Fish dying and dissapearing...

[Razorp]

So my tank is on its 5th week. I have had 2 clownfish, a clown goby, and a firefish since week two.

My clown goby disappeared last weekend, and i sort of wrote it off to him being so small. I thought maybe he couldn't take the .01 salinity swing over the weekend since my 36 gallon doesn't have an ato yet and my tank is in my office.

Well now i came in to work this morning and found my two poor clowns dead laying right next to each other. I did a water change on Friday and before the water change my nitrates were at 20ppm, nitrites 0, and ammonia 0. Salinity at 1.023. I'm really not sure what is going on. I use rodi water and i just cant figure out what the problem could be here. No noticeable signs of sickness when I left work on Friday.


My only remaining fish is my firefish, and he looks healthy as can be. I have a fan worm, and a torch coral, both of them look great. My tank is full of pods all over the glass, so i like to think that my tank is starting to become nice and healthy system,.

 

[Razorp]

Ammonia problem? I just did this test right now

 

[Razorp]

Nitrite 0

 

[Razorp]

Ph is good

 

[Razorp]

Nitrates

 

[Razorp]

Any ideas?

 

[joec]

It looks like you have some ammonia in your tank, that test does not look like its in the yellow range. Adding four fish after two weeks is too fast

 

[HuduVudu]

You said it was in your office, is that your home office? What kind of temp swings are you seeing?

 

[Razorp]

It looks like you have some ammonia in your tank, that test does not look like its in the yellow range. Adding four fish after two weeks is too fast

I believe the ammonia was due to the two dead fish sitting in the tank. I did not have ammonia on Friday before my 5 gallon water change. I continued adding live bacteria every week until last week and haven't had ammonia since 7 days after my cycle started. That's what's got me scratching my head. Im going to do another water change tomorrow morning and just watch the tank for two weeks. That's should be plenty of time to see if anything happens to the firefish. Also, I did add about 60 snails on Thursday, could that have cause a spike?

 

[Razorp]

You said it was in your office, is that your home office? What kind of temp swings are you seeing?

No, i work at a car dealership. I have a heater controller, and it has stayed really steady. 78 degrees 99% of the time. Ive only seen it read 77 degrees one time before, and that was early in the morning on a day it snowed. Never seen it run any hotter with the open top and plenty of surface agitation.

 

[Razorp]

Ammonia test update this morning. Considering it’s back down where it should be I think it’s safe to assume the dead fish sitting in the tank caused the ammonia spike. Which means I still don’t have an answer of why my fish are dying.

 

[Razorp]

Ammonia test update this morning. Considering it’s back down where it should be I think it’s safe to assume the dead fish sitting in the tank caused the ammonia spike. Which means I still don’t have an answer of why my fish are dying.

@joec any ideas? Are firefish more resilient to any fish diseases that you know of? He’s the only fish left alive out of the 4 I had. One of those four was an inch long clown goby that just disappeared. Never found a body.

 

[DeniseAndy]

Probably a young tank with some not so healthy little fish. It happens. Are your fish qt'd? If you added the firefish with the clowns, I have to guess they got something wild they could not handle. Since most clowns are captive bred, they do not have the great immunity of their wild brethren.
What is your clean up crew like? They do a great job on most dead creatures. A clown goby is small and can be gone in hour.

 

[jradishness]

Also, I did add about 60 snails on Thursday, could that have cause a spike?

Is this a typo? If not, it sounds like, if not the problem, a problem. That’s like 20-fold too much for this newish tank. I’ll bet there was some die-off contributing to ammonia rising, perhaps killing clowns?

 

[DeniseAndy]

Depends on the snails. If they were all dwarf cerith, no issues. If they were all tubos, problem. From the tank age and size, you do not currently need too large a crew. Cerith are great for the sand and in rock crevices. Good, safe snails to start.

 

[joec]

@joec any ideas? Are firefish more resilient to any fish diseases that you know of? He’s the only fish left alive out of the 4 I had. One of those four was an inch long clown goby that just disappeared. Never found a body.

The problem is you likely added too many creatures too fast into a brand new tank. I would slow down. You should also quaratine your fish or you are highly likely to have more deaths due to disease going forward

 

[Razorp]

Probably a young tank with some not so healthy little fish. It happens. Are your fish qt'd? If you added the firefish with the clowns, I have to guess they got something wild they could not handle. Since most clowns are captive bred, they do not have the great immunity of their wild brethren.
What is your clean up crew like? They do a great job on most dead creatures. A clown goby is small and can be gone in hour.

So the clowns were the first and only two fish in the tank for a week. The firefish and clown goby had been in my 4 gallon nano office tank for about 6 months, and i broke it down and added them to this new tank along with the torch coral i had in the 4 gallon. They have all been in this tank for about 3 weeks now. I test twice a week and never had an ammonia spike. Clean up crew is about 8-10 hermits, and about 60 snails. I suppose the snails could have possibly brought in something, they were added on thursday.

 

[Razorp]

Depends on the snails. If they were all dwarf cerith, no issues. If they were all tubos, problem. From the tank age and size, you do not currently need too large a crew. Cerith are great for the sand and in rock crevices. Good, safe snails to start.

Is this a typo? If not, it sounds like, if not the problem, a problem. That’s like 20-fold too much for this newish tank. I’ll bet there was some die-off contributing to ammonia rising, perhaps killing clowns?

So it was about 40 tiny cerith snails and about 20 nerite snails. when I say tiny, half of that 40 were barely bigger than the led on a pencil.

 

[Razorp]

Depends on the snails. If they were all dwarf cerith, no issues. If they were all tubos, problem. From the tank age and size, you do not currently need too large a crew. Cerith are great for the sand and in rock crevices. Good, safe snails to start.

 

[Dom]

Ammonia problem? I just did this test right now

Back that test up with some other test. API notorious for false positives.