Help

[Htbrooks1]

Hi everyone, I have a situation that I hope someone can help with! I came home from work today and both of my clownfish are breathing heavy. One of the clowns has a tiny dot on it’s nose and the other has skin peeling off of its mouth. I also noticed that both of the clowns are fighting more and one keeps hiding in a cave-like area behind the rock (it usually never does this and they haven’t fought before today). They also keep vibrating next to each other after the fights. The tank they are in is a Fluval Evo 13.5 with saltwater from the LFS, live sand, and dry rock. There are no other fish or inverts in the tank. We did switch the filter media to include purigen, chemipure blue, matrix, and filter floss. I made another post explaining that we’re doing a fish-in cycle (didn’t do enough research and went off of what the LFS owner recommended). Tank was set up on 2/5 and the fish were added together as juveniles on 2/7. We’ve been testing the water and the ammonia has been around .25-.5 and we’ve been doing water changes every other day to get it back closer to 0. pH-8 nitrites-0 nitrates-0. The salinity was at 1.026 last night and today it was extremely high at 1.029 so we topped off with R/O and the salinity is now 1.026 (currently working on getting it a little lower). The fish have been eating well and were acting perfectly normal before this afternoon. I expected to have some bumps in the road doing a fish-in cycle, but if there’s something we can do to help the fish I’d love to know!

 

[JosephM]

The heavy breathing is most likely ammonia poisoning, I hope you have been dosing prime every 48 hrs with doing a fish in cycle. As for the aggression and twitching they are trying to assert dominance and who will be the male and female (dominant one)

 

[Htbrooks1]

The heavy breathing is most likely ammonia poisoning, I hope you have been dosing prime every 48 hrs with doing a fish in cycle. As for the aggression and twitching they are trying to assert dominance and who will be the male and female (dominant one)

Just started dosing amguard lastnight, should we switch to prime ? We are new to this so we are going off the LFS recommendations. Thank you

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Poor fish, but if your going to torture them, then let them cycle the tank like you intended. By doing water changes you are delaying and tampering with the cycle. Ammonia will turn into nitrite and nitrite will turn into nitrate, but your not letting the process happen. There are different bacterias you can add to help speed up the cycle, but let the ammonia turn into nitrite. Nitrite is slightly easier on fish than ammonia.

 

[Htbrooks1]

Poor fish, but if your going to torture them, then let them cycle the tank like you intended. By doing water changes you are delaying and tampering with the cycle. Ammonia will turn into nitrite and nitrite will turn into nitrate, but your not letting the process happen. There are different bacterias you can add to help speed up the cycle, but let the ammonia turn into nitrite. Nitrite is slightly easier on fish than ammonia.

I'm not trying to torture any fish, like I said in the first post I'm doing what the LFS said. I trusted them when we added the fish. We didn't know any better. Didn't post to get backlash, posted to get help. Do you have a preference on bacteria to add ?

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

I'm not trying to torture any fish, like I said in the first post I'm doing what the LFS said. I trusted them when we added the fish. We didn't know any better. Didn't post to get backlash, posted to get help. Do you have a preference on bacteria to add ?

Sorry, its not my place to backlash on anybody, I'm one of those people that always seems angry when I'm not.

I'm not familiar with bacteria's, someone else will need to offer advise on that.

But please stop listening to your LFS, to sell you 2 clownfish to cycle your tank is pretty shady and wrong, ask fellow reefers online for help

 

[Htbrooks1]

Thank you for your reply, we set the tank up and added dr. Tim's then the day we added fish we added more dr Tim's. Should we add more ? We really hate seeing the fish like this and was told to do water changes to keep ammonia levels down. Do we need to just let the tank run and add amguard or prime? I guess so many ways and different opinions. We just don't know which way to go.

Sorry, its not my place to backlash on anybody, I'm one of those people that always seems angry when I'm not.

I'm not familiar with bacteria's, someone else will need to offer advise on that.

But please stop listening to your LFS, to sell you 2 clownfish to cycle your tank is pretty shady and wrong, ask fellow reefers online for help

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

sorry but my opinion is to ride out the cycle properly, and do research while its happening. you can't keep ammonia down unless you do water changes every day, you create ammonia every time you feed and every time the fish poops.
The fish will help the cycle go much faster anyway, but I suggest patience, thats my opinion.

 

[Deep]

Thank you for your reply, we set the tank up and added dr. Tim's then the day we added fish we added more dr Tim's. Should we add more ? We really hate seeing the fish like this and was told to do water changes to keep ammonia levels down. Do we need to just let the tank run and add amguard or prime? I guess so many ways and different opinions. We just don't know which way to go.

Now that you have started down this path of cycling with fish, just continue with water changes and wait for nitrites and nitrates to register. I dont think adding more bacteria is going to help.
Get the ammonia badge so you can visually see it increase.

 

[Htbrooks1]

sorry but my opinion is to ride out the cycle properly, and do research while its happening. you can't keep ammonia down unless you do water changes every day, you create ammonia every time you feed and every time the fish poops.
The fish will help the cycle go much faster anyway, but I suggest patience, thats my opinion.

Thank you for the info

 

[Htbrooks1]

Now that you have started down this path of cycling with fish, just continue with water changes and wait for nitrites and nitrates to register. I dont think adding more bacteria is going to help.
Get the ammonia badge so you can visually see it increase.

How much of a water change would you recommend ? 25% ? 50 % we have been doing roughly 25% but see no big change in the ammonia levels. How often ?

 

[Deep]

How much of a water change would you recommend ? 25% ? 50 % we have been doing roughly 25% but see no big change in the ammonia levels. How often ?

OKay so you dont want to bottom out ammonia obviously to stall the cycle. But you want to do enough so as to not harm the fish,

The same levels of ammonia can be more toxic depending on the temperature and PH.

So keep temps around 74-75 degrees, feed as little as possible, do water changes to keep ammonia around 0.4 if you can.... so after one water change, follow it up with another to keep it around 0.4..

 

[Htbrooks1]

OKay so you dont want to bottom out ammonia obviously to stall the cycle. But you want to do enough so as to not harm the fish,

The same levels of ammonia can be more toxic depending on the temperature and PH.

So keep temps around 74-75 degrees, feed as little as possible, do water changes to keep ammonia around 0.4 if you can.... so after one water change, follow it up with another to keep it around 0.4..

What should our PH be during the cycle ? When will we see the cycle level out or complete ?

 

[Deep]

What should our PH be during the cycle ? When will we see the cycle level out or complete ?

anywhere between 7.7 - 8.2, and it will decrease as the nitrification process starts. I would say 2-3 weeks for your cycle.
Since your LFS put you in this situation maybe you could ask the LFS to give you a small piece of live rock from their tank that you can seed the tank with. That should help cycle the tank much quicker.

 

[Htbrooks1]

anywhere between 7.7 - 8.2, and it will decrease as the nitrification process starts. I would say 2-3 weeks for your cycle.
Since your LFS put you in this situation maybe you could ask the LFS to give you a small piece of live rock from their tank that you can seed the tank with. That should help cycle the tank much quicker.

Will definitely ask, thank you