HELP !!! MY Fish are dying...

D

diverjohn101

AC Members
Sep 22, 2006
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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
 
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?
 
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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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. 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
 
Charlesr1958 said:
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
Click to expand...

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.
 
I'm sorry to report...

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
 
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...)
Click to expand...

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

Niko
 
Trying to upload pics...

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
 
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