Fish death after adding urchin

[fachatga]

I am thinking of keeping just one six-line wrasse.... after the fallow period.

Just be aware the 6 line is a notorious bully. It’s often sold as a docile fish but it absolutely is not.

 

[blaxsun]

Just be aware the 6 line is a notorious bully. It’s often sold as a docile fish but it absolutely is not.

My sixline is absolutely docile - a 100% pushover. Like a zero on the ****** scale...

 

[fachatga]

So was mine. For a long time until it wasn’t. I think it’s more common to have negative experiences with them.

 

[blaxsun]

So was mine. For a long time until it wasn’t. I think it’s more common to have negative experiences with them.

Good to know it’s something that may crop in the future...

 

[Acros]

I would love to have a Pygmy perchlet and a six line wrasse in the 25g tank. I think they should each be able to hold their ground or fight to death. Tail spot blenny is also of interest, but I don’t think I have enough space for all 3.

 

[Jordan92595]

I added a blue tuxedo urchin to eat the algae. Within 18 hours, my clownfish pair is dead (only fish in the tank). They have been in the tank for close to 2 months.

When I added the urchin, my fish started to freak out and tried burying themselves in the sand. I found one of my clownfish dead in the overflow, and the other one dead wedged headfirst in a hole in my rocks.

A week after I lost the clowns, I added a scooter dragonet. He was picking at my sand and rocks. I added a bottle of reef nutrition trigger pods after adding the fish to re-seed my pod population. The initial seeding was about two months back, and I feed live phyto every day.

Anyway, the dragonet is dead within 48 hours. I could not spot any signs of disease on the fish.

Notes:

• I stupidly added some water from the first store into my tank while acclimating the urchin.
• My SPS is all doing good and showing decent growth.
• No sign that the fish was eaten by anything in the tank.
• Other tank inhabitants - 4 * Trochus snails, 1 * Blue tuxedo urchin, any hitchhiker from 20lbs gulf live rock.
• I did not quarantine any of the fish.
• Salinity - 1.026
• Alk - 8.7
• Ammonia - 0
• Nitrite - 0
• Nitrate ~ 0
• Phosphate - 0.012
• Tank age - 2 months
• Size - 25 gallon

I appreciate all the help I can get. Should I go fallow for 45 days?

The dragonet. It died with its mouth open.

I would lower your salt.. you want to be in a perfect world around 1.04 to 1.06 so get your tank full and bring the salt to 1.04 this way when you loose water to evaporation your lessening the gallon ratio to your salt quantity . Which will raise your levels.
If you start your tank full at 1.06 the. When you loose water you can bring that to 1.07 and so on . Which will start burning your fishes gills and have some negative affects on your coral growth.
Just my input

 

[Acros]

Signs of the disease are more apparent this time. Is this ich or velvet? Death was within 48 hours of adding to the tank.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I added a blue tuxedo urchin to eat the algae. Within 18 hours, my clownfish pair is dead (only fish in the tank). They have been in the tank for close to 2 months.

When I added the urchin, my fish started to freak out and tried burying themselves in the sand. I found one of my clownfish dead in the overflow, and the other one dead wedged headfirst in a hole in my rocks.

A week after I lost the clowns, I added a scooter dragonet. He was picking at my sand and rocks. I added a bottle of reef nutrition trigger pods after adding the fish to re-seed my pod population. The initial seeding was about two months back, and I feed live phyto every day.

Anyway, the dragonet is dead within 48 hours. I could not spot any signs of disease on the fish.

Notes:

• I stupidly added some water from the first store into my tank while acclimating the urchin.
• My SPS is all doing good and showing decent growth.
• No sign that the fish was eaten by anything in the tank.
• Other tank inhabitants - 4 * Trochus snails, 1 * Blue tuxedo urchin, any hitchhiker from 20lbs gulf live rock.
• I did not quarantine any of the fish.
• Salinity - 1.026
• Alk - 8.7
• Ammonia - 0
• Nitrite - 0
• Nitrate ~ 0
• Phosphate - 0.012
• Tank age - 2 months
• Size - 25 gallon

I appreciate all the help I can get. Should I go fallow for 45 days?

The dragonet. It died with its mouth open.

I added a blue tuxedo urchin to eat the algae. Within 18 hours, my clownfish pair is dead (only fish in the tank). They have been in the tank for close to 2 months.

When I added the urchin, my fish started to freak out and tried burying themselves in the sand. I found one of my clownfish dead in the overflow, and the other one dead wedged headfirst in a hole in my rocks.

A week after I lost the clowns, I added a scooter dragonet. He was picking at my sand and rocks. I added a bottle of reef nutrition trigger pods after adding the fish to re-seed my pod population. The initial seeding was about two months back, and I feed live phyto every day.

Anyway, the dragonet is dead within 48 hours. I could not spot any signs of disease on the fish.

Notes:

• I stupidly added some water from the first store into my tank while acclimating the urchin.
• My SPS is all doing good and showing decent growth.
• No sign that the fish was eaten by anything in the tank.
• Other tank inhabitants - 4 * Trochus snails, 1 * Blue tuxedo urchin, any hitchhiker from 20lbs gulf live rock.
• I did not quarantine any of the fish.
• Salinity - 1.026
• Alk - 8.7
• Ammonia - 0
• Nitrite - 0
• Nitrate ~ 0
• Phosphate - 0.012
• Tank age - 2 months
• Size - 25 gallon

I appreciate all the help I can get. Should I go fallow for 45 days?

The dragonet. It died with its mouth open.

I wonder if the adding of the urchin was just a "red herring". I've rarely had fish die from shock/stress if they weren't compromised in some other fashion. For example, I was photographing an African angelfish while it was in quarantine and it literally keeled over and died from the stress of the flash...but it turns out it had internal nematodes that caused it to be "shocky".

The dragonet is way too skinny to survive, even if it was eating. When fish starve, they utilize their liver as energy, and even if they feed again, they are toast. Here is another possibility though: fish can dehydrate and look skinny like that from a salinity increase. Many stores keep their fish at a specific gravity of 1.020, or even lower. Many home aquariums are up around 1.025. You cannot acclimate a small fish like that from that low to that high without the water flooding out of its tissues...you need to gradually raise the specific gravity over a couple of days.

As to needing to let the tank lay fallow or not - yes, there is a risk in not doing that. However, if you don't have, or don't intend to get, a quarantine tank, I really wouldn't bother, since the next fish you get have the same potential of bringing a disease into the tank.

Jay


Jay

 

[Jay Hemdal]

Signs of the disease are more apparent this time. Is this ich or velvet? Death was within 48 hours of adding to the tank.

That fish looks emaciated and in poor conditions as well. Look into the salinity issue I just posted about, that could be the culprit here. If not, they you might want to look for a new dealer, as both the goby and the dragonet look very thin and shouldn't have died within 48 hours like that from any disease they didn't come in with.

Jay

 

[Acros]

I plan on getting a Petco 10g tank and quarantine fish before adding. Lost too many fish the other way.

The clownfish pair was from an LFS. The dragonet and the sharknose goby were from Petco.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I’ve never bought a fish from Petco, but I know a number of members here avoid them like the plague (pardon the pun).
Jay

I plan on getting a Petco 10g tank and quarantine fish before adding. Lost too many fish the other way.

The clownfish pair was from an LFS. The dragonet and the sharknose goby were from Petco.

 

[Acros]

I’ve never bought a fish from Petco, but I know a number of members here avoid them like the plague (pardon the pun).
Jay

They are the only store that carries ORA captive bred fish in the area. Anyway this has really soured my experience with them.