and a long nose hawk. I also,did a 20 gallon water change,after i lost the corals just in case,but came home afternoon to find fish dead.I,m at lost to explain and correct the problem....

[tendar]

Your temp spike has probably caused a chain reaction.
The 3 corals obviously died from the spike right away. What you dont see is the other possible creatures that may have died and sent your tank into a cycle causing a contius loss of life.
Have you tested your ammonia and nitrites since the spike?
If you are reading any ammonia or nitrites you may want to do another water change or 2.
The sudden decrease in temp probably was also a shock on the system also.

[ClownMan]

Like Gregg pointed out already, what is going on is a chain reaction that happens frequently in tank life. When the temp went up and killed your corals, this immediately started a chain reaction of a) increased nitrate / nitrite levels, b) increased algae (most likely) which in turn started your tank into a cycling spiral... Water changes are the right step, and taking additional steps to watch & reduce nitrites, nitrates & ammonia levels.

I've had similar situations happen before. One thing I've learned to do, is that if I get the sense that my tank is loosing control, I will immediately move healthy critters to my backup tank until I can get the primary tank back under control before loosing everything. I learned this the hard way when I first started out and didn't see the need for a backup tank. I had almost same thing happen. Temp went up and killed some of my coral and a couple of star fish, this in turn sky rocketed nitrates / nitrites and before I knew it my whole tank was gone. After doing a post mortem I took other's advice and got a backup tank for just such emergencies. It's helped me out several times since!

Just my $.02 worth... Sorry for your loss and I hope things get better soon. I always hate to hear when people loose a critter...

[brody98]

You may have cooled your tank down too fast, before I bought a chiller and still lived in a slab house my tank temp went up to 84 - 85 routinely during the summer all i did was turn the heater up so it didn’t fall off much in the night time, I never lost any fish or coral from that amount of heat, I would look for more possible issues, unless your temp went up real fast and was brought down real fast.that would cause alot of stress, Sorry for your loss