Fish are dying

M

Mgilmartin1

New member
I'm new to saltwater please help! I have a 65 gallon tank 70lbs live rock sump and protein skimmer. Power head does 1350 and return pump is around 900 for water movement. Had 2 clowns,1convict tang,1coral beauty,1yellow tang,1damsel,1 sand sifting goby 1mandarine goby. 2 cleaner shrimp,1horseshoe crab. And a clean up crew of snails an urchin and hermit crabs. Have two corals that are new

Fish started to die first was the mandarin. A few days later was the coral beauty next morning convict tang. Then this morning one clown fish. I checked water after first fish died everything was good. Thought mandarins hard to keep so makes sense. After second (coral beauty) checked water again all good. third died ( convict tang) rushed to lfs. They checked water said it was good as well. Had really no explanation that helped. This morning another dead fish (1 clown)

Ammonia 0
Nitrites 0
Ph8.1-8.3
Temp 80f
Nitrates .05-.1
Salinity 1.024-25
Coral all open shrimp even molted yesterday. Help I'm lost.
 
Could be any number of things.

How was your tank cycled?

Could be a disease, did you quarantine the new fish? Did you see any spots or discoloration.

How were the fish acting before they died?

Did you add all the fish at once and what was the acclimation procedure?

could be aggression from one of the fish killing the others off.
 
Small tank for two tangs could be the cause of stress/aggression/disease which could lead to fish dying off. Mandarin is an extremely difficult fish to keep if you don't have an excellent pod population and I believe a mostly peaceful stock list. It could be a number of things like stated above, get a test kid for alkalinity as well and see what that reads. Please research the specific needs of individual fish before purchasing! Could save a lot of deaths and headaches like this. Good luck!
 
What kind of filtration Do you have?
How much Surface water Movement?

How were the acting,breathing eating, and so on..

Did they all come from the same system at the LFS and does the LFS Have any of the same fish in that system that were there when you got them?

I agree it could be fighting between them in such a small tank . but it seems they died off to quick for that.

Guessing is all I GOT ..
 
How old is your tank? How long it was cycled before you put your first livestock? How it was cycled? How much time between adding new livestocks?
 
THat fish list would be crowded in a 100 gallon: that's one problem. If it was not cycled, that alone would account for it. The mandarin was doomed from the start if not connected to a very mature 20-30 gallon fuge producing pods.
 
Sk8r said:
THat fish list would be crowded in a 100 gallon: that's one problem. If it was not cycled, that alone would account for it. The mandarin was doomed from the start if not connected to a very mature 20-30 gallon fuge producing pods.
Click to expand...

8 fishes in 100 gallons in too crowded??

oh wow....then how many fish I can get in my 40 gallon IM Fusion tank??
I currently only have:
1x black ice snowflake clownfish
1x ocellaris
1x frogspawn frag
1x hammer frag
1x torch frag
1x very tiny Xenia Frag
3x trochus snails
2x nassarius snails
2x margarita snails (1 just died for no reason)
I am also running chaeto ball in one of the back chambers (lights only ON between 7pm-7am), using Aquamaxx HOB-1 skimmer, and just started doing 30% WC weekly instead of 15% WC.

but planning to add (in the future) a yellow clown goby, purple firefish, a cardinal, a tailspot blenny, and a yellow watchmen goby

Is this too much then??
 
Tank cycled 3 months now running for around 6months
All fish have been in tank for over a month since last fish was added. Have bubble mag7 skimmer and sump20 gallon. No spots on fish or marks of any kind fish were never aggressive towards each other. Fish were all smaller than 2in I have asked 3 local fish stores and they claimed tank could handle it.
 
DO NOT trust LFS (local fish store), your tank can not keep 2 tangs like that. Maybe disease, you need a QT (quarantine tank). Sorry to hear that
 
canadianeh said:
8 fishes in 100 gallons in too crowded??

oh wow....then how many fish I can get in my 40 gallon IM Fusion tank??
I currently only have:
1x black ice snowflake clownfish
1x ocellaris
1x frogspawn frag
1x hammer frag
1x torch frag
1x very tiny Xenia Frag
3x trochus snails
2x nassarius snails
2x margarita snails (1 just died for no reason)
I am also running chaeto ball in one of the back chambers (lights only ON between 7pm-7am), using Aquamaxx HOB-1 skimmer, and just started doing 30% WC weekly instead of 15% WC.

but planning to add (in the future) a yellow clown goby, purple firefish, a cardinal, a tailspot blenny, and a yellow watchmen goby

Is this too much then??
Click to expand...

