Clownfish suddenly died after feeding

[naselflee]

Hey guys.
I’m at loss here and quite heart broken and need some help.
I have a 400 litre tank that has been running for 6 month or so. Everything seems to be running smoothly.
Tank is a fish only.

anyway, I fed my tank this morning with some brine. All occupants ate fine.
I come back downstairs and my female clownfish is dead .
I have no idea what happened!
I have a blue hippo tang, foxface, sleeper goby, 2 clowns ,Valentini puffer and 2 pj cardinals. All fish seems fine.

I just done a 50% water change.
Could of the female maybe choked on her food or something?

parameters ammonia 0
Nitrate 40ppm
Nitrite 0
PH 8
Salinity 1.024

 

[Goaway]

If you still have her body, you can open her mouth and see. Should answer if it was food choking or not.

 

[brandon429]

Fish disease is the most likely option and cause. Before anyone freaks out on my assessment read the disease prep history of this tank and early symptoms while simultaneously reading the stickies from the disease forum, this will help to reduce blood pressure from initial reaction to the anger of my assessment.


fallow and quarantine is required to stem or stop losses that largely occur in mixed speciation tanks within the first eight months. If this was untrue the fish disease forum would be an inactive, boring place with not many posts from new tanks on every page for years.

 

[polyppal]

sometimes fish just die too , might've had some infection that wasn't evident. if the other fish are showing no issues it might've just been a fluke

 

[brandon429]

To save your current fish by summer, this reef needs to be re fallowed and the fish treated preemptively according to species and common maladies we see in the key forums.

next step: fervently debate disease etiology for the next six pages and pay no mind to the stickies in the disease forum


I already know how these assessments go down... This isn’t meant to offend you it’s meant to help your reef naselflee

this is merely the first one down, can revisit this advice when #3 hits

 

[Uncle99]

An attack?
Was the food concentrated in one area and someone made a “mistake”?
Odd I would say, eat and die maybe just coincidence.
50% water change seems a bit much, it may destabilize your water chemistry.

 

[LaloJ]

You must perform a thorough inspection of your tank to rule out any type of disease. I have seen fish die from one moment to the next when they try to jump out of the tank, come back breathing heavily and die as if from cardiac arrest, is it possible that this happens? Saw him with dartfish and once with an cherub angelfish.

 

[naselflee]

If you still have her body, you can open her mouth and see. Should answer if it was food choking or not.

I buried her.
It’s just weird cause the 2 clownfish were the first fish I owned. I had them for about 8 months

 

[BroccoliFarmer]

People can give you a million reasons, a million things to do, and a million things not to do. Unfortunately, just not enough information to make an informed decision let alone have someone give you advice is anything other than random guesses. But hey..when in rome...I suggest you turn up your protein skimmer to ensure enough gas exchange that will stop the next fish from dying.

All cynicisms aside, sorry for your loss.

 

[brandon429]

If this tank was the clowns only, a controlled and tight limited speciation they probably would be ok


some of the fish added back in the summer were the highest % disease vectors available and were symptomatic at the time of addition, combine this with vectoring from corals and rock and clean up crew from pet store


how to find information broccoli: click find all threads

look at the timing and progression matched to troubleshoots and timing and vector tracing from the key forum

ok ill be nice lol am not trying to cause anger, it’s merely a pattern relay you can bank on. Wait till #3 agreed then revisit

 

[naselflee]

You must perform a thorough inspection of your tank to rule out any type of disease. I have seen fish die from one moment to the next when they try to jump out of the tank, come back breathing heavily and die as if from cardiac arrest, is it possible that this happens? Saw him with dartfish and once with an cherub angelfish.

Maybe could be a heart attack? I only saw them an hour before hand and they were all eating fine.
When I got downstairs an hour later, she was dead.
Nothing usual on her body. The clownfish like to host the heater.
The other fish are fine, no spots or flashing against the tank.
The only difference today is that I’ve been downstairs vacuuming and cleaning ready for Christmas

 

[naselflee]

An attack?
Was the food concentrated in one area and someone made a “mistake”?
Odd I would say, eat and die maybe just coincidence.
50% water change seems a bit much, it may destabilize your water chemistry.

