My carpenter flasher wrasse and tomani tang suddenly dying

[Dom]

I was told by my lfs (different

thank you for the advice, I do need to slow down and my last additions to the tank were the last ones. I’m going to do a 20gal nano and pull my clown pair and damsels so there is a little more space and less bio load. I have a hang on the back filter that is for a 110 gallon tank that I recently adjusted the filtration to lower but once all of this happened I turned it back up. Also what is a refugium? To my understanding it is a sump packed with established rock, correct?

It is difficult (but not impossible) to have a successful tank with Hang On Back filter.

I would suggest a sump. It will give a place for mechanical filtration, a place to keep extra live rock, a refugium chamber and a return chamber.

A refugium is a location in the sump where you promote the growth of macro algae. Nitrates are a food source for the macro algae. When you grow macro algae in the refugium, it uses the nitrates in your water column.

 

[bstodds15]

Thank you for the kind words, will not be purchasing any more fish and am going to be focusing on building up the coral in my tank, and will be testing more often and being more cautious with what I put in my tank. My water quality has always been pretty stable but I’ll make sure to keep an eye on it. Going to pull my clown pair and damsels and do a 20g nano

Personally, I wouldn’t put a damsel in a 20g, especially with 2 clowns. without much space/rock work it can quickly lead to some aggression issues. You’d be better off just keeping the clowns in a 20g and letting them have their own setup (which is actually a very popular thing people do)

Also when it comes to fish/reef keeping, keep in mind that the smaller a tank is, the more you need to observe and maintain it. With less water, issues can pop up and effect the tank very quickly (I.e. disease or water quality issues).

 

[bstodds15]

Also - for future reference, whenever you’re at a fish store I highly suggest you pull up liveaquaria.com on your phone and look up information on the fish you’re interested in.

You can quickly get a good idea of if a fish is suited for you, I.e. the moorish idol being an “expert only fish”. A lot of the time fish are labeled expert because they are very particular in their eating habits/diet.

Even the most experienced fish keepers/reefers still opt for the hardier “easy to care for” fish, because they legitimately “easier” to care for.

Last bit of advice I would offer is focus on one part of the hobby at a time. And by that I mean focus on either the fish or the corals first. For reference I have a 55g tank myself that I’ve been running for ~2.5 years at this point (just fish/inverts), andI just added my first piece of coral last week.