Invert/other issues - Need advice

J

jbrowning1

New member
I am having some issues with my tank and would love any advice. I will list my tank specs below. My tank has been running for 9 months and I have had issues keeping certain things alive. For instance, I have bought 3 scarlet cleaner shrimp on different occasions and they have all died. I bought 20 astrea snails and they all died within 1 week. I have tried two BTA and they have both died within a week. I have tried green star polyps and they died over about three weeks. I am not sure if I am doing something wrong or what is going on. I have a red banded snapping shrimp that has been in the tank for 5 months and seems to be very active and healthy. He is paired with a spotted Goby. I also have 4 emerald crabs that have been in the tank about the same amount of time. Not sure why I can keep some inverts and not others. Also wondering about PH fluctuation. My PH runs from 8.14 at night and gets to 8.31 during the day. The LFS guy told me that it was normal, but I have read that corals/inverts are sensitive to PH change. I run my tank at 78 degrees and keep the salinity at 1.024-1.025. My ammonia is at zero and so are my nitrates/nitrites. I do not test for calcium/alk right now. I do a 20 gal water change every two weeks and add iodine/reef elements. I would really like to start adding some beginner corals, but I am really afraid to do so. Also wondering about my two firefish. I have had them from the beginning and they have always done fine. Lately I have seen one picking on the other and one of them is missing the top "antenna fin". I hope that it grows back, but not really sure what happened. I have what I consider to be a lot of money in this tank and would love to see it do well. Any advice would be appreciated. I would like to add some mushrooms soon.
Fish Stock:
12 oscellaris clowns - From the same clutch. No aggression so far.
2 Firefish
2 Green Chromis
1 Spotted Goby
1 pincher shrimp
Emerald crabs
Red legged hermit crabs

"¢ 90Gal Tank (Deep Blue Reef Ready)
"¢ APEX Controller (Lab grad PH probe)
"¢ Kessil A360W Lights
"¢ Trigger Sump (CRYS26S)
"¢ Reef Octopus NWB150 Skimmer
"¢ Eheim 1262 898gph main pump
"¢ Hydor Smartwave Controller with two Koralia Evolution 1500 pumps
"¢ BRS Dual Media Reactor (Carbon/GFO)
"¢ Tunze 3155 ATO
"¢ Eheim 200W heater x2
"¢ 100lbs BRS dry rock
"¢ Aragalive sand
 
The real FIRST question is your water parameters: source, [is it ro/di with 0 tds?] and specifics: my parameters are in my sig line, for comparison. They're good average params for an lps stony reef. Alkalinity is a must. PH is generally not a good measure of a marine tank: it's up and down a lot. Alkalinity should be about 8.3.
 
I do use RODI water. I have a Hanna TDS meter as well as inline on the unit. Always 0 TDS. I use Instant Ocean Reef Crystals salt mix.
 
Your problem with the inverts could be your method of acclimation, or lack of aclimation. How are you doing it? Although long drip aclimation is often recommended, it too can be stressful on inverts and it's often difficult to keep temperatures stable. Personally I don't do it anymore. Do you know the salinity level in the LFS tanks? Some are quite low and osmotic shock is a concern. If you have a QT it's not a bad idea to use it & match its salinity to that of the LFS and raise it over several days to your DT levels before introducing the shrimp.

I would recomsider the iodine dosing or scale it way back. It can be hard on inverts, especially shrimp. Advanced Aquariast on line magazine has a good article on this topic.

Firefish are known to kill off one another eventually unless the tank is really large or you have a mated pair. Like humans, mated pairs are known to degrade over time as well. Good luck.
 
"I do a 20 gal water change every two weeks and add iodine/reef" Why are you adding chemicals when you cannot test them? Just the biweekly water changes should be sufficient enough for the minerals lost.
 
I agree with all so far. Not sure why the extra iodine. Do you test for it? I to would be curious about your acclimation of the inverts. Is your temp and salinity stable? Eventually you will have one fire fish unless it is a mated pair.
 
Pincher Shrimp? I'm unfamiliar with that name. When I googled it I got a few different type of shrimp images, and a few were of various Coral Banded Shrimp. If it is a coral banded shrimp, is it possible he's attacking things when you're not looking?

