Need Urgent Help

[EdinburghReef]

A clownfish is super hardy. Surely temperature, salinity and cycling process is enough for them not to die. Not to mention all the other things I have to help.

 

[Tamberav]

I personally would add a hermit crab instead of a clownfish and see.

I even add hardy frags from my corals and test if they open up and such. My recent tank had cloves and a cabbage added.

Double check and make sure your salinity testing equipment is accurate/calibrated.

If inverts do well then it’s probably oxygen or acclimation or disease but disease doesn’t make sense since you had the fish a year.

 

[JohnTheReefer]

It is very likely not acclimation or oxygen causing the issue.

Does your municple water treatment facility use extra chemicals in the water annually or semi-annually?

Where did your live rock and sand come from?

 

[Fenral]

Okay—my job is really that of the village idiot, so forgive me while I ask some really stupid questions.

1. Do you need to put fish in that tank urgently for some reason? If yes... if No, then don't put anything else in that tank until you figure out what is going on.

2. You said it was a Redsea tank?? The same people that we see threads of blown-out seals, etc. (puts a pin on this thought)

3. You're picking fish from one tank in the same room to another tank in that room, so it's safe to assume it's not something in the air, correct?

4. If the fish were held in a tank there (if I understand correctly), when did you change the water in the old tank? Did you use the same source for the new tank? Same salt, etc.

Random Theories will abound, but keeping things simple, as they often tend to be, is either chemical or biological. Being an idiot, I thought I saw you tested for stray voltage, right?

 

[EdinburghReef]

I personally would add a hermit crab instead of a clownfish and see.

I even add hardy frags from my corals and test if they open up and such. My recent tank had cloves and a cabbage added.

Double check and make sure your salinity testing equipment is accurate/calibrated.

If inverts do well then it’s probably oxygen or acclimation or disease but disease doesn’t make sense since you had the fish a year.

Good idea I’ll throw a hermit and see what happens.

 

[EdinburghReef]

It is very likely not acclimation or oxygen causing the issue.

Does your municple water treatment facility use extra chemicals in the water annually or semi-annually?

Where did your live rock and sand come from?

Special grade sand, rock came from a tank shut down where I took many of the fish. Fish were very happy then with the rock beforehand. And no, it doesn’t the water is perfect at tests at 0.

 

[EdinburghReef]

Okay—my job is really that of the village idiot, so forgive me while I ask some really stupid questions.

1. Do you need to put fish in that tank urgently for some reason? If yes... if No, then don't put anything else in that tank until you figure out what is going on.

2. You said it was a Redsea tank?? The same people that we see threads of blown-out seals, etc. (puts a pin on this thought)

3. You're picking fish from one tank in the same room to another tank in that room, so it's safe to assume it's not something in the air, correct?

4. If the fish were held in a tank there (if I understand correctly), when did you change the water in the old tank? Did you use the same source for the new tank? Same salt, etc.

Random Theories will abound, but keeping things simple, as they often tend to be, is either chemical or biological. Being an idiot, I thought I saw you tested for stray voltage, right?

No there’s no rush, although I want it to happen sometime soon.
This is a brand new G2 tank don’t think there’s any problem with it.
The room is right next to the other room… no problem with my previous tank being there.
Water got changed maybe 5 months ago in old tank. I stopped doing it after it really matured and everything was looking happy. I’ve not seen them more happy before in that tank. So I don’t think anything’s wrong with it.

 

[jcmjoe]

So you have nothing in the tank currently that’s living? And when you say you checked for stray voltage, I assume you used a AC volt meter?!

 

[Fenral]

No there’s no rush, although I want it to happen sometime soon.
This is a brand new G2 tank don’t think there’s any problem with it.
The room is right next to the other room… no problem with my previous tank being there.
Water got changed maybe 5 months ago in old tank. I stopped doing it after it really matured and everything was looking happy. I’ve not seen them more happy before in that tank. So I don’t think anything’s wrong with it.

If there is no rush - then don't put anything else in the tank. Send the water for the ICP test; it may let you know what is happening. It's a shame/blessing you stopped the water changes; it could be that your source water did get contaminated, as was postulated above - again ICP test.

