Can anyone help with this mystery?

D

DLOC

AC Members
May 6, 2008
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Hello all..and thanks for having me.

I'll try and keep it short(ish), my husband started a marine tank in February. 500 litres, live rock, expensive sand, wave machine etc etc...(please excuse laymans language and untechie terms!).


He went by the time scales suggested by aquarium shop - started with hermits, turbo snails...went to emerald crabs and cleaner shrimp (2 cardinal and 4 of the stripey ones) and some very skinny starfish. All seem to be growing, shedding and doing their jobs very well.

He started stocking with fish (gradually) - 4 small wreck fish (anthia's), 2 clown fish, 2 Banggai cardinals. Then a VERY sweet regal tang. After that came some Lyre tail Anthia's (3 females, one male). Latest are a yellow eye tang, a Yellow tang and a Blenny, and two fatter starfish (sand burrowy ones?!). (All seem happy, except one starfish which looks a bit poorly today.

However, we lost both cardinals (looked like one had a heart attack), now have a new one which is lasting (2 months or so). Both clowns, separately. Replaced with one, then another, lost new one nearly immediately, then older one a day later (?!). Then the Anthi's started dying, one by one (hello!?). It started with the newer ladies, one went about every 3-5 days. We thought he was bullying them. They all went, then he went about 2 weeks later. Then the original smaller ones started going..one every 3-5 days. There's one left today.

So we have lost 4 clowns, 2 Banggais and 8 Anthias?! Any fish that dies gets taken care of VERY quickly by the emerald crabs so they don't lay about.

Is this NORMAL. My husband, bless him, in spite of killing himself changing water and cleaning and skimming etc etc is getting terribly despondent and I think is embarrassed that the shop will think he's taking the ****.


Do we have a killer something lurking that is eating the Anthia's one by one????


Help.....
 
oh dear - was dreading this. Will try my best., thanks for replying so quickly.

He started up at the beginning of Feb. The temp is at 27.8 at the mo. He took a water sample in to the fish shop for complete testing and was told nitrates, ph and nitrites were fine. Ammonia was a little high, but not serious. We have a testing kit, I will have a go in a couple of hours to test it again and will post results. Not heard SG - how do I get that info?

Also - brown algae seems to be settling on and over everything quite alarmingly. Looks like little flakes, a rusty colour.


Have to do school run now - so not being rude if you reply, and I don't thank you.

rgds.
 
DLOC said:
oh dear - was dreading this. Will try my best., thanks for replying so quickly.

He started up at the beginning of Feb. The temp is at 27.8 at the mo. He took a water sample in to the fish shop for complete testing and was told nitrates, ph and nitrites were fine. Ammonia was a little high, but not serious. We have a testing kit, I will have a go in a couple of hours to test it again and will post results. Not heard SG - how do I get that info?

Also - brown algae seems to be settling on and over everything quite alarmingly. Looks like little flakes, a rusty colour.


Have to do school run now - so not being rude if you reply, and I don't thank you.

rgds.
Click to expand...


Not rude at all mate...we all have other things to do..

Being honest, we do need the exact water test results to be able to properly advise.

SG is the specific gravity of the water, measured with either a refractometer or a hydrometer. Its a measurement of the salt content in the water.

The brown algae will more than likely be diatom algae...how ever, a photo from you would confirm this better...
 
Sorry to hear about all of the losses. I'm trying to help a friend that's experiencing similar results (although on a much smaller scale).

That does seem like an awful lot of fish to be adding in such a relatively short time. Also some fish that are somewhat sensitive.

Did he cycle the tank? If not, that could explain some of the deaths.

Could you elaborate on what you meant when you said that one cardinal looked like it died of a heart attack?
 
Hello..

I'll answer everything I can from from the last two posts (thanks for responding).

The cardinal in question was mincing about quite the thing, then stopped in its tracks, caught the current..and that was that. Latest cardinal has lasted a good few months. looks lonely though, and Blenny harrasses him.


As to number of fish, seems a lot, but obviously not all together at any one time. He always consults 'experts' at fish shop before buying anything, but he does seem to be a little nonplussed with the very conflicting info he sometimes gets.


if cycling tank means changing water. Yep, he has. Regal tang (Dolores) had signs of white spot but she's all cleared up, in fact, fish shop told us she would be the gauge to how happy the tank is. She seems as happy as can be, a real little sweetheart in fact. The yellow eye also seems very chipper, the yellow tang is the newbie, seems good, although cloudiness comes and goes in his eyes.


I did the tests as promised (felt like Dexter). Assuming I have done it all correctly I get the following:

Based on temp. 27.1 ( it will rise to about 27.8 during day, is this too severe?).

PH - 8

Alkaline - looks low to normal (more normal)

Nitrate - 0

Nitrites - 0.05 (this is too low isn't it?)

SG - 1.024 (or ppt about 32)

Ammonia - this one is a bit more complicated. The colour corresponded to 0.25, according to the graph it looked like I had to calculate 0.25 x 6.4/100 which gives me 0.016. Really not sure about this one? Have I calculated correctly.can someone let me know how if I have not.

M (husband) also tops up with RO water most days.

phew - thats about it.

Thanks again for taking the time.

rgds.
 
its sound like fish may be sick
you say the cloudy eyes? can you explain more?
this can be a sign of bad whitespot as far as i know but someone will confirm this.
do any of the fish have spots or cloudy eyes?
i would start feeding garlic flakes to boost immune system
do some research on ich
and add more flow to help algae boom
 
DLOC said:
Hello..

I'll answer everything I can from from the last two posts (thanks for responding).

The cardinal in question was mincing about quite the thing, then stopped in its tracks, caught the current..and that was that. Latest cardinal has lasted a good few months. looks lonely though, and Blenny harrasses him.


As to number of fish, seems a lot, but obviously not all together at any one time. He always consults 'experts' at fish shop before buying anything, but he does seem to be a little nonplussed with the very conflicting info he sometimes gets.


if cycling tank means changing water. Yep, he has. Regal tang (Dolores) had signs of white spot but she's all cleared up, in fact, fish shop told us she would be the gauge to how happy the tank is. She seems as happy as can be, a real little sweetheart in fact. The yellow eye also seems very chipper, the yellow tang is the newbie, seems good, although cloudiness comes and goes in his eyes.

Cycling means letting the tank settle without any fish. Usually takes about 4-6 weeks. During "cycling" you should get a high ammonia reading followed by nitrItes. Once these have peaked nitrAtes will start rising whilst the others drop. Once ammonia and nitrItes have been zero and nitrAtes have been less than 10 for a week constantly, then you can start adding your clean up crew and then fish but slowly.

I did the tests as promised (felt like Dexter). Assuming I have done it all correctly I get the following:

Based on temp. 27.1 ( it will rise to about 27.8 during day, is this too severe?).

PH - 8

Alkaline - looks low to normal (more normal)

Nitrate - 0

Nitrites - 0.05 (this is too low isn't it?) This needs to be ZERO

SG - 1.024 (or ppt about 32)

Ammonia - this one is a bit more complicated. The colour corresponded to 0.25, according to the graph it looked like I had to calculate 0.25 x 6.4/100 which gives me 0.016. Really not sure about this one? Have I calculated correctly.can someone let me know how if I have not. This needs to be zero

M (husband) also tops up with RO water most days.

phew - thats about it.

Thanks again for taking the time.

rgds.
Click to expand...

Have added some comments in red.
 
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