Not sure about this idea, but perhaps some more experienced folks can chime in... Is it possible that it's a low grade copper poisoning? Maybe the creatures dying have a lower tolerance to copper than the ones you have left?
 
Reef Frog said:
Your problem with the inverts could be your method of acclimation, or lack of aclimation. How are you doing it? Although long drip aclimation is often recommended, it too can be stressful on inverts and it's often difficult to keep temperatures stable. Personally I don't do it anymore. Do you know the salinity level in the LFS tanks? Some are quite low and osmotic shock is a concern. If you have a QT it's not a bad idea to use it & match its salinity to that of the LFS and raise it over several days to your DT levels before introducing the shrimp.



I would recomsider the iodine dosing or scale it way back. It can be hard on inverts, especially shrimp. Advanced Aquariast on line magazine has a good article on this topic.



Firefish are known to kill off one another eventually unless the tank is really large or you have a mated pair. Like humans, mated pairs are known to degrade over time as well. Good luck.
Click to expand...


+1

Do a lot of research on proper acclimation.
 
-I float the bags for 15-20 minutes to adjust temperature. I use the drip method for acclimation. I ordered all of my inverts from liveaquaria.com. The salinity of the water they come in is really close to my own.
-I was dosing iodine by recommendation on the liveaquaria site. I will stop dosing it until I get a test kit for it.
-When I ordered the firefish, I asked for a mated pair. Not sure that is what I got.

Thanks for the advice everyone!
 
Regular water changes are enough to keep iodine as needed. I started out dosing iodine because the LFS said to, my shrimp were molting like crazy and I think it was to stressful and they died. I stopped the iodine and have no further problems.
 
jbrowning1 said:
-I float the bags for 15-20 minutes to adjust temperature. I use the drip method for acclimation. I ordered all of my inverts from liveaquaria.com. The salinity of the water they come in is really close to my own.
-I was dosing iodine by recommendation on the liveaquaria site. I will stop dosing it until I get a test kit for it.
-When I ordered the firefish, I asked for a mated pair. Not sure that is what I got.

Thanks for the advice everyone!
Click to expand...

General rule of thumb is to not dose anything that you aren't measuring. A 20g water change should handle the loss of trace elements in a 90g especially in a newer tank.

Regarding your firefish and your chromis, don't be surprised if you only have 1 left of both one day.
 
Makes since to me. Really sucks about the firefish. I wish that I could catch one and separate them. No way that will happen though.
 
With livestock you order online (or locally but it is bagged for a while) when you open the bag and its exposed to new air you will get ammonia build up. So if you're dripping into that water for a while that can be bad. A tiny splash of Prime (or something similar) into the water that had been bagged will allow you to drip into it without any ammonia issues.
 
I have a mated pair of purple FF going on over one year. So far so good but I understand the pairing can eventually go wrong. So you might be OK. It's a role of the dice. The behavior of a mated pair is very interesting to watch.
 
Could be acclimation. Follow other advice on that. Could be the other inverts like the hermits, the emeralds and whatever the pincher shrimp is killing the snails. Nothing to do if they are. It could also be low levels of copper like someone else said. Get some polyfilter and place it in a high flow area. Depending on the color it changes you will be able to rule out copper. You can get a copper test kit but I don't know how accurate they are and the poly filter can actually remove copper from the water.

I would also check that you don't have any stray voltage leaking into the tank.

For your livestock, and I know you didn't ask this but you may want to research and see what you can find on each thing. The clowns will most likely start to battle and kill each other off when they start to sexually mature. If the firefish are truly a mated pair you should be fine unlsee they decide to "divorce" after a while. The chromis also have a way of killing each other after a while. Red leg hermits will kill snails sometimes for food, shells, or even fun sometimes. I have tried emerald crabs twice. The first killed half a dozen hermits in one night. The second mowed through bubble algae and then started to attack fish that slept in my rock work at night. I have no proof of the fish attacks other than they started to dissapear and one wrasse turned up badly injured. I removed the crab and no issues since.
 
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