I assume the rooms share enough common air, so it's unlikely to be aerosol in nature (not impossible)—again, ICP test. Not that ICP tests can answer all the questions, which is also why I was asking about the tank - it's entirely possible the jerks (forgive my language) at Redsea assembled the tank. There is contamination in the silicon, etc.

Not sure if you have the dead fish still, but if you do you may want to take a scraping and look at it, if possible, under a microscope; same for the tank water. If not wait for the ICP test, if it doesn't show anything, then see if a LFS or lab etc can take a closer look at your water for biologicals.

You did check for stray current right?

 

[bkwonnn]

+1 icp.
You say you used garden tap water. Is that connected to the same water source as the house or maybe to an other (ground water) source ?

 

[bkwonnn]

And dying this fast probably is toxins not disease

 

[BetteMidler]

No mention of what the salinity of the tank or bag is??? Wherever you are getting the clowns, did you measure the salinity of the bag they were in compared to your tank? A 45 min drip is not going to match salinity if you tank is 1.026/35ppt. Most fish store run very low salinity. Not to mention leaving a bucket without a heat source after floating the bags to temp. I cut a small hole in the bag for a pipette & measure salinity with a refractometer after the bag matches temp.

Taking a fish from a low salinity to high in 45 min is a death sentence. If you have a couple points difference, take tank water and dilute it with ro to match the bag, put a heater in the bucket, preferably divided from the fish. Then open your bag in the bucket. Drip to match salinity of your tank. That may take several hours.

 

[Fenral]

And dying this fast probably is toxins not disease

I agree, not Disease (which is more chronic) - but there are plenty of really nasty pathogenic life forms out there that may now be lurking in the new tank - IE, Amebas, and other flesh-eating bacteria, etc.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Thanks I’ll do this next time, but surely this isn’t down to me drip acclimating fish. Especially the way that they all die everytime?

Again, if youre getting fish grom the same store, try a different outlet. Wild caught clowns are in many cases subject to what you are experiencing

 

[EdinburghReef]

Again, if youre getting fish grom the same store, try a different outlet. Wild caught clowns are in many cases subject to what you are experiencing

Two of the clownfish from same store, other totally different from a high end store… the others are TMC captive bred though too.

 

[EdinburghReef]

No mention of what the salinity of the tank or bag is??? Wherever you are getting the clowns, did you measure the salinity of the bag they were in compared to your tank? A 45 min drip is not going to match salinity if you tank is 1.026/35ppt. Most fish store run very low salinity. Not to mention leaving a bucket without a heat source after floating the bags to temp. I cut a small hole in the bag for a pipette & measure salinity with a refractometer after the bag matches temp.

Taking a fish from a low salinity to high in 45 min is a death sentence. If you have a couple points difference, take tank water and dilute it with ro to match the bag, put a heater in the bucket, preferably divided from the fish. Then open your bag in the bucket. Drip to match salinity of your tank. That may take several hours.

Salinity is 35 in both tanks, that’s the one thing I do check in the old tank though.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Two of the clownfish from same store, other totally different from a high end store… the others are TMC captive bred though too.

\\ThYjere's a correlation here and I dont see this as a salinity issue

 

[EdinburghReef]

\\ThYjere's a correlation here and I dont see this as a salinity issue

Okay, so you think my issue is because I’m drip acclimating? I’ll try add a hermit without see what happens.

 

[Fenral]

Okay, so you think my issue is because I’m drip acclimating? I’ll try add a hermit without see what happens.

Dear God, no—while people may believe or disbelieve in practice now—unless you have contamination in your container that resulted in poisoning—it's not the drip; people have been doing that for ages without ill effects, and I still do it to some creatures that can't handle a rapid adjustment, unlike fish. Clowns are generally hardy enough. They were used to cycle tanks often enough...

 

[EdinburghReef]

Dear God, no—while people may believe or disbelieve in practice now—unless you have contamination in your container that resulted in poisoning—it's not the drip; people have been doing that for ages without ill effects, and I still do it to some creatures that can't handle a rapid adjustment, unlike fish. Clowns are generally hardy enough. They were used to cycle tanks often enough...

Thanks for the reply,
I did think there would be no way that the drip accumulation was the problem. I mean the tank is fully cycled too. Think the problem comes down to a toxin. But, I’m running purigen and carbon with no luck. So no idea how I will figure that out. Going to send off an ICP a hopefully that will show something.