Hello, all! I am a new reefer, my partner and I just started down this path about 6 weeks ago, got fish about 2 weeks ago (after the tank cycled), and since then we just had our second fish die this afternoon! We are finding this emotionally difficult to deal with, especially with the causes of death. Currently we have a 75 gallon tank, and our remaining fish are two Gladiator Clown fish, Cardinal Pajama, and Engineer Goby (all juvenile fish).
The first death was our juvenile sweet little baby Blue Hippo Tang. We were given the okay to get a beautiful Diadem Dottyback (from our fish store guy). Unfortunately we didn't do research and trusted him. Less than 36 hours later the Dotty took a big chunk out of Baby Tang's tail, and she was dead about 10 hours after that. Later we learned we should've put Baby Tang in the sump to be safe and relax till we got that hell devil out (she was officially evicted that next morning). The aquarium store guys said just to watch Baby Tang to make sure she eats, nothing else.
Latest death was our tiny little Clown Goby, which was split in two after a rock formation collapsed. I don't know anything about stacking rocks, but we are feeling especially hurt because the guy that comes to maintain the tank set the rocks up a second time. He had to take them out to get the Dotty, than restack them. I was not there to watch how he did it.
We are both feeling frustrated because these deaths seemed like they could have been prevented, especially since we put it in the hands of others. I will now have to restack them myself again tonight. We both love animals so much, and there has been so much death, and now understand that it happens. The purpose of having somebody come maintain our tank every two weeks (till we could take over with the APEX system) was so we didn't kill any fish, and we've lost two already! I am so sad now, they were so cute, and had so much personality, and even had great fish names! I am finding this particularly hard, and keep imagining these two fish last moments and thoughts, right before they died, and how they felt or if it hurt.
Sorry for the long post, but how do you deal with fish death?
The first death was our juvenile sweet little baby Blue Hippo Tang. We were given the okay to get a beautiful Diadem Dottyback (from our fish store guy). Unfortunately we didn't do research and trusted him. Less than 36 hours later the Dotty took a big chunk out of Baby Tang's tail, and she was dead about 10 hours after that. Later we learned we should've put Baby Tang in the sump to be safe and relax till we got that hell devil out (she was officially evicted that next morning). The aquarium store guys said just to watch Baby Tang to make sure she eats, nothing else.
Latest death was our tiny little Clown Goby, which was split in two after a rock formation collapsed. I don't know anything about stacking rocks, but we are feeling especially hurt because the guy that comes to maintain the tank set the rocks up a second time. He had to take them out to get the Dotty, than restack them. I was not there to watch how he did it.
We are both feeling frustrated because these deaths seemed like they could have been prevented, especially since we put it in the hands of others. I will now have to restack them myself again tonight. We both love animals so much, and there has been so much death, and now understand that it happens. The purpose of having somebody come maintain our tank every two weeks (till we could take over with the APEX system) was so we didn't kill any fish, and we've lost two already! I am so sad now, they were so cute, and had so much personality, and even had great fish names! I am finding this particularly hard, and keep imagining these two fish last moments and thoughts, right before they died, and how they felt or if it hurt.
Sorry for the long post, but how do you deal with fish death?