Help!! My banggai is lying on its side :(

[Celeste M]

I got my first banggai cardinal yesterday, and I introduced him to my 1.5 yr old (pretty established) 30 g biocube. The only other fish in there is a a goby, big clean up crew, and lots of coral. Tonight I noticed he was lying on his side at the bottom of the tank and breathing hard (( I don't know what's wrong with him and I got scared of letting a fish die in my tank and messing up my levels so I quarantined him and now he's still on his side at the bottom breathing hard... I don't know what to do, if I can even do anything...

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Nitrite: 0
Ammonia: 0
Salinity: 1.024
30 gal biocube stock lighting
Three tier media rack with filter floss, purogen, matrix carbon for filter system

 

[farfromsea]

Did you buy him online/receive him in the mail? Have you been cleaning your house today and putting your hands in the tank?

 

[jraker]

Sounds like it could be ammonia poisoning. Did you get it online, and how did you acclimate it?

 

[Grkgod36]

As said above . Also you always want to qt before you put the fish in your tank .

 

[Sk8r]

It could be a number of things. Some shippers will give you credit for a fish that did not survive a certain number of days. I would strongly urge quarantine. It could be the shipping; could be an acclimation going on more than half an hour; could be ich in the gills. Too many potential causes to guess.

 

[SeaCucumberFan]

Did you...
QT?
Aclimate?
Buy it online?

 

[gone fishin]

It could be a number of things. Some shippers will give you credit for a fish that did not survive a certain number of days. I would strongly urge quarantine. It could be the shipping; could be an acclimation going on more than half an hour; could be ich in the gills. Too many potential causes to guess.

What Sk8r said. I would also also add flukes

 

[Celeste M]

I got him at a local fish shop, but it was also a 45 min drive...I didn't qt when putting him in... The owner of the fish shop I went to said it should be ok to do a drip and put him in after about an hour...I tried a freshwater dip and that made him swim again but when I took him out he stopped swimming and bumped into rocks He didn't make it through the night

 

[heathlindner25]

You tried a freshwater dip? Can you elaborate

 

[Celeste M]

Yes I cross posted this and another person suggested I try a freshwater dip to rule out any flukes. As instructed I put him in a small qt tank with rodi water and an air stone for about five minutes, he swam around, and then I put him in his home tank and he swam a little bit more, then started bumping into rocks, then went back to lying on his side...

 

[heathlindner25]

Probably just too many things at one time

 

[Celeste M]

I read something about sudden fright syndrome, and there was a video of someone's fish acting the same way my fish did...There's so many possibilities of what went wrong and I can't pin point it which makes me wary of getting another one..

 

[gone fishin]

Do not be wary of trying another cardinal. I would suggest If you do then make use of the QT first. It will be much easier to treat any problems and observe the fish in a basically bare QT. Also, you will not put your other fish in the DT at risk. Good luck just my 2 cents.