Chromis Care

[DraggingTail]

I got 6 Chromid today. LFS says they will die because they are hard to keep alive.

I am determined to prove them wrong.

Any suggestions?

Thanks for your help.

 

[Retro Reefer]

For the best chance of keeping them alive they should be fed small amounts of nutritious foods many times throughout the day (keeps aggression down) and given lots of room and rock work with hiding places for them at night.

 

[DraggingTail]

For the best chance of keeping them alive they should be fed small amounts of nutritious foods many times throughout the day (keeps aggression down) and given lots of room and rock work with hiding places for them at night.

I don't think room is a problem. What kind of food?

 

[DraggingTail]

Pics

 

[DraggingTail]

They don't see to like the power head. They are down in a "lower" flow corner.

 

[408Dartfish]

My chromis do best with frozen mysis and rods food. Live brine shrimp they love also. Feeding a couple times a day keeps the aggression low towards each other. They like hiding places in the rocks to sleep at night. Some have luck with them some don’t. They’re known to kill each other. Dustin

 

[Cment]

One of the main reasons that chromis tend to die is from uronema. Ideally, QT should be done with CP. Once in your water column, always in your water column. The second reason they don't survive is from lack of feedings which leads to aggression among the group till only one survives.

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/uronema-marinum.247940/

 

[Chuk]

I've never had issues keeping them in general. What usually will happen to me is that I buy 5 or 7 and I'll end up with 3. It's happened on 4 different tanks.
Those 3 that make it last years so I don't think it's my husbandry that's getting the others. Maybe my tank is like thunderdome.

 

[DraggingTail]

I've never had issues keeping them in general. What usually will happen to me is that I buy 5 or 7 and I'll end up with 3. It's happened on 4 different tanks.
Those 3 that make it last years so I don't think it's my husbandry that's getting the others. Maybe my tank is like thunderdome.

Lol

 

[MSB123]

It appears your tank is very new. How long have it been running and have you cycled it?

 

[Joshua2598]

I laughed at the thunderdome remark

 

[DraggingTail]

It appears your tank is very new. How long have it been running and have you cycled it?

6 weeks.
Started with 2 shrimp and biospira.
After 4 weeks and reading 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites and 80 nitrates, I started weekly 10% water changes and turned on lights. I also added crabs, snails, conch, emerald crab at that time.

Latest check yesterday, nitrates are down to 20 so I added some cheap fish with a small bioload.

Today I started dosing calcium, magnesium in preparation for scraping my live rock to make a slurry to speed up corraline and prepare for coral in a month or two.

Plan is to keep getting nitrates lower and lower while keeping PH, hardness, calcium, magnesium stable.

I am running a 400 watt metal halide 9 hours a day. Temp at lights on 75 and swings up to 78. (Inline fan on way to make that swing smaller). I also have 2 36" T5 retro kit coming to add to my custom canopy ( front and back) and will add 2 ai prime (left and right) lights in as well.

When that is all in place, ai will come on with T5s kicking on and hour later then MH on an hour later for 4 hours then T5s back on for 2 hours until they kick off and ai prime back on (time when I get home from work) for 4 hours then off.

80 lbs of dry rock was added at start.

Have cannister filter with seachem matrix ONLY for now to keep nutrient high in preparation for coral.

Plan to have SPS, LPS, anemone, pair of clowns.

Latest readings

PH 8
NH4 0
NO2- 0
NO3- 20
Salinity 1.024
Temperature 77.9

 

[MSB123]

Those Temp swings are not good. You might also want to consider bringing your salinity up.

 

[DraggingTail]

Those Temp swings are not good. You might also want to consider bringing your salinity up.

Hopefully that goes away with fan and led, t5, mh light schedule.

I have been topping off with saltwater to work on that.

Thanks for the help.

 

[DraggingTail]

Only 3 left alive.
I could not get those to eat. They seem like pack animals. There are two dominant that are always out and the other we're hiding in rocks

 

[DraggingTail]

Now I have two Chromis left. The largest and the smallest are still alive.

However, the large one bullies the small one when it tries to eat.

Ideas?

 

[MSB123]

Split them up or return them to the store.

 

[MSB123]

I have only heard of keeping chromes successfully together in high flow large tanks, 150 gallons+. I have also come to understand that they must be fed at least 3 times per day to split aggression. If I were you, I would return them and get less aggressive fish.

 

[jrust2]

My three chromis only eat frozen brine shrimp. I feed once every other day. I have a 90 gallon.

 

[Sailingeric]

I have one chromis and he has done fine over the last six months I have had it. It gets a long fine with everyone but is protective of his sleeping spot.