Lost a clown and an angel-advice???

[kkgaskin90]

Woke up this morning to find a flame angel being eaten by my anemone and my male clown dead on the bottom. Neither were showing any signs of distress last night when we went to bed. I'm bummed about the angel, but in tears over my clown. The only thing I can think is water parameters (checking now) or ich... but what MAY or MAY NOT have been ich was virtually gone and all fish kept eating/swimming/breathing as normal. I'm stumped. The flame angel may simply have gotten too close to the anemone. It liked to go in and out of small crevices close to the anemone.

1) Should I try to get the Angel out of the anemone??? Only the head is still sticking out... my inclination is to let nature take its course...

3) What should I do? I still have a female picasso clown, melanurus wrasse, and blue green chromis.

Will post parameters as soon as I'm done

 

[Mike J.]

Waiting for parameters. Might be you answer your own questions. Clownfish are very hardy.

 

[kkgaskin90]

OK So my parameters are the worse they've ever been-here are what they were Saturday night vs. this morning:

7/20 pm: 7/22 am:

SG: 1.024 1.023
Salinity: 33 32
PH: 8.4 7.9
Ammonia: 0 0-0.25
Nitrite: 0 0
Nitrate: 10-20 20
Calcium: 360 360
KH: 13 13
Phosphate: 0.25-0.5 0.5
Temp: 81 80

I was gone for a week (7/13-7/20) during which time my husband fed the tank, but said he didn't notice anything wrong other than the power went out one day while he was at work. I had done a 20% water change 7/12. 7/20 I topped off the tank and scraped algae (quite a good bit) off the sides. 7/21 I zapped 2 aptasia with kalkwasser. Other than that there's been no changes. Immediate water change? How much? Should I remove the angel? Any other advice?

The eyes of the angel do appear bulged, so I am leaning towards eaten alive, but given the parameters maybe it was in a weakened state so when it otherwise could have escaped...?

 

[eliramos]

hmm im assuming maybe it died and the current may have pushed him into the anemone of especially if your clown has also passed, but that all depends on where your anemone is.

 

[Reefing Madness]

Nothing in those numbers should have killed your fish, or even weakened them by any account. If you have a Nem, those will tell you when your water is whacky, not the fish.
No reason to remove the fish, if its almost gone at the moment, if he was just caught in there I'd remove it, but not if his head is the only thing there. Only thing I can come up with is that they were sick, you mentioned a bulging eye, Pop Eye perhaps?

 

[Mike J.]

Your calcium is too low and your alkalinity is too high. I'm not suggesting that has anything to do with your fishes demise. Did your fish eat the kalk that was floating in the tank after you killed the aiptasia? I've seen that before.

 

[kkgaskin90]

We suspected ich, but there were very few tiny white dots and no fish showing any signs of distress, so following advice of this forum we soaked food in garlic and kept observing. All fish were eating last night. As far as the eyes, maybe I was just feeling sorry for it. They don't really look bulged now that I look at it. Just dead. The anemone relaxed it's mouth and released the angel, so I removed it.



The anemone just relaxed it's mouth and the angel fell out, so I went ahead and removed it.

 

[kkgaskin90]

It's possible that they ate some of the kalk-they never have before and I try to keep floaters down to a minimum, but it's possible. My alk has consistently been high - any advice on how to rectify that? I've been told to let it come down naturally (and it has come down from 15 on 7/6). Calcium I can bring back up.

 

[Dan1789]

Don't dose any ph buffering substance, that will increase your Alk. Also do some research on flukes. I had a couple fish die. There was a great article I read on here about them.