Advice on adding fish after cycle

[mr11]

Hi everyone.

So I cycled my tank with the raw shrimp method and my ammonia is 0, Nitrite 0, and nitrate around 10ppm (up from 5 a few days ago). I never had an algae or diatom bloom but I also was not running any lights. Since cycling finished a week ago I added a pair of clowns (No CUC since there was nothing to clean...). Well one clown didn't make it, it was sitting on the bottom of the tank almost immediately after acclimation and died 24 hours later.

I talked to my LFS and he essentially told me my tank was too new to have fish and needed to see a diatom bloom before adding fish and that's why he died... Intuitively this does not make sense to me, all of my levels are still reading 0 with a red sea kit, except a slight bump in nitrates after adding the clowns. The other clown is doing great and eating, very active.

I would like to have a pair of clowns and I know introducing a new clown can be problematic if my current clown has the time and chance to change to female. What's your advice? Is it really too early to add fish like the LFS said? Was that particular fish just too stressed out? Add a 2nd clown to pair? Cause of death?

 

[inetjnky]

I waited after I cycled, but what I really wanted to wait for was I wanted to introduce coralline first. So I introduced 5 red legged hermits with coralline on their shells. After a few weeks I still haven't had it take off anywhere in my tank yet and I also started up my light cycle and for the past month have been having a diatom bloom. I added 6 Cerith snails and 8 margarita snails. 3 hermits died or were eaten, have no idea on them but only have two left. I also added a purple Dottyback as my first fish which I may return if he's aggressive to a pair of clowns. Overall my point is even though the tank cycled your bio load may not be grown enough to handle two fish yet. Go slow and add slowly and test for a few weeks.

 

[Waters]

How big is your tank? Saying you need a diatom bloom before adding fish is totally false. If you tank is cycled, you have bacteria preset to support fish, as long as they aren't added too quickly. I assume the LFS is thinking your cycle isn't complete since you haven't seen any blooms (since they normally go hand in hand). Maybe they didn't know you wern't running lights? Anyways, unless the tank is very small, I don't think two small clowns would overload a cycled tank to the point where one dies. Could have been a lot of different things that caused the death but I don't think ammonia was one of them (again, as long as the tank was cycled).

 

[TheEngineer]

I agree with @Waters. You said the nitrates were going up (5ppm to 10ppm) before you added the clowns, right? Rising levels to me indicates the cycle has not yet completed. Can you post all of your current values?

I personally do a ghost feeding when I think the cycle is complete to test the tank's resilience to added nutrients. You add some food and then test 24 hours later. If you see a spike in values, you aren't cycled. If you don't see a spike, do it again for the next two days. Still no spike after a total of 3 days and you are good to go, IMO.

All of that aside, the fish could have been sick or acclimated poorly. How did the water from the store test? How did you acclimate?

 

[pondman]

I waited till I did a couple water changes then I added cleanup crew and a hardy fish then another water change then slowly started adding fish after that.every tank is different so go slow and keep up on maintenance.

 

[mr11]

Thanks for the advice. My tank is 50 gallon with a 15-20 gallon sump. I specifically told the LFS I was not running lights and I tried to explain all my levels were 0 before and after adding fish. Honestly he seemed a little defensive, like he thought I was accusing him of selling bad fish or something (I wasn't) so he was looking for faults in my set up.

I did not test the water from the store unfortunately, I tried the float method outline here, http://www.liveaquaria.com/PIC/article.cfm?aid=157 but the bag tipped and released the fish about halfway through. So I suspect bad acclimation. Drip acclimation for me from here on out, lesson learned.

My Nitrates were steady at 5ppm before adding fish. They went up to 10ppm about 3-4 days after adding fish but I never saw an ammonia or nitrite spike since adding them.

As of just now using all red sea tests:
Ammonia 0 ppm
Nitrite 0.05 ppm (very faint, 1st time I have seen any color since before adding fish and I check every other day)
Nitrate 5-10 ppm
Alk 3.2 Meq/L
Ph 8.2-8.4
Salinity 1.025
Temp 79

I did a 10% water change last night.

