help i am missing fish

thank is 55 has 20 lb of live and 40 lb of lace rock well on its way to becoming live rock

 

one of my pepermint shrimp seems to be missing also but they are realy good hiders so might just be hideing

 

Not to be rude, but did anyone even really read the first post?
Your fish are dieing because your tank is not cycled. Ammonia and nitrites need to be at 0. Anything above that (specially with ammonia), and stuff dies. They are most likely lost in your rock work. You need to take down the rocks, find the dead fish, get them out, and wait until your tank is done with the cycle. Then slowly stock up your fish.

 

wow, i did miss that . . .

nitrites "close to 0" is a HUGE problem not to mention the ammonia. also trying to keep a sailfin in a 55 is a big no no.

~Will.

 

the tank is cycled the reason i say almost 0 is that i am partly color blind with a blue green def and cant be sure the colos are exact matches

the sail fin was supposed to go in a 175 but that tank seems to have lost cycle so i moved him into this tank for safe keeping till other tank stabilized and he was verry small at this point size of a half dolar

i have moved rock and no fish found

 

my corals and clams are un affected by this suden vanishing act i would think they would be first affected by water quality

sorry te seem rude when i am the one asking for help but seems every where you go no matter what the problem is somone always says the tank isnt cycled with out asking how old is the tank and what else is in it that might be affected by it not being cycled

 

Nobodies trying to be rude, everyones just trying to find the root of the problem. I would be surprised too if fish were disappearing but coral and clams were fine. I had the same issue with fish disappearance and concluded it was a sally lightfoot.

 

Be sure and let us know if you find the culprit!

 

You haven't said how old the tank is? Where did you get the rock both dry and live as well as the sand and have you checked for copper? What do you use for water and have you checked to see if your water utility uses chloramines for a residual disinfectant. If so you may have ammonia present that your test kit isn't picking up even if you are using RO.

Do you have any starfish? All are predators.

 

Nobody is trying to be rude. But, how old the tank is has zero to do with whether it is cycling or not. Cycling doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the start of the tank. It could go on for ever if it was not done properly in the beginning. Or it can re-occur after the beginning. If you had a decent amount of fish that died in the tank, and you couldn't find them so they were left to rot, and it caused ammonia, your tank is now cycling Whenever there is ammonia or nitrites, regardless of tank age, that is a cycle. See where I am getting at? And at any point in the tanks life, whether it be at the start or caused later down the line, the action you take as a keeper will be the same: the tank needs to sit idle while it re-establishes itself.
And there very could well be ammonia, depending on what corals you have. A lot of corals are a heck of a lot tougher than fish. And clams take forever to die. So just because those two look fine, does not mean the tank is. Any easy way to tell if there is ammonia: test your RO water, then test the tank water in separate tubes. If they are different colors, you have ammonia.