LeftyReefer
2500 Club Member
I picked up two new fish from the LFS on saturday... A small Coral Beauty and a small Royal Gramma.
Both appeared healthy and happy at the LFS, other than the RG was a bit timid and hung out at the back of the tank at the LFS.. but that was expected.
The RG in particular was very nice looking and I was excited to add it. Both fish came from the same tank system at the LFS and neither was being medicated or in copper. I asked.
I drove the fish the 20 mins home and started floating them for temp. Checked salinity in both bags while floating. it was 28ppt. Would need to drip acclimate them for a few hours.
After they reached temp, I dumped both fish and LFS water into a 5 gal bucket with an air stone and started a slow drip line directly from my DT. (35ppt)
Drip acclimated them for 2.5 hours. Both fish appeared completely fine and unstressed during the process.
Even though both fish appeared completely healthy after close inspection at the LFS, I decided to use Safety Stop with them anyway.
So I prepared two more buckets, each with a gallon of water from my DT.
Put both fish through the Safety Stop 2 steps for 45 minutes each, again both fish appeared completely fine. Both of these buckets were using 100% water from my DT, which was 35ppt.
So at this point, the fish went from 28 ppt water at the LFS, into 2.5 hours in a bucket with rising salinity, and then another 1.5 hours in full salinity DT water, and both fish appeared completely fine the entire time. All was looking good. All that needed to be done was to transfer them to the DT.
I netted both fish out of the Safety Stop blue bucket and dumped them into the DT.
The CB swam off happy and unfazed. Unfortunately, no such luck with the RG. As soon as it hit the water, really bad things happened. It flipped out. Started twitching like crazy and darting into anything and everything... the glass, the rocks, the wavemaker... over and over. My daughter got upset when it started swimming upside down and twitching... both my kids thought they were watching it die. it eventually wedged itself into a wavemaker in what I assume was an attempt at suicide, but I was able to kill power before any real damage was done. I pulled it out of the wavemaker by its tail and it fell down to the bottom of the tank and sat facing a corner... it would slowly fall over onto its side and then right itself.... over and over. after a few minutes, something scared it and it darted underneath the heater and wedged itself between the titanium heater and the glass. Great, now it was trying to cook itself.
My daughter is crying and my son thinks it's certainly dead and asked he how long I'm going to leave it in.... Oh boy.... this did not go well.
Checked on it a bit later and it was gone. Spotted it wedged half into a small hole in the cave that the CB was now claiming... The RG was face first into a hole with the back half of its body sticking out into the cave. the CB didn't seem happy that the RG was there, but with its face wedged into the hole, the RG didn't really seem to care either. It just sat there motionless.
Breathing, but motionless. Shortly after that, it was lights out and I went to bed. That was saturday night.
Today is tuesday. The Coral Beauty is doing wonderful and pretty much runs the whole tank now. Great fish. Hasn't nipped any corals yet, but we are keeping it well fed.
As for the RG, we haven't seen it since saturday night. it has not made a single appearance and we've been constantly checking for it since we added it. it is not in any hiding spot that we can see. We can't find it anywhere.. I don't know what happened to it. It doesn't come out at feeding times, or at all. The snails don't seem to be drawn to a rotting carcass anywhere yet.... and I haven't seen any rise in ammonia at all yet.... so I'm still hopeful that it is still alive somewhere.... but how long can a 2 inch long RG last, while being wedged into/under rockwork, and not eating or free swimming?
Or perhaps it is dead and it just hasn't been enough time yet for the ammonia to spike. I'm worried it wedged itself into a hole and then died..... and now Its going to crash my tank.
Unfortunately, I glued a bunch of my rockwork together, so I can't really take it apart to find this possibly dead, possibly not dead fish.
Every day longer this goes on... I now dread coming home from work each day, only to find a cloudy crashed tank... ugh.
I'm not sure what I could have done differently... other than maybe use an acclimation box or maybe turn off the lights completely next time...
I'm really not sure what happened to be honest, but all I know is that introducing that Royal Gramma went worse than any other fish introduction I've done. hands down.
it was going just fine, right up until it wasn't... no signs of trouble, until the fish literally just flipped out the second it hit the DT water....
the only thing I can think of was maybe temp.... I did not use any heaters in any of the buckets. but I've put fish through this process before without issue.
And the 2 buckets I used for the SS dips would have only been out of the heated tank for 2 hours at most. So I don't really see that as being the issue.
