HELP !!! MY Fish are dying...

[diverjohn101]

Hi all...

Hope you guys can help me...
But first my specs.
** Water Quality **
TEMP: Average 77 degrees (+/- 1 degree)
PH....... 8.2
Alk...... 3.2
Cal...... 550
Phos.... .1
trite.... .2
trate... .2
Amm.. 0
Salt.... .022

FEEDING:
Once a day... cocktail of Algae pellets, veggie flakes, 2 drops extreme garlic, 5 drops vita-chem. And 2x week I add a cube of bryne shrimp... (all this is mixed and marinates for abour 20 minutes before feeding) Then its feed slowly into the tank a little at a time until its all eaten and only a few pellets are left on the bottom... which gets eaten by the inhabitants within a short time.

OK... Now on to the problem...
I purchased 3 fish on this past wednesday 10/03/07...
1- Rocky Beauty Angel / 2 - Flame Cardinals

On Friday night I found one Cardinal dead and practically half eaten my sally's probably got to him early in the day, and the other Cardinal is M.I.A.
probably dead in one of the hiding spots in the tank.

Now my rocky beauty is looking bad he's lying on is side in the tank barely swimming and he has on him what looks like to be a thin layer of some white residue of some kind of which I have no idea.

All my other fish are doing great they are strong and eating and very active.

He started looking bad on Saturday. Does anybody have any idea of what could be happening ??

My tank is clean and running stable for almost 6 monthes now.

PLease HELP any and all suggestions would be greatly appreciated.


Thanks,

Diver John

[Catpicklesdog]

Hi DiverJohn. Your nitrItes are too high - anything above 0 is too high. I'd also try raising your SG to about .024.

How did you acclimatise the fish?

How well do you know the LFS where you brought them from?

[Neenie]

Hi ya

I was going to say the same thing, Nitrites are high.. however not sure why your other fish have not been affected though..

I would do a water change pretty quick to get your nitrite down and monitor the water again before adding any more fish..

Also if it was me, I wouldn't add three fish at once especially in a 65 gallon... IMHO..

Sorry for your losses though.

[Charlesr1958]

For fish, nitrites are not an issue unless you start getting past 100 or more, not something a typical tank is likely to see, same goes for nitrates, it takes extreme levels to start affecting a fish. I would be more concerned with an acclimation issue since your other fish are doing good.
Might I suggest the use of a quarantine tank for future purchases as you are running an extremely high risk of introducing all kinds of problems with new fish. Some of your parameters could use a slight tweeking, but nothing stands out that could be a cause for the loss of three fish in one day.

Chuck

[clown-lover]

I think I agree with Charles but I have a question. Did you remove the bodies after you found them? The reason why I ask while there are nitrites in your tank I am wondering if those conditions are pre-deaths or post deaths.. The nitrates are being caused by the decomposing tissue of the fish.

What other types of fish/livestock do you have in the tank? Anything really aggressive?

Also Neenie brings up a good point as well.. Did you see these fish eat at the LPS? How were they acting in the LPS? Had you gone in and seen these fish prior to the purchase or was this you went in and saw them and bought them type of thing (I've done it)..

How did you acclimate the new arrivals? Ultimately I think more information is needed before your true cause can be found.

What you can do in the time being however is perform at least a 20 to 30 percent water change to lower those nitrites. I would do this once initially and test several hours later. If it doesn't impact your nitrites plan on performing one again the following day. At this point you probably won't find the other Cardinal fish as if you have a good clean up crew they should have performed their job.

[Charlesr1958]

One other concern is that you mentioned one of the fish being covered in mucus. I'm not sure if thats simply a response to different water conditions than it was in, or worse, an outbreak of Brooklynella (http://home2.pacific.net.ph/%7Esweetyummy42/brookynella.html). Quite often, infested/infected fish will have a rapid onslaught of what ever it is they have been exposed to when stressed during a move.

Chuck

[rsw686]

For fish, nitrites are not an issue unless you start getting past 100 or more, not something a typical tank is likely to see, same goes for nitrates, it takes extreme levels to start affecting a fish.
Chuck

I think you need to read up on the nitrogen cycle. There should be no detectable ammonia or nitrIte in your tank. Nitrate is the end process. If you have anaerobic bacteria then it goes one step further and turns into nitrogen gas which exits the tank. For example my tank, I feed a decent amount too, has no detectable ammonia, nitrIte, or nitrAte.

