New Clownfish Dying

[singwithmylife]

I am new to saltwater but have had large freshwater tanks for years. I know salt is a totally different ballgame. I started my 20 gal. display tank about a month ago. It is cycled but currently empty. I also have a 10 gal. quarantine tank.

Yesterday I bought two baby storm clownfish, one black and one orange, from my local fish store. He had them for several weeks in the store and had been holding them for me. They seemed fine at the store.

I brought them straight home and floated them in the tank for 20 min. to adjust to the temp then drip acclimated them for about an hour until the water ratio was 1 to 1. I then moved them by hand into the quarantine tank. I washed my hands with super hot water no soap for several min. prior to moving them and was extremely gentle.

My quarantine tank has no substrate, just a submerged filter with a bubble feature, a heater, and two black pvc elbows to hide in.

As soon as I got them into the tank the black one started laying down on its side on the bottom and breathing heavily. I turned off all the lights thinking it was just super stressed and left the room calm and quiet. It seemed to improve but was still laying down a lot. The orange one was hanging out by the black one a lot but was at least not laying down.

I checked my parameters yesterday morning and again today and they have not changed. They are:

Ph - 8.1
Ammonia - 0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 0
Salinity - 1.024
Temp - 76.8 F

This morning I let the lights do a low level program and tried to feed them some mysis shrimp (frozen). The black one got the zoomies for a minute and was gasping for air at the top and then laid down on the bottom and died. The orange one is still hanging out at the bottom and not swimming around much. I think I saw it eat a tiny bit. I don’t want the orange one to die! What do I do? I can’t figure out what’s wrong.

 

[singwithmylife]

I’m so sad.

 

[Fish Fan]

I'm sorry about your Clownfish, we've all been there, and it can be rough.

The only thing that comes to mind is that maybe there's not enough oxygen? Is the bubbler creating enough surface agitation for good gas exchange? Maybe adding an air stone would help.

I'm sure others will see this and be able to help you going forward.

 

[chivobp]

That sucks. You need to have a powerhead to create oxygen.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

My first thought as well is low oxygen. Saltwater does not hold oxygen as well as freshwater , we need to consciously oxygenate the water. Flow and surface agitation is so much more important than in freshwater.

 

[Mr. Mojo Rising]

Also 0-0-0 seems to me an uncycled tank.

 

[EuphyllinOHk]

If you don't have a spare (small) powerhead to agitate the surface of the water, an airstone will work too for oxygenating the water.

I couldn't quite see the orange clown so I couldn't tell if it was also gasping. Another thing to consider are disease. Are you currently medicating your quarantine tank? (One of)The fastest disease in saltwater is marine velvet, which quickly causes rapid breathing/respiratory collapse (and is contagious). Gill flukes are a common cause of similar symptoms, but they don't really overtake a fish quickly - the black clown would have to have been infected with gill flukes for a while before you bought it.

The black clown looks really thin and could have also been very weak and more susceptible to whatever overtook it. In the video, I think we would consider it "moribund", which is shorthand for "too far gone" and it's hard to draw definite conclusions. I would add +1 to everyone's suggestion of doing something to get the water oxygenated, as it's the fastest way of improving your orange clown's condition, then I would suggest looking into medicating for marine velvet/ich with a copper medication, if you haven't already. Good luck, fingers crossed.

 

[singwithmylife]

Also 0-0-0 seems to me an uncycled tank.

It’s a quarantine tank.

 

[Fish Fan]

It’s a quarantine tank.

How is the other Clown?

 

[singwithmylife]

Here’s a couple of videos that show the surface agitation situation as well as the orange clown currently. Thank you all so much for your help! I have a wave maker that I could add and aim at the top if the current setup doesn’t seem like enough. I added some live copepods and he seems to be trying to eat them once in a while.

 

[singwithmylife]

How is the other Clown?

Not so good. I just posted a video.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

I am new to saltwater but have had large freshwater tanks for years. I know salt is a totally different ballgame. I started my 20 gal. display tank about a month ago. It is cycled but currently empty. I also have a 10 gal. quarantine tank.

Yesterday I bought two baby storm clownfish, one black and one orange, from my local fish store. He had them for several weeks in the store and had been holding them for me. They seemed fine at the store.