I don’t know? All the fish seem peaceful. Every now and then, I see the puffer go up to them and look and them. But not aggression

 

[brandon429]

Truly I’d given thought to your tank history and stocking order before commenting

it’s not a flippant writeup it’s my specific advice to protect your remaining fish coming from a long line of cycled tanks where we advise new tankers to practice the biosecurity and stocking fallow prep that Jay constantly writes about and peers rarely if ever relay. There were disease discussions on prior challenge posts for your developing tank, and since fallow hadnt been instated to clear things out it’s especially in play now that we are approaching 1st year and there have likely been a total of ~20 or more separate additions of unprepped materials from pet store.

anything wet added to the tank was a legit risk vector


there is a trend nowadays in reefing that didn’t use to exist regarding disease, that’s why most people have to endure losses and be driven to consider disease first, not many of the planning articles or peers will relay this trend to us right up front. I had to learn about it to address why so many pages of fish help loss were stacking up in my inbox eight months after we cycled their tank and they stocked up from pet stores. In times past, merely feeding well kept fish healthy. That time is no longer here, the disease forum is not using feeding tricks to quell mass loss patterns it’s a fractional component in the grand scheme of fallow and quarantine.

I am honestly, 100% trying to help, not to offend, this is every discussion in cycling we have on a daily basis for years now it just seems offensive since I’m pressing firm here based on specific details for this system. I know you value your fish seriously, this is how to prevent future losses.

maybe this guy had a bad ticker agreed, or genetics

but if you see any more disease implications on this system, fallow and quarantine is it.

 

[LaloJ]

Maybe could be a heart attack? I only saw them an hour before hand and they were all eating fine.
When I got downstairs an hour later, she was dead.
Nothing usual on her body. The clownfish like to host the heater.
The other fish are fine, no spots or flashing against the tank.
The only difference today is that I’ve been downstairs vacuuming and cleaning ready for Christmas

I can only say that I saw 3 or 4 fish die like this, but no clownfish, firefish and cherub angelfish, rose to the surface, jumped and returned to the water only to go to the bottom (just like corydoras do), but breathing heavily and practically lying on the sand to die.

 

[brandon429]

I’m shocked Laloj how even during fallow and quarantine attempts there are holes/ ways for disease to get through anyway


merely applying those actions intently still isn’t a guarantee. Nowadays I rate compound losses a near certainty without them in mixed species tanks

we have twenty years of data from nano-reef.com to show that two clowns and a goby fare well more often than not without preps


but a foxface fish
or cohorts

it’s only a matter of time and we track this timing right at about eight months to a year on any page of the fish disease forum if we count the # of help threads on any given page and select find all posts and discern roughly how old the tank is

the fact that fallow and quarantine can still fail comprises about 100% of the reasons non practicing peers decry the method while all along Jay saves bucket loads of fish with the technique

it is saving more fish than losing them, and when that’s no longer true expect major procedural changes in the stickies portion of the disease forum and someone else’s zoo director running them. Dying after feeding was mere coincidence

 

[Uncle99]

8 month old clownfish fish don’t die in one hour from a disease.
No pathogen moves that fast.
Again 50% water change is big IMM, however, it affected only one fish.
Strange.

 

[brandon429]

Disagreed based on any reading in the fish disease forum. If you read the stocking order of the tank and bio security applied, prior symptoms back in late summer, how would you rate it on a scale of 0-10 zero being no preps and 10 being an attempt at controlling vectors

 

[brandon429]

Id be curious to know even from a skeptic perspective how disease would be ruled out based on assembly and timing

Im reading a quick loss thread as we speak on page one of the fish disease forum

 

[brandon429]

The ethics of quarantining and and prophylactically medicating (or not)

If QT protocols weren't routinely shared and recommended this hobby would be dust. The vast majority of hobbyists have no local access to disease free livestock or know who the trusted online vendors are.

www.reef2reef.com

good lessons are found there. All votes to be hesitant on qt come from ones own tank example and inherent skill that absolutely doesn’t transfer outbound very well. quarantine hesitancy never comes from working retention in others tanks and then being able to quick link ten examples where disease issues were fixed in expressing systems without fallow and qt. Folks stay clear of those jobs, and yield to Jays advice.

 

[workhz]

Brandon429. I feel like you know your stuff but for the life of me I can barely follow what you say. Just curious, do you speak like you type? I can’t put my finger on it but my eyes glaze over and it feels like you’re writing in riddles. Again, don’t take offense but if you want to help people maybe work on delivery.