Lost a fish :(

[UCF_BRAVES_FAN]

Ugh!

16g nuvo, live sand, 12 lbs of live rock, CUC and 2 black snowflake clowns.

Wanted to give a quick back story to see if I did anything wrong. This is my first tank so I've only been at everything about 6 months. I researched a ton and tried to do everything right by taking it slow.

I cycled the tank and everything was running perfect and fish were doing great. Everything was set up and in the tank for about a month after the cycle and again doing well.

I mentioned on here a few weeks ago that I came home from work one day and noticed a leak in the tank. After a lot of discussion with the LFS where I bought the tank and Innovative Marine, I found out my only option for a replacement tank was for them to ship me a new one. It took about 3 weeks for the entire process to take place so I was instructed that everything would do fine in a 5g bucket since I didn't have another tank to put them in. I put all of my rock and some water and the pump in the bucket and everything seemed to be doing fine.

I was testing regularly for ammonia and doing water changes once or twice a week. The tank arrived about a week ago so I set it up and dropped a tiny piece of raw shrimp in there to start the cycle process over again in the new tank.

In my testing two nights ago (Monday), I noticed that the ammonia was up a tad around .50. I went to the fish store last night and did a 20% water change to try to reduce the ammonia. I figure one of the snails or crabs died which is what caused the spike. I tested again this morning and it was even higher, and in doing so I noticed that the pump wasn't moving as much water around on the surface. I turned it off and looked down and noticed that one of my clowns was sucked into the intake.

I assume he died from the stress of being in the bucket and the ammonia, however they never showed signs of being uncomfortable. They ate instantly every day and swam around like they were fine all up until noticing one had died this morning.

I mainly wanted to check to see if I did something wrong. Again, this is my first go round with everything, so I really welcome any constructive criticism. Ultimately, I just feel bad for the fish and will be taking the other one back to the store if they'll take him. I don't want him to die too.

Tough introduction to the hobby. I knew in my research that it wasn't something that was all fun and games, but I really did try to do it right and with the leak and now this, I guess I just have some bad luck.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions.

 

[thegrun]

Sorry for your loss. It hard to know what the cause of the ammonia was, perhaps a lack of water movement, perhaps two clowns in such a small bucket was just too much bio-load. Either way with only a few gallons of water in the system when things start to go bad the go bad very quickly. A 20% water change would still leave the ammonia at a higher level than the fish can tolerate. In the future if you encounter a similar situation in addition to a large water change I would add Amquel or one of the other ammonia neutralizing products on the market. You have had a streak of bad luck; things have got to get better moving forward.
Best of luck,
Mike

 

[W1ngz]

That sucks. I hope things look better going forward.

For what it's worth after the fact though, you don't cycle a tank. It's the rock that you are actually cycling. You likely could have just moved things back into the new tank from the bucket as soon as you got it.