I brought them straight home and floated them in the tank for 20 min. to adjust to the temp then drip acclimated them for about an hour until the water ratio was 1 to 1. I then moved them by hand into the quarantine tank. I washed my hands with super hot water no soap for several min. prior to moving them and was extremely gentle.

My quarantine tank has no substrate, just a submerged filter with a bubble feature, a heater, and two black pvc elbows to hide in.

As soon as I got them into the tank the black one started laying down on its side on the bottom and breathing heavily. I turned off all the lights thinking it was just super stressed and left the room calm and quiet. It seemed to improve but was still laying down a lot. The orange one was hanging out by the black one a lot but was at least not laying down.

I checked my parameters yesterday morning and again today and they have not changed. They are:

Ph - 8.1
Ammonia - 0
Nitrites - 0
Nitrates - 0
Salinity - 1.024
Temp - 76.8 F

This morning I let the lights do a low level program and tried to feed them some mysis shrimp (frozen). The black one got the zoomies for a minute and was gasping for air at the top and then laid down on the bottom and died. The orange one is still hanging out at the bottom and not swimming around much. I think I saw it eat a tiny bit. I don’t want the orange one to die! What do I do? I can’t figure out what’s wrong.

Do you know the salinity the fish arrived in? Some stores keep their fish in lower salinity. Acclimating those fish to full strength seawater is very difficult.
This hits smaller fish harder, and the rapid downturn the fish took also hints at that being the cause.

 

[chivobp]

Here’s a couple of videos that show the surface agitation situation as well as the orange clown currently. Thank you all so much for your help! I have a wave maker that I could add and aim at the top if the current setup doesn’t seem like enough. I added some live copepods and he seems to be trying to eat them once in a while.

Yea . Add the wavemaker

 

[singwithmylife]

Do you know the salinity the fish arrived in? Some stores keep their fish in lower salinity. Acclimating those fish to full strength seawater is very difficult.
This hits smaller fish harder, and the rapid downturn the fish took also hints at that being the cause.

I don’t know. I’ll ask tomorrow morning. The guy from the shop has been trying to help too. He has been great. I was wondering about that and wishing I had checked and took some to run parameters on before I started the drip. Lesson learned. Does that mean I get to level up now?

 

[Fish Fan]

Do you know the salinity the fish arrived in? Some stores keep their fish in lower salinity. Acclimating those fish to full strength seawater is very difficult.
This hits smaller fish harder, and the rapid downturn the fish took also hints at that being the cause.

@singwithmylife mentioned that they drip acclimated for an hour. Do you feel like this wasn't a good approach, or not long enough?

 

[Fish Fan]

I don’t know. I’ll ask tomorrow morning. The guy from the shop has been trying to help too. He has been great. I was wondering about that and wishing I had checked and took some to run parameters on before I started the drip. Lesson learned. Does that mean I get to level up now?

I don't mean to speak for Jay H., but it's always a good idea to test the sanity of the water the fish come in. Many times fish stores run their fish tanks at a lower salinity than your own tank (especially if you have corals). As mentioned already in this thread, fish can acclimate more easily and more quickly to a lower salinity, but it takes longer to acclimate them to a higher salinity.

 

[Jay Hemdal]

@singwithmylife mentioned that they drip acclimated for an hour. Do you feel like this wasn't a good approach, or not long enough?

Depends on the flow rate, the salinity difference, if they aerated during the drip, how long the transport home took.

People almost always run drip acclimation too low in volume or some other error.

 

[singwithmylife]

Yea . Add the wavemaker

Is this right?

 

[Fish Fan]

People almost always run drip acclimation too low in volume or some other error.

Thank you, Jay! This is interesting. I don't mean to get off topic here, especially when the OP is having time sensitive problems, but maybe sometime you could do an article on drip acclimation? I'm going to feel like an idiot if you already have one, but what's new lol! I was starting to believe that most people are drip acclimating for too long.

 

[Areseebee]

Consider that if you ended at equal volume tank to bag water, in the end yhe difference between them was half of what it orgijally was. Maybe thats a small bumber but i uave LFS thay are 7 ppt below my tanks 35 ppt. Sometimes it can be a lot. Thst being said i feel like thet is not whats going on here as i would have expected the fish to recover by now.