Is My Water OK? I killed 3 fish during acclamation.

the original poster already stated his specific gravity is 1.024 so I dont think its that.

 

+1 after all my years of experience I have found saltwater works best for saltwater fish.



also your fish may be stressed out from the small tanks.

 

So, you mean wet salt. Because it's the moisture that makes it clump up.

And the only real problem with that is that calcium and alk will bond and then they won't dissolve when you do mix it. Otherwise, it'll be fine.

I think there's an added ingredient, like a pesticide from runoff or contamination from a bacterial inhibitor in this tank.

 

Pure water is at about a 7, there is stuff in the water that raises the the PH. If you have good saltmix it should put you close enough. Don't get to caught up in ph as long as its between 7.9-8.3 in the tank.

I wouldn't worry about it, the fish you got seem to be hit or miss depending on how they faired in the transition from the ocean. if you have damsels dying something is wrong.

 

The pictures you see are from my QT. Separate tank for each fish.
I do use a filter for each tank, but I changed it. The carbon pad came out and I made my own media from a 50 micron pad. This brings the issue of me having small particles in the water from the filter, but that was gone before the fish arrived.

The salt - the salt is Reef Crystals. It was open prior to mixing and it had air. It was hard to mix it, but after few hours it looked ok.

The light - the light was off during acclamation and during the night.

 

What did you mix your saltwater in?

 

you said you changed the filter pad
did you have any means of adding new bacteria to the water
they might have suffered from ammonia poisoning without sufficent bateria in the water in this case filter

 

Any oxygenation while they were acclimating? I can't tell from the pics or your explanation.

As someone else mentioned, a good picture of your acclimation tanks/equipment and/or a DETAILED description of your tank setups would help a lot.

 

Saltwater was mixed in the tank. This is my QT.

What worries me is the Food Grade containers. I use buckets from Home Depot and Lowes for my water and sometimes salt mixing.

There was 0 ammonia there as the fish was in the tank for 3 hours max.

I have another fish in my other QT for 4 weeks now and she is doing fine.

I did run air stones during acclamation. Yes.

 

How long did you mix it for? Usually 24 hrs to mix is a good idea to make sure that it mixes evenly.