New fish can die from stress?

[kingkapoor]

I just got a yellow belly damsel (looks small/young) for my girlfriends Pico 5 G tank.

Tank is cycled, has biomedia from established tank, and we have 3 hermit crabs who have been chilling in the bottom for a few days now.

We got a yellow belly blue damsel who died within 2 hours. First heavy breathing, then boom dead on the side parameters are heavenly.
Temp: 77.5 F Salinity 1.025 pH 8.2
Ammonia 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 10-15 ppm.
Calcium 440, phosphates 0

I dont know why the poor guy died besides stress. Appearance wise he looks absolutely fine.

 

[JoshO]

Sorry for your loss. What was your acclimation method? Large water parameter swings can often end badly

 

[kingkapoor]

Sorry for your loss. What was your acclimation method? Large water parameter swings can often end badly

I drain his bag down to about 1 cups of water.
I add 1 cup of my water into an IV bag.
Let it flow for about 35 minutes into his bag.

Pop the guy in the tank.

 

[Arthacker87]

More than I do for my fish . might have been a fish that was already beat up before buying it and the switch just stressed but also could be tank not ready. I'm always a rule of thumb guy to wait a few weeks with everything at operating levels before adding a fish

 

[lion king]

Check the sg in the bag, more and more suppliers are running their sg extremely low. Anything more than .002 higher will many times put them in osmodic shock, if they don't die quickily, they usually don't live much more than a day. Even with .002 higher you need to acclimate. If an lfs is running 1.018, which is pretty normal today, it is extremely challenging to say the least, to get them acclimated to full reef at 1.025. It may take as long as a couple of hours acclimation, matching a qt tank is a better option, then raising the qt to tank parameters.

 

[JoshO]

I drain his bag down to about 1 cups of water.
I add 1 cup of my water into an IV bag.
Let it flow for about 35 minutes into his bag.

Pop the guy in the tank.

Please don't think I'm trying to be unfair by asking, but was his bag floating in your tank?
Your method is pretty sound normally. I tend to drain the first round of water down to half and repeat the process to get the parameters as close as possible

 

[kingkapoor]

Please don't think I'm trying to be unfair by asking, but was his bag floating in your tank?
Your method is pretty sound normally. I tend to drain the first round of water down to half and repeat the process to get the parameters as close as possible

Definitely dont think its unfair.

No I usually avoid floating the bag because 1) the pico tank too small and water would pour out. 2) Chemicals on peoples hands.

 

[JoshO]

Definitely dont think its unfair.

No I usually avoid floating the bag because 1) the pico tank too small and water would pour out. 2) Chemicals on peoples hands.

As @lion king said, there's a good chance your salinity was off a fair way, but I also think temp might have played a role. I always have a clean container which I use to hold display water temporarily while I float the bag, then once the acclimation is done I just add it again. If you're concerned about chemicals you could always float a container that you have to hand in the tank