Help me figure out why I kill so many fish...

[hoosierpat]

How well are the fish eating? I don't think you have some chemical issue that is poisoning your tank otherwise your corals would be dying much before your fish. Also, copper is not going to kill your fish before your corals so it doesn't matter if your water is coming from a copper pipe. I highly doubt that it is your garbage can either.

It sounds like your tangs aren't getting enough to eat. That would cause them to become weak and eventually get sucked up against an intake. A tangs abdomen should be 1-2 times as thick as their skull. When I take care of tangs I like to be able to see their stomach bulging beyond the anterior of their body when I look at them face to face.

Unfortunately, chromis and damsels tend to zero in on the weakest member of the group and systematically pick them off. There's not much you can do beyond keeping a ton of them or keeping just a few.

 

[tgunn]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10799511#post10799511 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by hoosierpat
How well are the fish eating? I don't think you have some chemical issue that is poisoning your tank otherwise your corals would be dying much before your fish. Also, copper is not going to kill your fish before your corals so it doesn't matter if your water is coming from a copper pipe. I highly doubt that it is your garbage can either.

It sounds like your tangs aren't getting enough to eat. That would cause them to become weak and eventually get sucked up against an intake. A tangs abdomen should be 1-2 times as thick as their skull. When I take care of tangs I like to be able to see their stomach bulging beyond the anterior of their body when I look at them face to face.

Unfortunately, chromis and damsels tend to zero in on the weakest member of the group and systematically pick them off. There's not much you can do beyond keeping a ton of them or keeping just a few.

My feeding regime is:
Daily at noon: auto feeder feeds a mix of spirulina flake and prime reef flake
Evening: I feed either cyclopeeze or spirulina flake. Every few days I feed nori soaked in selcon vitamins for the tangs.

They all seem to pig out quite well when I feed. For the tangs in particular I think I'm going to start feeding the Nori more often. I'll be honest, in the past few months I haven't fed that very often due to the birth of my daughter and other things preoccupying me.

Perhaps it's time to get more rigorous with my feeding and to get some better, high quality foods.

Tyler

 

[kodyboy]

sorry to hear about your difficulties, but we all have them from time to time.
If your problems started when you added you DIY food that might be something to look at. I know some sea cucumbers can be quite toxic and wipe out whole tanks if they get sucked up into a powerhead. An experiment might be to buy some of the sea cucumber and feed it to a fish or two to see if it has any effect.
A parasite/pathogen could have gotten into the system. If this is the case quarantining the whole tank (no fish) for a few months might get rid of it. This would not explain the coral issues however. I guess you could have two pathogens, but the odds of that are really low.
Just some guesses, most likely way off
I hope things go better in the future.

 

[tgunn]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10801866#post10801866 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by kodyboy
sorry to hear about your difficulties, but we all have them from time to time.
If your problems started when you added you DIY food that might be something to look at. I know some sea cucumbers can be quite toxic and wipe out whole tanks if they get sucked up into a powerhead. An experiment might be to buy some of the sea cucumber and feed it to a fish or two to see if it has any effect.
A parasite/pathogen could have gotten into the system. If this is the case quarantining the whole tank (no fish) for a few months might get rid of it. This would not explain the coral issues however. I guess you could have two pathogens, but the odds of that are really low.
Just some guesses, most likely way off
I hope things go better in the future.

Thanks. Yeah,it's definitely a downer to have difficulties; things seemed to be going so well for a while. Oh well. I'll get things back on track.

I have a feeling the food might a contributing factor. One of the ingredients I used was a freshwater fish paste. But the cucumbers are also a possible problem too. I guess I have to look at it this way; if I eat something bad I get sick. So if my fish eat something bad they'll get sick too. For how little it cost me to make the DIY food I might just scrap it and buy some more known quality foods for my fish.

A pathogen is an interesting possibility too, but as you said since fish and to some extent the corals are both affected it seems unlikely. I'll see how changing foods does to keep things healthy. If that doesn't work then I will have to explore other routes such as a pathogen of some kind.


Thanks for the insight; I didn't even think of the cucumbers as a suspect ingredient...

Tyler

 

[philagothos]

Just a quick thought (likely not the problem). A buddy had a problem of his pH suddenly dropping and didn't know what had caused it. Then he noticed the room smelled fresher than usual. Turns out his wife had placed an air freshener in the room and it was messing with his tank's chemistry. Again, it's probably not your problem, but maybe worth a very small consideration.

 

[tgunn]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10803343#post10803343 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by philagothos
Just a quick thought (likely not the problem). A buddy had a problem of his pH suddenly dropping and didn't know what had caused it. Then he noticed the room smelled fresher than usual. Turns out his wife had placed an air freshener in the room and it was messing with his tank's chemistry. Again, it's probably not your problem, but maybe worth a very small consideration.

Heh. Good thought. Luckily my wife knows not to put air freshners in the fish room or by the tank. And at this point my daughter is too young to be the culprit of putting something in/near the tank too.

Thanks,
Tyler

 

[petoonia]

I noticed you put sea cucumbers in your food mixture. I thought alot of cucmbers had the ability to be toxic. I could be wrong, I've never heard of using them to feed fish.

I hope everything works out!!!

 

[tgunn]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10806153#post10806153 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by petoonia
I noticed you put sea cucumbers in your food mixture. I thought alot of cucmbers had the ability to be toxic. I could be wrong, I've never heard of using them to feed fish.

I hope everything works out!!!

Yes I think that was a mistake on my part. I think my assumption at the time was, 'if people can eat it, so can the fish.'
It was just a random assortment of sea food ingredients that went into the mixture...

I'm definitely not going to bother with that food any more.

Thanks,
Tyler

 

[philagothos]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10778079#post10778079 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by tgunn
The tank is in the living room which is a pretty big room. We occasionally use a glade plugin airfreshener on the other side of the room from the tank.

Sorry about that, I misread this part from an earlier post and thought the Glade was in the living room. Like I said, it probably isn't the problem, but was a thought. It sounds like you are on your way to finding the culprit though.

Best of luck,
-Kevin