Dying Fish

[dori]

29 Gallon tank that has been established for 1 year. Fluval 205 filter.
Chromis, bi color blenny, twin spot goby, clarki clown are remaining fish along with snails and crabs. Have alot of green hair algae growing on everything. I did a water change yesterday and this morning a damsal is dead and my blenny is at the bottom tucked by a rock and his color is fading. My ph is 7.8, amonia 0, nitrate 10, nitrite 0. I currently lost a coral beauty last week. None of the fish are new to the tank. Does anyone have any suggestions of what might be going on?

 

[joy13]

What is your SG and how do you test it?

 

[dori]

I only test for ph, amonia, nitrite, nitrate. Water is bought at local fish store.

 

[iDream]

Your nitrite levels are very high, not sure of what caused it but I'm pretty sure that's why you had the losses

 

[dori]

I had them reversed Nitrate is10 and Nitrite is 0

 

[joy13]

What is your salt level at (SG) and how do you test it with a hydrometer or a refractometer? I am thinking the SG changed to rapidly and that might be causing the problems. I know I test before and after I do a water change to make sure nothing has changed. Before I got ATO's on all my tanks I would top off with fresh water and then do the water change. I know one time I got a friend saltwater at a LFS and it was a big difference than what was in his tank so he had to get some extra salt from me to bring it up to 1.024 (that is what he uses for his tank) I use 1.025.

 

[dori]

just did it and mine is at 1.028

 

[iDream]

That's fairly high, do you top off with saltwater or freshwater? Either way it needs to come down

 

[Tomchong22]

I would do a 20 or 50% water change. The sg should only be around 1.020-1.025 the rapid change is what is probably killing them. Also the water change will bring the ph back up to around 8. Corals like a higher ph I'n the water. Are you doing 10% water changes a week?

 

[dori]

I do a 20% every 2 weeks.

 

[joy13]

I found this out the hard way when I got a used set up and brought it home the SG was way to high and I brought it down to fast. One fish made it the other didn't. I found out later what I should have done is basically drip acclimate it slowly with 2 airline hoses one going in and one going out and a fairly steady drip over a period of several hours or in my case days. The lady I got it from said her SG was perfect it was at 1.025 when in reality it was at 1.052. I don't know if she was topping off with saltwater or not but at any rate she didn't know how to read a refractometer.

With the ph make sure there is enough surface movement because that effects the ph as well.

 

[dori]

Did a water change and SG is 1.025 now. Everyone seems to be doing ok, no new deaths this morning.Thanks everyone

 

[Tomchong22]

Your welcome. Yeah the first thing you should always do if your test are wrong is to do a large water change. Adding new salt water replaces the minerals and gets your sg back to normal.

 

[iDream]

I hadn't even realized that you're using a cansiter, for a SW tank unless it's cleaned out regularly and thoroughly it will cause problems.

Also that you're experiencing a large amount of nuisance algae, this could be the canister and a large bioload.