I recommend purchasing a refractometer. They are much more accurate than a hydrometer and only take a drop of water to give you the specific gravity. Anyway when acclimating I like to check the specific gravity of the bag water at the end to make sure it matches the tank. I've found that fish from certain stores that have a larger difference in specific gravity take more water than I thought to bring their specific gravity to match the tank. If you don't do this you will shock the fish.

[diverjohn101]

Thank you all for your input...

BUT, unfortunately I'm sorry to report that the angel has past away this morning.

I had quarantined him in a small tank that I have on Sunday morning when I saw he looked a bit funny and he was kind of swimming, but not doing much.

As for my water parameters. MY LFS said that my water was in excellent condition. When I asked about my Nitrites and Nitrates, They said it was negligible in such minute quantities. (So, if my numbers seem off then its a possible typ-O on my part... sorry)

MY acclimation of the fish... Well, I've acclimated all my inhabitants very slowly. I place the bag in the water and pop two or three small pin holes. It then sits for about 20 minutes, before I add about 1/2 a cup of tank water to the bag at intervals of 10 minutes apart total of 6x. (with all my lights off)

My purchasing them... Well.. I unfortunately must say it was an impulse buy.
They were not purchased from my regular LFS, I have not had one fish pass on me purchased from them (other than a mimic tang who was shocked by temp spikes when my power went out 3x on two days that were very hot.) On the other hand, the LFS I got these from I've only had mixed experience with them, one prior who passed & one other fish and he's doing fine.

Clown-lover,I did remove the body as I only found 1 cardinal and he was already half eaten. I think my cleaning crew is pretty effecient.(might add some more to it in the future). IN aggressive fish, I don't think I have anything extremely agressive towards other fish... If you see anything that might be agressive I would appreciate a heads up...

My community consists of:
3 - Small Blue/Green Chromis
2- Small Firefish Goby's
2- Small percula clowns
1- large Diamond Cleaner Goby
4- sally lightfoot crabs(3- med / 1 lg.)
3- peppermint shrimp
7- atlantic lceaner snails
3- med. Mexican turbo snails.
2- med. horseshoe crabs
2- sand sifter starfish

If I missed anything that might be pertinent. Please respond and I'll try to be more specific.

P.S. - I tried to get some pics up for reference but the system gives me an error when I try to upload.(MODS- help when possible...)

Thank You all for your responses.

DiverJohn

[Reefscape]

Really sorry to hear about the loss, its always such a shame when we loose an inhabitant...


P.S. - I tried to get some pics up for reference but the system gives me an error when I try to upload.(MODS- help when possible...)


PM me the error message your getting and i will help out all i can to get the issue resolved with you..

Niko

[diverjohn101]

Hi.. I'm stuill trying to upload pics...

I'm getting an error.

Cannot display page or cannot find DNS Server.

How do I fix that...
I thought it was my computer since I'm on a Powermac Running Tiger...
But, I just tried it at work running XP Pro...

Anythought on how to resolve this...

Thanks,

Diver John

[Reefscape]

Hi.. I'm stuill trying to upload pics...

I'm getting an error.

Cannot display page or cannot find DNS Server.

How do I fix that...
I thought it was my computer since I'm on a Powermac Running Tiger...
But, I just tried it at work running XP Pro...

Anythought on how to resolve this...

Thanks,

Diver John


Will discuss this issue via PM to save the thread loosing focus mate..

Niko

[tankanator]

Thank you all for your input...

BUT, unfortunately I'm sorry to report that the angel has past away this morning.

I had quarantined him in a small tank that I have on Sunday morning when I saw he looked a bit funny and he was kind of swimming, but not doing much.

