- Joined
- May 18, 2009
- Messages
- 325
- Reaction score
- 114
Hi,
I had ordered two fish from a nearby (but still shipped overnight) store. A small captive-bred yellow tang and a captive bred royal gramma. Both came in alive and seemed okay. Even though they were captive-bred I still wanted to observe them before placing them into my display tank. My quarantine is a long (33") 17 gallon acrylic tank. I've used the tank to monitor and treat fish in the tank in the past. The last time I used it was 6 months ago to prophylactically treat 3 dispar anthias with general cure, metro, and copper power for 40 days. The fish made it out fine. After I used the tank I bleached the entire thing and rinsed it out at least 2 times with tap water and 2 times with RO/DI. The tank was left to dry for the last 6 months. In anticipation of these fish, I mixed fresh saltwater and used the same heater and PVC pieces. I added biospira bacteria to the tank and brought the ammonia up to 0.2ppm using ammonia chloride. I let this cycle for a week and both my seachem ammonia badges registered no reading.
I temp acclimated both fish. I added the royal gramma first (with most of the water in the bag) and the fish did seem a little skittish but went into the pvc to hide. About 15min later, I added the tang and it swam around for about half an hour pretty normally. I let the fish settle in for the next couple of hours without bothering them, then when I came back both were dead. I don't know what went wrong. I was dumb and didn't check the salinity of the bags. The only thing I guess is that my acclimation was not sufficient. In the past, I usually float temp acclimate and pull out the fish with my hand and place into the tank. I've always been under the impression that the sudden pH increase from O2 causes the ammonia to become toxic, therefore open bag acclimation can be dangerous. I'm totally bummed that I lost both fish and I'm hoping not to repeat my mistakes.
My parameters of the tank were as follows:
0 ammonia reading
77F temp
1.025 SG measured both from refractometer and Milwaukee digital.
0.02 V stray voltage
Any thoughts on what could have gone wrong?
I had ordered two fish from a nearby (but still shipped overnight) store. A small captive-bred yellow tang and a captive bred royal gramma. Both came in alive and seemed okay. Even though they were captive-bred I still wanted to observe them before placing them into my display tank. My quarantine is a long (33") 17 gallon acrylic tank. I've used the tank to monitor and treat fish in the tank in the past. The last time I used it was 6 months ago to prophylactically treat 3 dispar anthias with general cure, metro, and copper power for 40 days. The fish made it out fine. After I used the tank I bleached the entire thing and rinsed it out at least 2 times with tap water and 2 times with RO/DI. The tank was left to dry for the last 6 months. In anticipation of these fish, I mixed fresh saltwater and used the same heater and PVC pieces. I added biospira bacteria to the tank and brought the ammonia up to 0.2ppm using ammonia chloride. I let this cycle for a week and both my seachem ammonia badges registered no reading.
I temp acclimated both fish. I added the royal gramma first (with most of the water in the bag) and the fish did seem a little skittish but went into the pvc to hide. About 15min later, I added the tang and it swam around for about half an hour pretty normally. I let the fish settle in for the next couple of hours without bothering them, then when I came back both were dead. I don't know what went wrong. I was dumb and didn't check the salinity of the bags. The only thing I guess is that my acclimation was not sufficient. In the past, I usually float temp acclimate and pull out the fish with my hand and place into the tank. I've always been under the impression that the sudden pH increase from O2 causes the ammonia to become toxic, therefore open bag acclimation can be dangerous. I'm totally bummed that I lost both fish and I'm hoping not to repeat my mistakes.
My parameters of the tank were as follows:
0 ammonia reading
77F temp
1.025 SG measured both from refractometer and Milwaukee digital.
0.02 V stray voltage
Any thoughts on what could have gone wrong?