 

[brandon429]

post pics of your rock, checking to see if its group a or group b rocks from this thread:

http://reef2reef.com/threads/new-ta...rimp-live-rock-no-shrimp.214618/#post-2507641

as icecool mentioned, a specific test exists to detail the cycle ability of any tank, any time and reliably. the fact you got nitrate readings in ten days leans harder towards group b rocks, or rocks with some level of benthic life, sight unseen id be curious to see how group a rocks are producing nitrate that fast. if so, they may have been water cured for a while in nutrient poor conditions such that bacteria had what they needed but not as much for fanworms, coralline, light sponge growth, some pods etc or they may have been cured with only bottle bac and ammonia, which wont do much to add marine benthics until that rock is seeded in that manner.


there is a strong tie between visually verified live rock organisms including coralline and the presence of nitrifier bacteria, its neat that some rocks don't even need to build up bacteria in a cycle at all after being brought home from the store.

 

[mr11]

Here's my rock. It's about 35lbs of Marco dry rock and 11 lbs of "cured" live rock from my LFS.

 

[brandon429]

I really enjoy making predictions before seeing facts its a fun part of web posting. literally its anticipation training one uses to make their own reef behave, you intercept problems beforehand.

yours is the third type of cycling in the thread, the blended approach and the abilities of the tank to process waste come from the live rock portion, as the dry ones simply catch up by being there. you've started correctly, clean sand, clean lines, the lr portions that are group a are so nicely corallined id have to ask the guy who sold them to me to make sure they weren't painted, its that nice of a coralline loading, enough to cause doubt lol.

if any of those purple live rocks have fanworms live encased on the rock, its real. if it has any sponges on it, its probably real or just long term soaked painted rock lol. it takes a squirrely lfs to not be upfront about the live rock, chances are you just got some primo good rocks.

if we imagine your whole tank as just those three rocks and no sand, no marco rocks, we can relate that to bare bottom tanks who have 3 tangs and tons of sps, live rock is that powerful of a filter base.

A challenge for you here will be dealing with leach from the marcos, possibly.

 

[mr11]

I really enjoy making predictions before seeing facts its a fun part of web posting. literally its anticipation training one uses to make their own reef behave, you intercept problems beforehand.

yours is the third type of cycling in the thread, the blended approach and the abilities of the tank to process waste come from the live rock portion, as the dry ones simply catch up by being there. you've started correctly, clean sand, clean lines, the lr portions that are group a are so nicely corallined id have to ask the guy who sold them to me to make sure they weren't painted, its that nice of a coralline loading, enough to cause doubt lol.

if any of those purple live rocks have fanworms live encased on the rock, its real. if it has any sponges on it, its probably real or just long term soaked painted rock lol. it takes a squirrely lfs to not be upfront about the live rock, chances are you just got some primo good rocks.

if we imagine your whole tank as just those three rocks and no sand, no marco rocks, we can relate that to bare bottom tanks who have 3 tangs and tons of sps, live rock is that powerful of a filter base.

A challenge for you here will be dealing with leach from the marcos, possibly. google it to see at least a plan

Yeah good call!

The live rock was $10 a lb so it better not be painted . Yeah I saw there might be some concern with phosphate leech from the marco rock. I don't have coral yet so I'm not terribly concerned about phosphates at this point. I'll have a chance to get that under control and test for it before corals.

 

[Pete polyp]

You reported that the clown that died instantly hit the bottom after acclimation. If it was because the tank was not able to support the bioload it would have taken longer than instantly. Sometimes things like this happen to a new addition. I don't belive for a minute that it was caused by the tank being too new.

As far as adding another clown just be sure to add a juvi and it should be no problem at all.

 

[Naiad]

I saw the video you posted of the clown. It wasn't your tank. There was something wrong with the fish. It may have been in shock. I have had fish that are perfectly healthy die right in the bags. It is like their poor heart gave out. The fact your nitrates are rising means the tank is processing waste fine.