Dying fish in month old tank

[elijah scot]

I have had my tank for a month now and when I first got it I put quick start in it. Every time I add a fish it dies. I’ve done all the testing and the only thing not normal is the nitrates. (The tank is going through a algae bloom right now). I added a fish I Vought into the tank and it’s the only fish that has stayed alive. I don’t know what to do other than get some prime to add to the tank. The salt I used in this tank is from a brand called blue treasure.
If you have any idea what I could do to make this tank liveable I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[Dave1993]

not cycled buy some live rock

 

[FiddlersReef]

It's normally good to post a list of your actual tank parameters. However, a month old tank is almost certainly not cycled. Did you test the water as you went along and see the ammonia go up, then back down as nitrites went up, then down as nitrates went up? If not, then you're likely sending fish to their deaths in an uncycled tank that will poison them. Sure you might run across one that is particularly hardy that will survive it, but it will probably damage his health long term.

There's a ton of information available about cycling a tank and doing it without using fish. I'd strongly recommend searching and reading a lot before adding anything more. There's a great article on here about starting your first saltwater tank, but I can't seem to find it. Hopefully someone will chime in.

Bulk Reef Supply has a 5 minute video series covering all the issues with starting up a tank as well, and they're super helpful.

But in a nutshell.... until you've seen the actual cycle run its course, which will probably take a couple months, don't add any more fish.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

how many fish have you killed? Do you have test kits to check if the cycle is done, or just adding fish?

Its also a very small looking tank, if its less thank 10 gallons its cruel to put fish in there.

And the one rock would not be sufficient for biological filtration, it needs more rock.

 

[dmsc2fs]

how many fish have you killed? Do you have test kits to check if the cycle is done, or just adding fish?

Its also a very small looking tank, if its less thank 10 gallons its cruel to put fish in there.

And the one rock would not be sufficient for biological filtration, it needs more rock.

It has a center brace and appears to have a sump via overflow. Maybe a 20 long. It is interesting in that it is rimless on the sides but not on the front and back. Possibly the side rim was removed to use the light that was selected? Either way, the cycle needs to finish. If you plan to keep throwing fish at it to cycle it please just put one frozen shrimp in it and let it cycle the tank for 30 days.

 

[Dave1993]

Buy some real live rock from that has came from the ocean and you can add fish straight away its expensive but this is not a cheap hobby i spent £500-600 on rock alone

 

[N.Sreefer]

+1 on all said above but also wanted to ask how are you measuring salinity and how much do you let it swing before topping it off? Also just to cover all the bases whats your source water and how do you treat it? Are you using well water?

Edit: I agree with the surface area part (you need more rock) but a month old tank should be cycled if you added an ammonia source.

 

[brandon429]

Visual cycling 101

it is not possible to have a rock covered in algae that isn’t cycled for basic ammonia control. Point two, why would cycling take longer than a cycling chart shows, one month. Agreed above for NSreefer, look to basics like acclimation, water controls salinity etc. move on from cycling

It’s likely the op used bottle bac and didn’t disclose it

even if the op read enough about reefing to want one, and talks with a pet store about fish and still somehow didn’t know to use bottle bac, which I’ve never seen happen in twenty years, the poor fish that got put in originally up cycled the rock, we can see it plain as day. It is not possible to have a rock sat in water long enough to grow a top coat of algae that can’t handle basic ammonia. It’s odd that in all the reading the owner did they selected a one rock bare setup to copy from their study materials, why not just copy any thread on this site and do this:

add ten more of those rocks so the tank looks like reefs on the site, or at the pet store, or any reef online you’ve ever seen.

add more bottle bac to bring those up, don’t add any more fish destined to die until you can keep some basic corals and snails alive, quit killing fish. When ready for fish, read the fish disease forum stickies and follow them for disease prep, then add fish.


that setup above is 100% guaranteed to bring out disease in unprepped fish

 

[Cell]

However, a month old tank is almost certainly not cycled.

I beg to differ. Provided ammonia source alone, a tank will cycle in about 4 weeks. Add bottled bac it can be a matter of days.

