Dead fish

K

kaspm

New member
I have a new tank and these were the first fish I added. I added 2 clown and 2 cardinal yesterday. This morning a notice the one Cardinal laying on the sand bed and just now saw the other dead.

Water parameters are good, not sure what caused the problem. Both clowns seem to be doing fine.
 
What are your ammonia, nitrite and nitrate readings?

Did you let your tank cycle?

When was it setup?
 
This sounds like a new tank? Can you post the size, equipment, how long set up and all that good stuff?

Parameters should include ammonia, nitrite, nitrate as well.....has your tank cycled? New fish dying in a new tank is usually due to the tank not being cycled.
 
hmmm. So the clowns are ok? I wonder if they bullied the cardinals, although you didn't see that going on. Are they all from the same LFS? the only thing I can think of is that some fish are hardier than others and maybe the cardinals were more delicate. Most clowns have been captive bred for generations and haven't been collected off the reef and subject to shipping long distances and all that. Any marks or spots on the fish at all?
 
Too many fish too fast in a new tank, probably had an ammonia spike and it killed the cardinal fish. Clowns are much hardier and can take a mild low level ammonia spike, still might have damaged gills. This would be my guess.
 
Dkuhlmann said:
Too many fish too fast in a new tank, probably had an ammonia spike and it killed the cardinal fish. Clowns are much hardier and can take a mild low level ammonia spike, still might have damaged gills. This would be my guess.
Click to expand...

+1

Too many fish too fast would be my first guess as well.

Also how did you acclimate?

The other questions are valid too. What sized tank, how much rock, equipment etc.
 
+1 to tank size and maturity issues but also a question of how you acclimated them (since we hear nothing of quarantining). 1.02 is pretty low by most salinity standards and it's possible that the fish were shocked by a salinity change -- depending on the salinity of the water from which they came.
Just a thought...
 
Agree on the acclimation question. Depending where you got the fish from though 1.02 might not be that far off in terms of what they came in with for salinity. I know I got fish shipped in water that had a salinity of 1.018 but if your fish came from a LFS that may not have been the case.

Considering we don't know the tank size I am thinking it was you overloaded the tank in terms of what it could handle as well. Are the readings you just provided post fish death or when you put them in?
 
Tank is 120g lfs water was 1.018. Acclimated by floating bag for temp and then adding some of my water to bag every 5 mins
 
Dead fish

kaspm said:
Tank is 120g lfs water was 1.018. Acclimated by floating bag for temp and then adding some of my water to bag every 5 mins
Click to expand...


How did you cycle? I know you posted parameters (what brand test kit?). But a step by step may help our sleuthing.

Any new live rock since the cycle?

-ryan
 
kaspm said:
Tank is 120g lfs water was 1.018. Acclimated by floating bag for temp and then adding some of my water to bag every 5 mins
Click to expand...

How long did you add water via the 5 minute process. That doesn't seem unreasonable. How about other equipment?
 
Api marine test kit
Added water 4 times so over a 20 min period
I did add a piece of live rock at the same time
Running skimz, fluval sp4
 
Doesn't sound like there was much of a swing in sg and acclimation seems fine.

I think it boils down to too many fish at once or never cycled the tank properly in the first place.

When you cycled did you speed the process along with fish food or a table shrimp? Did you observe ammonia spike to about 2-3 and then nitrite and then nitrate? Etc etc?
 
I'm with everyone on the ammonia spike. Too many creatures too fast and the new LR could have added to it.

Api are known for errors on some kits.

Sorry for your losses. ITF slow down a titch and let the tank catch up to the bio load before adding more.

How much LR in the tank?

-ryan
 
25lbs in a 120?

You are about a hundred pounds short. Maybe 175 lbs.

It's common to run between 1-2 lbs of LR per gallon. (Yes, yes, there are people who run less, but it's rare).

I suspect you haven't even cycled yet. Which explains the dying fish.

Did you read the SETTING UP sticky post?

-ryan
 
Yes way too little rock and you probably didn't cycle yet. How much sand? For reference I have 100 pounds of sand and 80 pounds of rock in my 80g. But yeah at least 1 pound per gallon up to two pounds per gallon.
 
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