valentini gone manderin dead....

i tried this thread inn the sand section but not many hits so im tryn it here. my good friends valentini puffer died or so we think , it really vanished over night. we went the next day and bought a manderin and got it all set and put it in the tank. 10 hrs or so later the manderin was dead.we went to the lfs and the guy told us the valentini puffers wer toxic when they die. so we are changing the water. what should we do with the live sand

 

if the puffer died he might still be in there rotting idk if they are toxic but that could have killed the fish do u have hermits

 

no none in this tank. hes not in there we took all the water and rocks out an will be taking the sand out as well....he was theb only thing living in the tank besides LR and live sand.

 

That is wierd so no body?

 

nope just up and disappeared, lookd around on the floor in the filter no trace.

 

im more concernd with how to clean the tank out so we can get more fish in it.

 

dr. forster and smith says there is no need to worry about toxins on the rock and or sand.

 

no body from a puffer?
i thought those guys were big enough so you could see them all day long, thats really weird.
maybe aliens came and took it?

 

I'm guessing it got sucked up an intake or something. Get a good cleanup crew and see if they'll survive long enough to fix the mess. If so wait a week or two and readd a damsel or similar.

 

Yeah... I would assume if there are no other fish in the tank (I think I am reading that right) that eventually the tank cycle will settle down if it's out of whack.

What are your parameters? Do you have ammonia and nitrites above 0?

The other thing I would consider is starting with another type of hearty fish. Puffers are pretty "dirty" in terms of the amount of waste they produce... if your tank isn't really mature enough in it's cycle (or it doesn't have enough of a community of bacteria to handle the waste) that could be the reason you keep losing fish. (losing in terms of dying not in terms of physically losing them... that IS weird).

In any case, if you don't find the body... just keep watching the parameters on your tank until the ammonia and nitrites go back to zero and then start with smaller fish.

Sorry about your struggles... that sucks.