 

[Cell]

Disease is the most likely culprit here. If you aren't quarantining for observation at a minimum you will likely run into issues nowadays. Most savvy reefers preemptively medicate during QT for common fish diseases.

 

[NoahLikesFish]

vetteguy will swap dry rock for live rock if you pay shipping

 

[brandon429]

Fully agreed. Water control and or disease. From the fish forum: (again, don't waste another fish until it's read that's mean)

Any fish put into a bone white single rock setup skipping all preps, all observation periods, and fed the lowest possible quality food a fish can be fed, is doomed. So, do the reverse of those steps. Begin with a clean up crew, they'll eat low quality food pellets. Add corals that are simple, run those while actually studying in the disease forum before ever adding another fish, and make your reef look like common reefs we see here before adding them after studying the disease forum.

Reverse of the loss pattern: brings up a ten rock tank into spots of coralline. Can keep corals, shows new growth, proves water is decent. Read and fully versed in fallow and quarantine. Does fallow, added qt fish, makes effort to secure best feed possible and hardly ever uses pellets or flake feed, makes a top feeding effort.

 

[FiddlersReef]

I beg to differ. Provided ammonia source alone, a tank will cycle in about 4 weeks. Add bottled bac it can be a matter of days.

Oh, I didn't think about adding bottled bacteria, etc. That probably makes sense.

 

[kenchilada]

Small tank like this, I would just stick a power filter on it and dump bottle bac in. Add more rock. After its established you can remove the filter.

 

[G Santana]

I cycled my 130 gallon dry rock with two bottles of FritZyme 9, on day 1 I put in two tangs, purple and yellow, a year later they are both fine.
I had never cycled a tank like that and was skeptical, this stuff is inexpensive and works.

 

[tharbin]

To me, the tank looks cycled. Yes it could use more rock and yes a small clean up crew would be good but I think it is more likely either the way the fish are being introduced to the tank or the general health of the acquired fish are the culprit.

Do you slowly match the specific gravity of the water the fish are in to your tank? How big a difference is there between your tank sg and the sg of the LFS water? Did you watch the fish at the LFS and are you relatively sure they are healthy when you buy them?

 

[brandon429]

curious

where did you read in preps leading up to reefing that we take dry rocks and add fish to it

did a pet store employee tell you to do that, or a thread you saw? asking because you had to read up a while to learn how to control salinity, salt levels, to do water changes and I hadn't seen any post where someone was advised to add fish to a non cycled tank with no bottle bac.

usually in pet stores when buying fish they chat you up about your reef, all that went undisclosed?

as the fish sat there among the waste for weeks before they died, you were feeding them as normal and the reef cycled within a month relative to surface area present just like this one did

see how feed + wait a month = cycled? you did this same approach, only fish were dying along the way in the ramp up

Build Thread - My SPS Waterbox Peninsula Mini 15

Hi all. Long time member (I think I joined right around when R2R started or took off years ago) but got out of the hobby for about 6 years and now I am back! I don't see many build threads for the PM 15 (mostly the 25) so thought I'd share my journey here. This post will be a bit behind...

www.reef2reef.com

where did you read about setting up a reef tank this way


you need to add a total of ten of those rocks to your tank, not 1. you can see in preps by clicking reefs on the site they use more than 1 rock in nearly all examples

the reason am asking about how you studied and saw to skip bottle bac is because I'm interested in knowing how people approach reef tank builds as a new reefer.

**bags of wet sand say you can do this trick**so that may be one reason you chose to skip the bottle bac. it says right on the caribsea bag can insta cycle a tank for fish. we don't believe it, but it says it.

 

[elijah scot]

how many fish have you killed? Do you have test kits to check if the cycle is done, or just adding fish?

Its also a very small looking tank, if its less thank 10 gallons its cruel to put fish in there.

And the one rock would not be sufficient for biological filtration, it needs more rock.

It’s 122 litres and I’m going to get more rock really soon

 

[Dave1993]

did you use bottled bacteria to cycle the tank i don't think this has been answered yet

 

[VermontReefs]

Do yourself a huge favor and watch as many videos as humanely possible! This type of material wasn't around when I started so take it all in before you do anything else with your tank. Good Luck.

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