Hi all, long time lurker here, hoping I can poll the crowd for what the heck happened to my fish. This happened a few weeks ago, sorry in advance for the long story.
I had 6 fish in a 90g:
- two clowns (both with me for 6+ years), laying eggs happily about every 3 weeks
- a yellow tang
- a pinstripe wrasse
- a blue niger trigger (a juvenile, maybe 1.5")
- a sleeper banded goby
All fish had been in the tank for at least a month at this point.
On Thursday night the goby looked a little pale, made a note to keep an eye on him. Friday AM I found him barely able to stay upright, very pale, fins slightly ragged, and pulled him into QT. He died ~6 hours later. I didn't know what happened but started keeping a close eye on the rest of the tank, no symptoms or weird behavior from anything else. Friday night the male clown was acting a little skittish, but I chalked it up to a clutch of eggs and the fact that clowns are weird fish, these two in particular.
Saturday morning, the male clown is very pale, fins very ragged. I pull him out into QT, and do the same for the female out of caution. At a loss for what to do, I dosed the QT with Fritz Maracyn (it's what I had on hand and everything was closed/out of stock nearby). Male died about 3 hours after that (Saturday afternoon) and the female died the following morning (Sunday AM) with her dorsal fin looking like someone had cut it halfway down, and her tail looking like it had been through a blender (photo below). I eventually found the trigger dead Monday morning with the same symptoms as the female clown -- ragged fins, very pale coloring, absolutely no other visible indications of ill health.
So all told, I lost 4 seemingly totally healthy fish (AFAICT) with no more than ~36 hours between obvious onset of symptoms and death.
Corals (LPS, SPS, softies) and anemone are entirely unfazed, and the wrasse and yellow tang were behaving 100% normally this entire time -- eating and swimming around without a care. This is the part that has me totally baffled.
This tank has been set up for a long time (years) and all the below parameters have been stable at these levels for at least 6 months.
Nitrates: 10-20ppm
Alk: 8.9-9.1
Calcium: ~420-440
pH: 8.2-8.4
Happy to answer questions if I left something out. Absolutely no idea what went down here, and the crew at the LFS was at a loss too. Photos below, of the female clown before/after and the goby just before I pulled him out.
I had 6 fish in a 90g:
- two clowns (both with me for 6+ years), laying eggs happily about every 3 weeks
- a yellow tang
- a pinstripe wrasse
- a blue niger trigger (a juvenile, maybe 1.5")
- a sleeper banded goby
All fish had been in the tank for at least a month at this point.
On Thursday night the goby looked a little pale, made a note to keep an eye on him. Friday AM I found him barely able to stay upright, very pale, fins slightly ragged, and pulled him into QT. He died ~6 hours later. I didn't know what happened but started keeping a close eye on the rest of the tank, no symptoms or weird behavior from anything else. Friday night the male clown was acting a little skittish, but I chalked it up to a clutch of eggs and the fact that clowns are weird fish, these two in particular.
Saturday morning, the male clown is very pale, fins very ragged. I pull him out into QT, and do the same for the female out of caution. At a loss for what to do, I dosed the QT with Fritz Maracyn (it's what I had on hand and everything was closed/out of stock nearby). Male died about 3 hours after that (Saturday afternoon) and the female died the following morning (Sunday AM) with her dorsal fin looking like someone had cut it halfway down, and her tail looking like it had been through a blender (photo below). I eventually found the trigger dead Monday morning with the same symptoms as the female clown -- ragged fins, very pale coloring, absolutely no other visible indications of ill health.
So all told, I lost 4 seemingly totally healthy fish (AFAICT) with no more than ~36 hours between obvious onset of symptoms and death.
Corals (LPS, SPS, softies) and anemone are entirely unfazed, and the wrasse and yellow tang were behaving 100% normally this entire time -- eating and swimming around without a care. This is the part that has me totally baffled.
This tank has been set up for a long time (years) and all the below parameters have been stable at these levels for at least 6 months.
Nitrates: 10-20ppm
Alk: 8.9-9.1
Calcium: ~420-440
pH: 8.2-8.4
Happy to answer questions if I left something out. Absolutely no idea what went down here, and the crew at the LFS was at a loss too. Photos below, of the female clown before/after and the goby just before I pulled him out.