As for my water parameters. MY LFS said that my water was in excellent condition. When I asked about my Nitrites and Nitrates, They said it was negligible in such minute quantities. (So, if my numbers seem off then its a possible typ-O on my part... sorry)

MY acclimation of the fish... Well, I've acclimated all my inhabitants very slowly. I place the bag in the water and pop two or three small pin holes. It then sits for about 20 minutes, before I add about 1/2 a cup of tank water to the bag at intervals of 10 minutes apart total of 6x. (with all my lights off)

My purchasing them... Well.. I unfortunately must say it was an impulse buy.
They were not purchased from my regular LFS, I have not had one fish pass on me purchased from them (other than a mimic tang who was shocked by temp spikes when my power went out 3x on two days that were very hot.) On the other hand, the LFS I got these from I've only had mixed experience with them, one prior who passed & one other fish and he's doing fine.

Clown-lover,I did remove the body as I only found 1 cardinal and he was already half eaten. I think my cleaning crew is pretty effecient.(might add some more to it in the future). IN aggressive fish, I don't think I have anything extremely agressive towards other fish... If you see anything that might be agressive I would appreciate a heads up...

My community consists of:
3 - Small Blue/Green Chromis
2- Small Firefish Goby's
2- Small percula clowns
1- large Diamond Cleaner Goby
4- sally lightfoot crabs(3- med / 1 lg.)
3- peppermint shrimp
7- atlantic lceaner snails
3- med. Mexican turbo snails.
2- med. horseshoe crabs
2- sand sifter starfish

If I missed anything that might be pertinent. Please respond and I'll try to be more specific.

P.S. - I tried to get some pics up for reference but the system gives me an error when I try to upload.(MODS- help when possible...)

Thank You all for your responses.

DiverJohn

You acclimation process needs to be changed, you mention that you put pin holes in the bag you should never do this, if there is oxygen in the bag and you introduce air then you can cause a ammonia spike that will for sure kill your fish. This is what I do and I think a lot of people do in some form, float the bag unopened for about 15 minutes this is to adjust the bag's water temp to your water temp. then use some type of bucket I use a 5 gal bucket that my salt came in, make sure you have not used chemicals in it. Then empty your water and fish in the bucket with a small house start a siphon at the end tie a knot in it so that you have a slow drip let that run for about 1 to 1 1/2 hrs then you can add the fish to you tank or QT tank. Never and I repeat never add the LFS water to your main tank.

[clown-lover]

I have to agree with Charles in that I don't believe Nitrite is the issue that caused the fish to die or you would have had more losses than just the new fish.. However you do have something creating nitrite in detectable levels but if that is the end result of the fish dying or something else I do not know at this time. But you should probably start investigating as to what is causing your system to have nitrites.

The reason why I say I don't believe that nitrites were the cause was because of this article

http://www.reefkeeping.com/issues/2005-06/rhf/index.php

I may be wrong but in this instance I don't believe so..

As far as your stocking goes I don't see anything "overly aggressive" in your tank other than the Sally's which are a semi-aggressive. I'm not sure I'd personally have that many sally's in a 65 gal simply due to that fact.

I also have floated fish before, but don't use the pin hole method. I personally wouldn't let any water from the LPS into my tank but again thats me. I float the bag (for fish only) and add about 1/4 cup of water every 10 to 20 minutes until the salinity and ph parameters pretty much match my tank. I think you could probably extend your acclimation time..

Like Charles said though that the angel being covered in a white substance, probably mucus concerns me that you might have inadvertantly introduced Brooklynella into your tank. Monitor all of your other fish VERY closely.

[Charlesr1958]

I think you need to read up on the nitrogen cycle. There should be no detectable ammonia or nitrIte in your tank. Nitrate is the end process.

I need to read up on something?... okay, thanks for the laugh...lol. The issue is what was causing the problem for the fish, not why there is nitrites or how they get converted into nitrates. Typically nitrites should never be detectable as they get converted so fast that I don't even bother with owning a test kit for it. But again, thats not what this thread is/was about.

Filtration (http://home2.pacific.net.ph/~sweetyummy42/filtration.html)

Chuck

[saltydunc]

on your rock beauty angel they are very hard to keep in the home aquarium with very few people having any success in keeping them alive for any length of time....they require a special diet of sponges to survive......i tried to keep one and it ate fine for a couple of weeks and then just went down hill rapidly and died.....such a shame cause it was a beautiful fish but these angels should be kept in the wild reef.

