Hi Greg,
Did you see that the problem was with newly added fish? They were dying in a one to two week period of adding them to the tank.
Such a mortality pattern would be consistent with fish dying of acute poisioning. - As well as, of course, some other things. Simply can't tell by this distance.
New fish added after the three month period were fine.
If some factor in the tank was reducing the mortality to toxic effects, waiting would work in your favor.
Also, if it was heavy metal poisioning, wouldn't the snails, crabs and other inverts die long before fish?
Not necessarily. A lot of survival to this stuff depends on acclimation, and if they were already acclimated to it, they could be surviving by detoxifying the metals loads. I think a lot of "salinity" acclimation problems have nothing to do with salinity, but everything to do with metals detoxification.
It is hard to make generalities about toxicity across different animal groups, some snails and such are quite prone to dying in any elevated metal environment, but there are a few which are quite hardy.
Scott,
You said, "I am wondering if this might be related at all to the reason why many of the less hardy additions to our tank, such as corals anemones and some fish, must wait 6 months before the tank "matures", long after the initial cycling of the tank has finished."
Yes, I think that is precisely why that that happens.
Did you see that the problem was with newly added fish? They were dying in a one to two week period of adding them to the tank.
Such a mortality pattern would be consistent with fish dying of acute poisioning. - As well as, of course, some other things. Simply can't tell by this distance.
New fish added after the three month period were fine.
If some factor in the tank was reducing the mortality to toxic effects, waiting would work in your favor.
Also, if it was heavy metal poisioning, wouldn't the snails, crabs and other inverts die long before fish?
Not necessarily. A lot of survival to this stuff depends on acclimation, and if they were already acclimated to it, they could be surviving by detoxifying the metals loads. I think a lot of "salinity" acclimation problems have nothing to do with salinity, but everything to do with metals detoxification.
It is hard to make generalities about toxicity across different animal groups, some snails and such are quite prone to dying in any elevated metal environment, but there are a few which are quite hardy.
Scott,
You said, "I am wondering if this might be related at all to the reason why many of the less hardy additions to our tank, such as corals anemones and some fish, must wait 6 months before the tank "matures", long after the initial cycling of the tank has finished."
Yes, I think that is precisely why that that happens.