how to keep 5 fish in 10 gallon saltwater tank

I was thinking about sending the 2 damsels back. And you still think that the clown fish wont make it through.

 

Clownfish ARE damsels. As they get bigger they get pretty territorial. I just had to put mine up for "adoption" because it was getting very aggressive and that's only ONE in a tank.

 

Correct, and as Steve said, two will pair up and eventually the odd man out will get rough ride. Those are very young fish atm, so you won't quite see their true nature yet.

 

ya i would take all of them back ASAP wait a few weeks till your params settle out then i would add one fish and maybe one more later on. alot of cool small fish are clown gobys. i have a green one but alot of people like yellow ones. a great place to look for them is liveaquaria.com and they have a hole section for fish that are suitible for a small tank

 

First, you need to do some water tests or have your lfs do some water tests (if you don't have any kits.) You will need ammonia, nitrite and nitrate right now. IMO, your tank hasn't cycled yet. Doing any sort of water change will only delay the cycle and result in problems down the road. If you do nothing, there is a good chance all the fish will die, as the ammonia will get pretty high with 5 fish all added basically at the same time to an un-cycled tank. The best thing you can do IMO is to do the water tests and take all but one damsel back right now. On a 10 gallon tank, even with good filtration, you should only have about 2, 3 fish at the most. Remember, they will grow.

On another note, also keep in mind small salt water tanks are very hard to keep and maintain. The evaporation causes them to have large salinity swings, the small amount of water will result in larger temp swings if not careful and the small volume of water will also cause pollutants to build up quickly. I don't want to discourage you, but keep these things in mind, especially if you start to have problems. You haven't started out on the greatest path, but hopefully we can get you there, we all made mistakes, especially when starting out.

 

How long do you think i have if i dont fix this problem.

 

before any fish start showing sings of stress if not already id say a few days.

1 week max ( this is stretching it im pretty sure it would be less than this) before fish begin to show signs of illness. IMO.

edit: didnt read correctly.. i was thinking on ammonia poisoning and illness over that

 

It depends, the fish may not pair up. If they do pair up, then the aggression will occur rapidly. As to when they will pair, it depends on their age, the tank and the fish, there's no specific date or time period.

However, before that, you will experience a cycle which will stress the fish out a lot of possibly kill them.

 

GuitarMan89 had a great post above.

If in regards to the behavior, can't really be sure, but they're new to the tank and will be a bit docile till they claim territory. In regards to the very realistic decline in tank conditions and fish health, I wouldn't even wait past tomorrow to correct the situation.

 

i agree with slocal on correcting the situation ASAP. like tomorrow if not today. (wednesday at most, you dont want to return a stressed fish back to the LFS. truth is they wont really do anything to help them other than put them in a bigger tank and try to resell them.. unless ofcourse your LFS is very adequate about their livestock)