[darkcirca]

I need to read up on something?... okay, thanks for the laugh...lol. The issue is what was causing the problem for the fish, not why there is nitrites or how they get converted into nitrates. Typically nitrites should never be detectable as they get converted so fast that I don't even bother with owning a test kit for it. But again, thats not what this thread is/was about.

Filtration (http://home2.pacific.net.ph/%7Esweetyummy42/filtration.html)

Chuck

Nitrites can be a problem to fish dying. The Nitrogen Cycle comes into play. Remember how he posted? Ammonia->Nitrite->Nitrate.

Earlier you stated
"For fish, nitrites are not an issue unless you start getting past 100 or more, not something a typical tank is likely to see, same goes for nitrates, it takes extreme levels to start affecting a fish. I would be more concerned with an acclimation issue since your other fish are doing good."

Nitrites over 100 are HORRIBLE. You always want AMMONIA and NITRITES at 0. Even if NITRATES were at 100, that would be bad. Yes there are cases that fish live in these conditions. Saying that nitrites of 100 is okay is bad information to give.

Nitrite Poisoning does happen. In the ocean there is a small amount, which your article says, 0.00002 ppm. Yea that's really low. The tests in the standard measure from 0, usually going .1, .2 etc. If you have that much detectable nitrite that isn't safe, which is why you have to cycle your tank before adding fish. Don't take everything you read in articles are serious. Find multiple sources before believing things. Sometimes false information happens, then you do the wrong thing. Just because Nitrite isn't "as toxic to saltwater fish" does not mean that they can't die from it. Would you want to sit in a room with .1 carbon monoxide? I don't think so, and fish don't want nitrite.

As reef keepers we are to provide the best possible home for these animals.

[Max]

I hate to tell you this darkcirca but, nitrites don't hurt s.w. vertabrates unless the concentrations are very high. I also agree with you 100% that should not be detectable in a cycled tank unless something is very wrong. Now long term and short term exposure might make a difference as well but, that's a different post.

[darkcirca]

And them saying above that being at levels around 100 is okay is wrong, someone should of stepped in sooner and corrected that, because that is giving off bad information for someone who is starting a saltwater tank and reads this. If I had no idea on any info I could have killed my entire tank because I bought fish before things were done cycling. Over time nitrites can cause problems in saltwater, so they should be at 0 at all times. Who knows how long the tank had detectable nitrites.

[Max]

If your nitrites were at .10 for 50 years I don't think that it would hurt most fish. Other critters like snails, shrimp , corals etc are a very different story though. Salt water limits the ammount of nitirites that can be taken in through a fish's gills and it has pretty much no affect. However, if you are cycling a tank and it's still a detectable reeding your cycle most certainly isn't done and you shouldn't add any fish.
hope this helps
Max

[clown-lover]

I know I never said that Nitrates at a level of 100 ppm was good. What I said if you read my post is that I didn't believe a level of .2 ppm was the cause of his fish dieing. I also posted a link to an article that basically showed that SW fish could stand higher concentrations of nitrates than FW fish and this ideology of SW fish automatically keeling over from a low level of nitrate is a misconception that has been brought over from the FW world.

If you continue to read what I posted I stated is that I had no clue if it was the after affect of the fish dying or something else and that he needed to investigate as to the cause of that issue. The implication of this being that he has something generating nitrates that his system isn't consuming if he is able to test the levels in his tank.

Edit.. I then post about how he acclimated his fish. I personally believe that might have been the culprit along with the fact that his Angel has a sypmptom Brooklynella disease and that he may have introduced it into his tank and needs to monitor the rest of his livestock.

[Charlesr1958]

Did I say nitrites of 100 or more are acceptable? Of course they are not. My point is that the level in this persons tank is not the cause of the fishes problems as saltwater fish can tolerate high levels of nitrites, how high depends on the species. You keep going back to a totaly different subject pertaining to filtration and bacteria. Again, that is not what this thread was or is about. Its about why his newly purchased fish dropped dead in one day while his other fish are fine. Once past that initial issue, then yes, the reason why there are detectable nitrites should be addressed, but its not a critical factor within this disscussion, or will I have to repeat myself yet again?

Chuck