discouraged

So last night at lights out my clowns were happy as pie swimming around. This morning I woke up to one of them laying on its side gasping. They have been in the QT for two weeks now. I added media from my cycled tank plus a few pounds of live rock with shrooms/coral that I was quarantining. Have been feeding them frozen mysis and new life spectrum thera +A and they have been gobbling it up.

The temp has been rock solid at 79. Never had an ammonia spike but nitrites did show up about 0.25 last week. I did a small water change and they have been pretty much non existent since last week. Nitrates are between 10 and 20. The only thing I can find wrong is didn't top off the water yesterday and the salinity this morning was 1.028 and my PH is on the low side at 8.0.

Sucks that I have been at this for two weeks and already lost a fish.

 

hey don't let it get you down. Sometime things just happens and there's nothing you can do about it. i cant even start to tell how many fish i lost in the beginning of the hobby 12 years ago when i started.

 

How big is your tank?

 

Can you give us any more info about the tank they are currently in? Size, water movement, current parameters, etc.?

Is the clown still alive (you mentioned it gasping, but then said you already lost your first fish)? Did it have any spots, scrapes, etc on it?

 

Can you give us any more info about the tank they are currently in? Size, water movement, current parameters, etc.?

Is the clown still alive (you mentioned it gasping, but then said you already lost your first fish)? Did it have any spots, scrapes, etc on it?

 

Its a 10g quarantine tank

Nope he was taking his last few breaths. I had two clowns in the tank and they were paired up. The second clown was nudging him with its nose just before it died. kinda looked like he wanted to wake it up. Poor guy...The second clown seems to be doing fine. No spots or scrapes on the one that died but it was kind of a pale color.

The tank is a 10g with a penguin 400 biowheel full of seachem matrix that was cycled in my DT. Water parameters are all good - Ammo 0, Nitrite 0, Nitrate 0, PH was a bit low at 8.0 and Salinity was high because I didn't top off yesterday. It was 1.028 Temp has been steady at 79F. The only thing I can think of that happened in the tank is the torch coral that was in QT with the fish got broken in two 3 pieces during trasport. I tried to save all 3 fragments but the smallest one started melting over the past few days. I took it out of the tank yesterday. the 2 larger pieces are doing great.

Thanks

 

Sorry for your situation, Its hard when you take the right steps and yet it still seems like what did i do wrong. Were you medicating with anything in the qt tank?

 

nope no meds because everything seemed to be going really well. I did dip the coral in coralrx pro and rinsed it before adding to the tank.

 

It sounds like your ammonia spike and the inevitable Nitrite spike that accompanies it may have burned the fishes gills.A high salinity may have exacerbated the problem. Small tanks are much harder to maintain because the parameters swing much more easily.

 

I have tested everyday and never saw any ammonia and the highest the nitrites got was .25 Would that be enough to hurt them? If so then I am not sure how else I could do a qt tank without having a little bit of a cycle...