yellow goby doesn't look good

[blounm]

We're new to salt water in the last month and a half or so. We bought live rock and cycled the tank for 2-3 weeks. It was good rock (so we're told) so the levels never really spiked. We've been measuring everything that came with the kit (pH, hardness, Nitrate, Nitrite, salinity.) In the last two weeks we've bought two commons clowns, a green clown goby, a turbo snail, two small snails, two hermit crabs, a pistol shrimp and a yellow watchman goby. We didn't buy those all at once. We bought the pistol shimp and the goby just on Thursday. They bonded right away and started digging their hole. The yellow goby looked good for the last few days, but just this afternoon started to swim out of his hole. He's lying on the sand sideways now looking not so good. We thought he was dead for a little bit, but every now an then he'll spasm around and try to swim. He also has a few darker spots that we didn't notice when we first got him. Last symptom he seems to be gasping for air a bit. We just recently checked all of our levels and they all seem good. Salinity was at 1.0255 (our target has been 1.025). We added some fresh water to bring it back down.

Is the goby a lost cause? Any advice?

 

[StonyReefer]

Its hard to say just from what you have said. Have you noticed anything else? White feces, marks of any kind on the fish, is the fish eating?

Even with established live rock you should give the tank around 3-4 weeks for it to go through its cycle. It is almost impossiable to set a new tank up even with everything live and not have some sort of spike. Also adding that much livestock that fast will throw the balance of the tank off. You have to add slow. I usually do 1-2 fish a week just to be on the safe side of things. Everything you add will have a bio load. The system needs to offset the bio load and get back to normal. Expecially in a small tank. Best advice I can give you without seeing pics and knowing more info is do a nice water change and keep watching him.

Also when adding the fish I take it you did not use a QT to make sure they was healthy before adding them into your system. Thats the fastest way to bring a disease into your tank.

I am a firm user of ParaGuard to treat new fish before adding them into my display just to make sure they dont have anything internal like parasites. You can also do a freshwater dip.

Also just noticed you didnt mention a Ammonia test kit. Thats the first thing to spike and that alone will do fish in.

 

[MelbaToasty]

I am by no means an expert as my tank is only 5 months old, but I had an issue with my brownbanned goby. He was eating well, but started showing a bloody lesion on his head. I was treating the tank for ich after adding my tang. I don't know if it was the ich or the herbal supplement I used, but he was in trouble.

I gave him a freshwater dip and placed him in a hospital tank for 30 days. I treated the hospital tank with Formalin as prescribed on the label. I just put my goby back in the display tank a few days ago and he is doing great.

I don't know anything about yellow gobies so I don’t know if my method will apply to your situation, but my treatments were successful. I posted my exact steps here: http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1909559