Fsih dying, help please (emergency)

I'm talking about your live rock.
I'm not sure how much you know about the LR in your system so forgive me if I'm getting too basic here.
Your LR acts as your filter. the bacteria living within the rock play 2 very important roles.
1) Converts Ammonia into Nitrite. This occurs aerobically
2) converts Nitrite into Nitrate. This occurs anaerobically
the existence of these bacteria is dependant on the food available for them to consume. Basically fish and food waste is their food. The more food the more bacteria needed. Of course if the addition of too much fish will result in a lack of bacteria, until the population can catch up. It is however possible to have so many fish that the bacteria population can not convert the waste.

J

 

point understood, I have 50 Lbs of live rock in the tank and I believe that the bioload I have isn't big at all. At this point that shouldn't be an issue so I believe, unless Im missing something here??? because if that was the case, wouldn't my ammonia and nitrates be high?

 

I was having a similar problem and someone on the forum suggested I turn my powerheads more towards the surface of the water for more oxygen exchange. after I did that, I have had no casualties.

 

Thanks for your input Ktaylor. Both the return line and the powerhead are now pointing to the surface

 

I agree with the lines for surface agitation. Increasing the water temperature actually lowers the available oxygen in the water that could cause that gasping you saw but I wouldn't think only one fish would doing it if it was the case unless it was your largest fish.

 

I was just that one fish

 

From personal experience, Do not try to treat a sick fish right away! The extra stress will kill it (RIP Dorie). Setup a quarantine tank. Paint the sides or tape paper to the sides(no light will reduce the stress of the fish). Put a power filter and heater in there. start off by filling half with tank water half with new saltwater. This will reduce the stress of transfer. Drip Acclimate. Allow the fish to settle in to the QT tank for a couple days. I have never had luck with hypo salinity, so I recommend copper treatment. Treat for 2 weeks and carefully reintroduce the fish.

On a side note, If you really want to kick the ich. You need to run the tank fallow for 2 or three weeks.

 

you ask a question and you are guaranteed to get a bunch of different responses! Lol......IMO a QT tank at this point is just going to stress them out even more! I would not move them what so ever. Copper can also be very toxic and must be used with extreme caution.

As pointed out......dont jump to extremes with any type of treatment with sick fish. I thought when I first entered this hobby that fish getting ick was a death sentence. However IME it is nothing like freshwater and I personally do not worry about ick (I do worry about other diseases such as velvet, brookynella etc) If your water parems is good, fish is eating a good diet with HUFA etc........then majority of the time your fish will beat it.

HOWEVER, your water parems are not good, there is a lot of stress in your tank, and you are over-crowded in your tank. Your bioload is too much for your size tank. The tang that you have really should go in a much bigger tank, say a 125g at least.

Nitrites should be zero......period. No ifs and or buts. This means that you recently had ammonia in your tank. Ammonia is toxic in even small amounts. Once ammonia is broken down it converts to nitrites. Nitrites is also toxic to fish, even in small doses. Then the nitrites are broken down to nitrates. Nitrates are tolerable to fish depending on the level, and your level is fine.

Once the cycle starts, it can turn into a viscous cycle. You have a fish die, etc and it releases ammonia. The ammonia causes stress and illness on your other fish. This can result in more fatalities. Hence the ammonia level will go up even higher thus causing more stress........see my drift!

So, like others said on here........stop whatever you are doing. How fast did you raise the temp of your tank......this could have started the initial cycle, cleaning the sand can cause a lot of junk to be released in the water causing the cycle, overfeeding can cause it etc. There is too many variables. I would gradually lower the temp back down to 78 and leave the tank be.

What are you feeding. Are you giving your tang algea sheets? I see you are using selcon which is great. Your tang will love you if you add an algea sheet to your tank. They are constant grazers and this will really help him. Plus some of your other fish might eat it, especially your angel. If your tang will not immediately go for the algea, add a piece of lettuce. This has no nutritional value, but it will help at this point. He will pick at it and IMO they will be attracted more to lettuce at first. Then you can add the algea sheets. Make sure you remove them daily so they do not break down in your tank

also how much flow do you have in the tank? You want to make sure there is a lot of o2 in there, and as said make sure the water is rippling on top.

Finally, what kind of butterfly do you have? I am assuming that is what you meant with b/f, many of these are very hard to keep even in a mature tank. While 5-6 months seems like a long time for a tank, sadly it isnt!

good luck

 

Yes, what Schackmel said.

 

Im gonna try and answer as best as I can. I havent had this problem until I placed the tang in the tank. Before then all of my parameters were 0. I got the tang because I already have a 90 gallon tank that im in the process of setting up. the50 pounds of lr should be more that enough to filter out some of the bad stuff out of the tank to include the skimmer. I also have a medium CUC that should also be helping on eating difritus of the tank. I reiterate, I didnd have this problem not until I added the tang recently, before then everything was good. As far as food for the tang, I've been feeding him algae with garlic and loves it, he seems not to get enough. As soon I the I found the dead fish(s) and the time I took it out the tank wasn't until a couple of hours in between which is not alot of time for it to release ammonia.

I raised the temp a degree at a time from 80 to 82, maybe was one of the stressors? the salinity has been in the .024-.025 range all the time, except for a day that it got a little high and I brought it back down to what I normally have at.

I laso think that the "live sand" in the tank is raising my readings., which Im getting rid of when I set up the 90 DT, it is fine sand and its messy. Will go for crush coral instead.

As food goes, I give them a mixture of mysis, brine, squid and meaty fiest soaked in selcom and garlic. I feed them once a day and some times feed them in the afternoon some artic pods with is also soaked in selcom and garlic. I really dont over feed them, at leastt I dont believe.

The butterfly I have is a long nose butterfly fish which was my second fish and he's doing really good, also the clowns are doing good as well as the anthias.