Anybody else have any similar issues with adding Royal Grammas ?
Both appeared healthy and happy at the LFS, other than the RG was a bit timid and hung out at the back of the tank at the LFS.. but that was expected.
The RG in particular was very nice looking and I was excited to add it. Both fish came from the same tank system at the LFS and neither was being medicated or in copper. I asked.
I drove the fish the 20 mins home and started floating them for temp. Checked salinity in both bags while floating. it was 28ppt. Would need to drip acclimate them for a few hours.
After they reached temp, I dumped both fish and LFS water into a 5 gal bucket with an air stone and started a slow drip line directly from my DT. (35ppt)
Drip acclimated them for 2.5 hours. Both fish appeared completely fine and unstressed during the process.
Even though both fish appeared completely healthy after close inspection at the LFS, I decided to use Safety Stop with them anyway.
So I prepared two more buckets, each with a gallon of water from my DT.
Put both fish through the Safety Stop 2 steps for 45 minutes each, again both fish appeared completely fine. Both of these buckets were using 100% water from my DT, which was 35ppt.
So at this point, the fish went from 28 ppt water at the LFS, into 2.5 hours in a bucket with rising salinity, and then another 1.5 hours in full salinity DT water, and both fish appeared completely fine the entire time. All was looking good. All that needed to be done was to transfer them to the DT.
I netted both fish out of the Safety Stop blue bucket and dumped them into the DT.
The CB swam off happy and unfazed. Unfortunately, no such luck with the RG. As soon as it hit the water, really bad things happened. It flipped out. Started twitching like crazy and darting into anything and everything... the glass, the rocks, the wavemaker... over and over. My daughter got upset when it started swimming upside down and twitching... both my kids thought they were watching it die. it eventually wedged itself into a wavemaker in what I assume was an attempt at suicide, but I was able to kill power before any real damage was done. I pulled it out of the wavemaker by its tail and it fell down to the bottom of the tank and sat facing a corner... it would slowly fall over onto its side and then right itself.... over and over. after a few minutes, something scared it and it darted underneath the heater and wedged itself between the titanium heater and the glass. Great, now it was trying to cook itself.
My daughter is crying and my son thinks it's certainly dead and asked he how long I'm going to leave it in.... Oh boy.... this did not go well.
Checked on it a bit later and it was gone. Spotted it wedged half into a small hole in the cave that the CB was now claiming... The RG was face first into a hole with the back half of its body sticking out into the cave. the CB didn't seem happy that the RG was there, but with its face wedged into the hole, the RG didn't really seem to care either. It just sat there motionless.
Breathing, but motionless. Shortly after that, it was lights out and I went to bed. That was saturday night.
Today is tuesday. The Coral Beauty is doing wonderful and pretty much runs the whole tank now. Great fish. Hasn't nipped any corals yet, but we are keeping it well fed.
As for the RG, we haven't seen it since saturday night. it has not made a single appearance and we've been constantly checking for it since we added it. it is not in any hiding spot that we can see. We can't find it anywhere.. I don't know what happened to it. It doesn't come out at feeding times, or at all. The snails don't seem to be drawn to a rotting carcass anywhere yet.... and I haven't seen any rise in ammonia at all yet.... so I'm still hopeful that it is still alive somewhere.... but how long can a 2 inch long RG last, while being wedged into/under rockwork, and not eating or free swimming?
Or perhaps it is dead and it just hasn't been enough time yet for the ammonia to spike. I'm worried it wedged itself into a hole and then died..... and now Its going to crash my tank.
Unfortunately, I glued a bunch of my rockwork together, so I can't really take it apart to find this possibly dead, possibly not dead fish.
Every day longer this goes on... I now dread coming home from work each day, only to find a cloudy crashed tank... ugh.
I'm not sure what I could have done differently... other than maybe use an acclimation box or maybe turn off the lights completely next time...
I'm really not sure what happened to be honest, but all I know is that introducing that Royal Gramma went worse than any other fish introduction I've done. hands down.
it was going just fine, right up until it wasn't... no signs of trouble, until the fish literally just flipped out the second it hit the DT water....
the only thing I can think of was maybe temp.... I did not use any heaters in any of the buckets. but I've put fish through this process before without issue.
And the 2 buckets I used for the SS dips would have only been out of the heated tank for 2 hours at most. So I don't really see that as being the issue.
Anybody else have any similar issues with adding Royal Grammas ?
