Quick help with dieing clownfish

[ReefWreak]

Hi,

The deal is that my clownfish has been doing fine forever, and is one of the tank's oldest inhabitants (even though he's the smallest fish). Other inhabitants are tons of corals, some hermit crabs (omnivores obviously), a few snails, a golden corris wrasse, and a firefish.

The fish all get along just fine.

I was doing a waterchange about 30 minutes ago because a brain coral that I bought last week just hasn't been doing well, and was being eaten, so he's gone and I wanted to clean the tank in case he was dieing and polluting.

After the water change was complete, I saw the clownfish struggling in the middle of my rock lagoon area, on the surface of the sand. I saw that a larger (1/2") hermit crab had him, and was attacking/eating him, even though he was fine all day today.

SO he went into shock, and I've been keeping him in a small cup floating on the surface of the water, while doing water changes every 10 minutes with tank water, and dumping the water into a nearby container, so he doesn't choke in there.

He has been laying on his side and struggling breathing with no visible damage to his exterior, i.e. no bleeding etc. since the incident.

I want to know if anyone has any suggestions for how to help him other than keep him isolated and with fresh water.

Thank you so much,

Eric

 

[Andrew]

It seems your doing alot of water changes and that could be shocking the clownfish. Can you post your water levels? How much water have you replaced so far since hes been doing this?

 

[ReefWreak]

salinity: 1.025
Nitrates (checked 2 days ago) 0
Amonia (checked 2 days ago) 0
Calcium 450
temp 78.3

I would be very suprised if the levels in the tank had anything to do with him being like this, because the corals definatly would close up before any fish would be effected in my tank. I've got tempermental xenias and a few montiporas and other stuff too. Also the firefish is out swimmin around, but the yellow wrasse hardly comes out anymore, so I don't expect to see him till later or tomorrow.

Thank you!

 

[Andrew]

How much water have you changed? You may just be changing too much water and putting the fish into shock. Have you added anything else new to the tank?

 

[ReefWreak]

I did less than 4 gallons, because I used a 5g container for both water removal and water replacement, but neither of them filled all the way. I don't like to replace too much water. I doubt that he would be shocked from salinity, because I've screwed up much worse before and he's been fine. He's also spent days without food after jumping in the back of my NanoCube, so I would imagine him to be one resiliant little guy.

Also this is the first time i've equalized temperature between tank and refill water, so that definatly couldn't have been it.

 

[Andrew]

Yea, thats not enough to affect him that much. Something else has to be wrong. Something may have been wrong with the water you have been adding to the tank.

 

[ReefWreak]

I dunno. It was LFS water from like a few days ago, but it was in my car and got cold one day, but today it was heated, so the SG should have been fine. The other fish are all fine too. I don't know why he's like this, and it's really random, but I jus tthink he was hiding from the water change in the rock, and was attacked by a hungry crab. My crabs have eaten cleaner shrimp (who was about to die) and that brain coral.

I'm bewildered, but I still blame those damned hermit crabs.

 

[ReefWreak]

6:36PM EST the clownfish stopped breathing and went belly up.

He spasmed for a while, but just didn't go anywhere with it.

I feel really bad, and a little guilty, but I guess/hope it wasn't my fault. It's been a bad week for me with my tank.

Thanks Andrew for trying to help.

 

[Andrew]

Sorry to hear that. I would stat mixing up your own water and test the water you get from the lfs first.