BrendanH
Aquarium Advice Activist
Hi All,
Since this is my first post, let me first tell you a little about my setup. I have recently installed a 55 gallon tank, with 80lbs live sand and 21lbs live rock. I'm using a Fluval 404 filter with carbon and ammonia remover along with the usual mechanical and bio filtration stages. My current water stats are :
Temp : 77.2 F
PH : 8.2
Ammonia : 1.0
Nitrite : .5
Nitrate : 10 ( I don't actually have the readings with me right now so I may well be mixing up the
NO2 and NO3 readings - you more experienced folks will probably be able to tell which is which)
Fish : 7 Blue/Green Chromis, 1 Ocillaris Clownfish, 1 Royal Tang, 1 Flame Angel and 1 Coral Beauty Angel.
I know that Ammonia and Nitrite should ideally be at zero but this is a new tank, just running for a week now. Also - before the flames start, I now know that there is no way I should have fish in such a new tank. I went to the LFS with the intention of starting out with Freshwater but the guy at the store told me that it is no longer difficult to keep Marine tanks so I perhaps foolishly took his advice completely. He suggested the setup above and that I bring in a water sample after 2 or 3 days to see if the tank was ready for fish. They tested the water and gave me a green light to add the fish listed above. I really hope I haven't screwed up too much but I'm beginning to have problems that I hope you may be able to help me solve and protect the fish I've got.
So here are the problems I've been seeing :
The Coral Beauty ate the first day in the tank but has not eaten since. The first day it did not eat I noticed it briefly scraping itself on a rock. It did it just once but I had a closer look at the fish and noticed a small fuzzy white patch on its left pectoral fin. Following further advice from the same LFS I dipped the fish in Formulin 3 for 25 minutes. The fuzzy patch has now disappeared but the fish is still not eating. At feeding time if a piece of food comes close she wll move towards it as if to eat but after taking a closer look then backs away. I've been feeding a couple of different types of flake food and frozen mysis and brine shrimp. All the other fish in the tank feed affressively on whatever I put in. Other behavioural traits for the Coral Beauty - she's not as active as the others and tends to hide out a lot. When there is no movement in the room around the tank she will come out of hiding and swim around to an extent but rarely strays far from her hideout.
Other than that I had not noticed any strange behaviour from any of the other fish, but despite that I had a sudden loss overnight last night. This morning one of the Chromis was dead and lying at the bottom of the tank. I immediately removed the fish and all other fish seem to be fine with the exception of the Coral Beauty who continues to behave as described above. I then took measurements giving the results listed above. In hopes of preventing further loss I used some Ammo-lock 2 to neutralize the remaining Ammonia and I also put in a dose of stress-coat. I put in the same treatments 1 week ago when I first set up the tank.
One other note - Unfortunately I set up the tank with regular tap-water, using just the treatments listed above. Since then I have learned the value of RO/DI water and I have purchased a Maxxima Hi-S system from Kent Marine. I'm still looking for a good way to connect it a household faucet but I expect to solve that later today and then this weekend I'll be ready to do a water change.
So - there it is. Flame me if you feel it necessary but I know that I have made some dumb moves here and any advice you can give me will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
BrendanH.
Since this is my first post, let me first tell you a little about my setup. I have recently installed a 55 gallon tank, with 80lbs live sand and 21lbs live rock. I'm using a Fluval 404 filter with carbon and ammonia remover along with the usual mechanical and bio filtration stages. My current water stats are :
Temp : 77.2 F
PH : 8.2
Ammonia : 1.0
Nitrite : .5
Nitrate : 10 ( I don't actually have the readings with me right now so I may well be mixing up the
NO2 and NO3 readings - you more experienced folks will probably be able to tell which is which)
Fish : 7 Blue/Green Chromis, 1 Ocillaris Clownfish, 1 Royal Tang, 1 Flame Angel and 1 Coral Beauty Angel.
I know that Ammonia and Nitrite should ideally be at zero but this is a new tank, just running for a week now. Also - before the flames start, I now know that there is no way I should have fish in such a new tank. I went to the LFS with the intention of starting out with Freshwater but the guy at the store told me that it is no longer difficult to keep Marine tanks so I perhaps foolishly took his advice completely. He suggested the setup above and that I bring in a water sample after 2 or 3 days to see if the tank was ready for fish. They tested the water and gave me a green light to add the fish listed above. I really hope I haven't screwed up too much but I'm beginning to have problems that I hope you may be able to help me solve and protect the fish I've got.
So here are the problems I've been seeing :
The Coral Beauty ate the first day in the tank but has not eaten since. The first day it did not eat I noticed it briefly scraping itself on a rock. It did it just once but I had a closer look at the fish and noticed a small fuzzy white patch on its left pectoral fin. Following further advice from the same LFS I dipped the fish in Formulin 3 for 25 minutes. The fuzzy patch has now disappeared but the fish is still not eating. At feeding time if a piece of food comes close she wll move towards it as if to eat but after taking a closer look then backs away. I've been feeding a couple of different types of flake food and frozen mysis and brine shrimp. All the other fish in the tank feed affressively on whatever I put in. Other behavioural traits for the Coral Beauty - she's not as active as the others and tends to hide out a lot. When there is no movement in the room around the tank she will come out of hiding and swim around to an extent but rarely strays far from her hideout.
Other than that I had not noticed any strange behaviour from any of the other fish, but despite that I had a sudden loss overnight last night. This morning one of the Chromis was dead and lying at the bottom of the tank. I immediately removed the fish and all other fish seem to be fine with the exception of the Coral Beauty who continues to behave as described above. I then took measurements giving the results listed above. In hopes of preventing further loss I used some Ammo-lock 2 to neutralize the remaining Ammonia and I also put in a dose of stress-coat. I put in the same treatments 1 week ago when I first set up the tank.
One other note - Unfortunately I set up the tank with regular tap-water, using just the treatments listed above. Since then I have learned the value of RO/DI water and I have purchased a Maxxima Hi-S system from Kent Marine. I'm still looking for a good way to connect it a household faucet but I expect to solve that later today and then this weekend I'll be ready to do a water change.
So - there it is. Flame me if you feel it necessary but I know that I have made some dumb moves here and any advice you can give me will be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
BrendanH.
