Hello,
I'm new to the hobby and unfortunately my first two damsels have died. I tried to research like crazy and have everything perfect, but I likely made a major mistake.
I had my Tank setup with a oversized hob, RODI water used, temperature at 80F. I was ready to go and when talking to the store owner he had mentioned hyposalinity as an easy way to avoid flukes. With everything I've read I'm not sure why I didn't think to lower the salinity slowly even though he didn't mention that part.
Basically, I dropped the SG to 1.010 in the tank, set the bag of fish friends in the water to acclimate for 20 minutes, and then... Took them directly out of their likely 1.02X water and plopped them in the 1.010.
They didn't die immediately, but over the course of a day one started to swim slowly, then would kind of freeze, lose orientation upside down or lay on its side, and then snap out of it and swim normal for a bit, doing that for hours until eventually passing away. The other did the same thing about a day later. I attached a video but warning it is sad and hard to watch.
I feel awful because with everything I've read this was the complete wrong way to do it. Something in my head and talking with the store owner made me think this was to be done prior to fish in the tank.
My question for the non-dumb fish keepers is: Is the immediate shock of such a drastically lower SG what for sure killed them? I'm worried I did something else wrong and I don't want to kill my next damsels if that wasn't it.
Thank you in advance for the knowledge
I'm new to the hobby and unfortunately my first two damsels have died. I tried to research like crazy and have everything perfect, but I likely made a major mistake.
I had my Tank setup with a oversized hob, RODI water used, temperature at 80F. I was ready to go and when talking to the store owner he had mentioned hyposalinity as an easy way to avoid flukes. With everything I've read I'm not sure why I didn't think to lower the salinity slowly even though he didn't mention that part.
Basically, I dropped the SG to 1.010 in the tank, set the bag of fish friends in the water to acclimate for 20 minutes, and then... Took them directly out of their likely 1.02X water and plopped them in the 1.010.
They didn't die immediately, but over the course of a day one started to swim slowly, then would kind of freeze, lose orientation upside down or lay on its side, and then snap out of it and swim normal for a bit, doing that for hours until eventually passing away. The other did the same thing about a day later. I attached a video but warning it is sad and hard to watch.
I feel awful because with everything I've read this was the complete wrong way to do it. Something in my head and talking with the store owner made me think this was to be done prior to fish in the tank.
My question for the non-dumb fish keepers is: Is the immediate shock of such a drastically lower SG what for sure killed them? I'm worried I did something else wrong and I don't want to kill my next damsels if that wasn't it.
Thank you in advance for the knowledge