Quarantine questions

[Quandale applesauce]

Side note: I just found a bunch of copapods crawling on the glass and the sponge filter. Is it possible the clown is eating copapods and just not eating my food. Still he doesn’t look too well.

 

[Quandale applesauce]

He just died.

 

[kboogie]

I'm sorry for your loss. The point Jay made is important to remember: unless the fish are from a country that bans cyanide, most of the very small fish are caught with a high dose of cyanide, resulting in a fish that is basically a "dead fish swimming". Since the death occurs a few weeks after the cyanide overdose, people think it was something they did when that is not the case.

 

[Jay Hemdal Verified Community Expert]

I used the Red Sea ammonia test. The weird thing is my sea chem ammonia alert is showing it’s in the safe zone but the Red Sea is showing 1.2. I know it’s a crappy test but it’s all I got.

The Sea Chem badge is reading the toxic, NH3 and the Red Sea test is reading total ammonia, NH3 plus the less toxic NH4. The ratio is pH dependent. I worry about total ammonia readings above 1 ppm

 

[Quandale applesauce]

One last question, before he died I noticed little copapod looking things crawling on him. I have copapods in my big tank and it could just be cross contamination and they got in the tank. Another possibility is that I was keeping live rock in there before it was a quarantine tank and it came in on the rock. I’m trying to make sure these are copapods and not some other type of harmful creature. Is it normal for copapods to be on a fish right before they die? They move, look, and act like a copapod. They swim from wall to wall sometimes on the bottom or on he sponge filter.

 

[Quandale applesauce]

This is a photo of the fish after he died. Do you see anything that would explain cause of death?