It's not always how many, but size, feeding requirements, swimming requirements, etc
 
canadianeh said:
8 fishes in 100 gallons in too crowded??

oh wow....then how many fish I can get in my 40 gallon IM Fusion tank??
I currently only have:
1x black ice snowflake clownfish
1x ocellaris
1x frogspawn frag
1x hammer frag
1x torch frag
1x very tiny Xenia Frag
3x trochus snails
2x nassarius snails
2x margarita snails (1 just died for no reason)
I am also running chaeto ball in one of the back chambers (lights only ON between 7pm-7am), using Aquamaxx HOB-1 skimmer, and just started doing 30% WC weekly instead of 15% WC.

but planning to add (in the future) a yellow clown goby, purple firefish, a cardinal, a tailspot blenny, and a yellow watchmen goby

Is this too much then??
Click to expand...

You should be fine.
 
Mgilmartin1 said:
They came from different stores. They were acting normal all eating.
Click to expand...


Most diseases kill with no outward symptoms (that can be seen by the naked eye or without proper diagnostic tools). If fish are dying and you have no other obvious causes, then error on the side of caution and assume they died of velvet or ick (both infect the gills the most) and let the tank go fallow for three-four months before trying to add any new fish. And before you add those new fish be sure to treat them as if they are infected and keep them in a hospital tank while you worm, and use medication like chloroquine phosphate or copper to kill any parasites they could be harboring. While this is NOT 100% (because the parasites are hard/impossible to kill when imbedded in the fish and some have reported fish remaining carriers for up to 6 months) it at least increases your odds of not getting anything nasty into your tank.
 
canadianeh said:
8 fishes in 100 gallons in too crowded??

oh wow....then how many fish I can get in my 40 gallon IM Fusion tank??
I currently only have:
1x black ice snowflake clownfish
1x ocellaris
1x frogspawn frag
1x hammer frag
1x torch frag
1x very tiny Xenia Frag
3x trochus snails
2x nassarius snails
2x margarita snails (1 just died for no reason)
I am also running chaeto ball in one of the back chambers (lights only ON between 7pm-7am), using Aquamaxx HOB-1 skimmer, and just started doing 30% WC weekly instead of 15% WC.

but planning to add (in the future) a yellow clown goby, purple firefish, a cardinal, a tailspot blenny, and a yellow watchmen goby

Is this too much then??
Click to expand...

I think that is too many fish, I would cut off st least two
 
Thanks for all the advice. Think I figured it out food poisoning possible. Had just switch frozen shrimp. Bought new and haven't lost fish since. Smelled old vs new major difference. Fingers crossed that was it.
 
Considering most fish, especially those who eat meat, can be opportunistic predators and will eat dead stuff when they can get it (like my three yellow tangs who went to town on a turbo snail that died), it's highly unlikely food poisoning killed them unless the food actually contained a contaminate rather than was just dead and partially decaying. Even then I will question whether the food was actually spoiled, because I can promise you, spoiled frozen food will curl your nose hairs from a distance.
 
Dunno if this has been said but when you repopulate your tank,please dont get another mandarin goby unless you're planning on adding a bottle or two of pods per week to the tank. They need a system that's at least a year old for pod population longer is most cases and they can never be kept if smaller all in one systems because there just isnt a big enough pod population to support them since they very rarely to never adapt to eat frozen foods. I too killed a couple of them in the beginning and it was before I found these forums.

You'll find that if you heed the advice of experienced reefers you'll have much more success than if you just listen to the LFS alone. Welcome to the forums and the addiction that is the reefkeeping hobby!
 
So that I too may learn from this exchange, I have a question for those asking how his tank was cycled. If his reported numbers are accurate, and he has no ammonia, no nitrite, and low nitrate (which are the three parameters concerned with cycling a tank), why does it matter *how* it was cycled?

Just curious.
 
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